Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook Sound Card PCMCIA

I got this card because I use my laptop all the time and I am also a music and movie maniac so I couldn't bear the poor sound quality from the integrated soundcard of the laptop. The card is thin, light, and easy to carry. And they even give you a sticker you can use on your desktop beside your XP and Intel labels. If you have a good headset, that's great enough for enjoying high quality music on your computer; and if you have a set of 2.1 or 4.1, the sound is unexpectedly amazing when you watch a movie. I can't imagine what my feeling will be when I get my 7.1 pieces, eventually. The card has digital output, but you have to buy additional cable to use optical signal. The same thing for digital input, but I don't think most people will use this function, since those professional DJs never work on a laptop. But you will be fond of Karaoke if you're an Asian. Cheers~~

The Audigy 2 ZS sound card was purchased used from BMS Computer Sales. It was exactly as represented in their advertisement. It and EVERY piece of the accessories arrived together - very well packaged. Everything worked PERFECTLY. The order was placed on Saturday AM - it was delivered Monday afternoon. Man, that's prompt. I am Very, Very pleased with the product, AND BMS Computer Sales' performance. I rate BMS Computer Sales with an A PLUS for their performance on this transaction.

I recently retired my old desktop and replaced it with a laptop & docking station. One of the problems you have with a laptop is less ability to upgrade it. Mine already has an nVidia 5200FX graphics card, albeit with just 32mb RAM, but it is adequate for all but the most demanding new games. OTOH, the built-in sound needed serious upgrading. I was toying with getting the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 external card with USB connection, but I've already filled 6 on-board USB ports and a 4-port USB hub with other paripherals, so this card was an ideal solution. The card suports 5.1 - 7.1 speaker configurations. If you only have two speakers now (with or without sub), plan on upgrading these as well if you want to get the most out of the sound card. Plugged into the PC card slot and connected to Logitech 5300e 5.1 THX surround sound speakers via the included cable adapter, it fills my 10' x 10' office with sound. DVD's obviously don't sound as good as my home theather set up, but do sound an order of magnitude better than my previous two speakers with sub and the built-in audio was capable of. I haven't had time to try out a game that supports EAX yet, but I assume it will be just as incredible. The card has a built-in headphone jack, so even if I take the laptop to another part of the house or on the road, I can still use it. That's something that wouldn't be practical with the external USB Audigy 2. The card comes with a little pouch to store it in when you remove it, so you can toss it in your laptop bag during transport. I assume the included software suite is the same one you would get with any Audigy 2 card, but it is the one thing that drags down the product. Rather than one feature packed program, Creative gives you a collection of individual programs. Many of these programs (like volume level, CD burning, etc.) are of limited use and don't appear to offer any functionality not built-in to WinXP or Media Player 10. A couple of the utilities like the THX surround set up are actually useful though. Curiously, some of these utilities include buttons that launch others in the suite, but not all of them and not all apps have the buttons. OTOH, there is a dashboard utility/toolbar that has buttons to launch all the utilities and it starts now whenever I start up the machine or reboot. It "hides" at the top of the screen until you mouse over the top edge, then drops down into view. This is an unnecessary and unwanted "feature" as far as I'm concerned. Since the programs are all accessible from the menu, or via desktop shortcuts you could easily create for the most often used utilities if you want to go that route, I don't see the benefit of having an app launcher utility continuously running and taking up memory/system resources. I haven't yet explored disabling this utility, but intend to. The hardware itself performs flawlessly, but the app suite and unnecessary, but forced app launcher toolbar prevent me from giving it 5 stars. Nevertheless, if you've got a laptop and you want to upgrade the sound, this is really the best way to go. The USB route is a little bit cheaper, but the PC card is worth the couple extra bucks for its portability and just the fact that it doesn't require a USB port to plug into.

I bought this soundcard with the express purpose of bringing out all the sound of my logitech z-2300's. So far it's doing quite well. The install did take a while, despite having a relatively good system. It did bother me that there was no volume control on the card itself, only in software, but now that my speakers are set up I simply adjust the volume knob on their wired remote and all is well. Had an external usb audigy 2 zs (not ns) sound card been available I'd have likely bought it and installed a usb 2.0 sound card in the pcmcia slot instead, but no biggie. The zs was the only one that mentioned being THX certified, and since my speakers are too I'd settle for no less.

potential buyeres need to be aware that the original version of the Audigy2 ZS does not fit the PCMCIA slots of several notebooks. For details about this problem, refer to Creative's discussion forum: [...] The card I purchased at Amazon was the shorter version and so would not fit my laptop. As of this writing, I'm still having problems getting a replacement from Creative.

Would give it a higher rating but crashes the Dell Latitude (Win XP) when you stop the device (as recommended) and remove the card! Bought it to use the laptop for Software Defined Radio, where the higher bandwidth would be very useful and a stereo sound in is required (most laptops have mono-in). If you don't try to stop or remove the card then everything works really well. Quite a bit of the software that comes with is pretty badly implemented - sucks up processor power. Hopefully the crash issue will be fixed.

Overall great ,sound quality ,but have major problems when using EAX 4.0 HD on almost all games...reason for that is > not compatible with some PCMCIA controllers (like mine)...

I have nothing extra special or unique to add... just want to say that this product does what it says, and it does it very well. What I didn't expect to like most about this card was the recording options... but it really has a lot of great features in this regard. This card is useful if: You use your laptop as your main computer, and use seperate speakers (5.1 etc) You need better recording options when on the road You have a nice pair of headphones, and aren't happy with the output your laptop has. This card does exactly what it says, and flawlessly, for me.