Big Sound, Low Price: Creative Audigy

Dolby Digital Decoder

Like the earlier Live ! 5.1, the Audigy sound cards are capable of decoding Dolby Digital 5.1. This operation is done at driver level; there isn't any smart card hardware for the purpose as in an audio/video amplifier. Creative doesn't provide software for playing DVD, and we used Win DVD 2000 for our tests. We compared the result with a middle-range Home Cinema system made up of a Denon AVC amplifier and Bose Accoustima speakers. To activate the 5.1 on the Audigy, you have to control the decoding in the mixer and leave the DVD player on AC3 passthrough.

As a an adequate source, we chose the films "Toy Story 2" and "Saving Private Ryan". The sound positioning is excellent, and the dialogues have been well allocated to the central voice. However, the dynamics of the sounds leaves a little to be desired. It is difficult to express objectively what one feels. If the sounds are positioned well, they don't cross the room. The movement of a bullet fired from a rifle at the back on the left, and which hits metal at the front on the right can be traced with the Home Cinema installation, while with Audigy you can't identify the origin or the destination.

This is logical enough, as you can't expect the same result unless as if you were to use an amplifier costing a thousand bucks, but it's already pretty good. As for the processor utilization rate, on our test computer the decoding takes about 8% more CPU resources while reading. In practice, this is of no importance because in general, you don't do anything else while watching a film. For a DVD player without graphics assistance, however, you will need a 500 MHz processor at least.