Sound Blaster Audigy Review 

"Why buy one when you can buy two for double the price." Don't give the RTX 30 Series buyers any ideas Phil.

Support from Windows 95 to Windows 10, that's damn impressive

This may be my favorite piece of computer hardware EVER. I've had dreams about it even. Saving up $30 a week to buy an Audigy and later a 9700 AIW card made me feel so spoiled as a high schooler. The Audigy 'gamer edition' even came with Deus Ex GOTY and Giants Citizen Kabuto.

I am still using the exact same SB Audigy in my (more or less) modern day rig. The hard part was finding an adequate Socket 1151 motherboard with a PCI slot. lol This is the longest I ever stuck to a computer part. Still works beautifully without a glitch and I always liked the sound. I even sold an external sound card I once bought after a month of using it, because it didn't quite give me that dynamics and punch on the bass that Audigy does so well.

Your driver bundles are a wonderful tool! i've installed both SB Live & Audigy with your driver packs, as well as your MSDOS configuration, on my 90s computers - no problems whatsoever. Thanks very much.

I had one of these with the front live drive a long time ago! I remember routinely recording sound from an electric guitar just playing around and also recording live concerts that played live on TV with this setup

Phil is using Government logic, why buy 1 when you can buy 2 at double the price...

I had a plan to record every 1990's k pops caset tape I own by using "record what you hear" option through AUX line to microphone.

Soundblaster + MIDI Whole days sequencing music in the 90’s

I have good memories with this card, i still have a Audigy laying around somewhere. Back in the day it was really a step up from the live! cards. The favorite sound card i used.

I'm glad I still have mine around. One of my most favorite cards around~

This Sound Cards series was AMAZING! Thank you Phil!!!!!!!

The gold mine experience? Wow, I haven't seen that in a while, that brings back some memories. Brilliant video as per usual Phil

I had the Audigy 2 and was amazed by the sound quality.

Speaking of Doom, I was replaying the recent update and for the first time I fall in love with the music 'I sawed the demons'. The 2nd episode, 1st level.

Cool, I had one of these many moons ago. Awesome sound card.

That brings back memories! I also had the sound card back then. Soundblaster Audigy SB0090, Athlon XP 1800 +, MSI K 7 Turbo mainboard, Geforce 4 TI and a CHIEFTEC DRAGON PC case in beige. I even modified the side part with a window-kit (with Nuclear Power sticker (ha) ) and a green cold cathode light. That was popular back then. This was my first self-assembled PC. Those were good times!

I only ever used the Daniel_k driver pack for my Audigy and Audigy 2 ZS cards. They add a couple bugfixes and pretty seamless support under win7 and win10 x64.

I Have one on ordered for my windows xp computer! Excited to experience that 3D SOUND.

12:20 Nice. Quake 3 Arena. I still play that from time to time on Steam. Q3A capture the flag used to be my favorite game for over 3 years long. Until Mafia: The city of lost heaven was released.

I have also worked at a mod/update of the kx audio driver for macOS, and so now i got this audigy card (and many other cards from the audigy series) running on macOS catalina and even macOS big sur, so it's a very versatile sound card

Always a good day when Phil uploads a retro part

Saw many of them back in the day. The black pcb and the gold connectors made them look impressive.

Excellent video, thanks! All other reviewers for this card just mention specs and connection ports but never actually show the card in action. I was especially interested in that sound font thing, especially for retro gaming, now I know which sound font to get for Doom!!! Thnx again 🖖🏻

Followed your instructions and it works perfectly in DOS. Thanks

I still have this card in my collection as well as my Sound Blaster Live! Platinum, Audigy 2, X-Fi XtremeMusic and current Audigy RX. Great cards that did well in their respective periods but the software/ drivers were always a bit subpar. I wish Creative would bundle free games with the new cards like they did in the past.

Thank you for providing the Live! drivers. Sound works great in Win98SE and DOS with SB16 emulation.

Very nostalgic. Yes really is.

I just bough one of these for a old HP that was in storage since 1999 in Detroit and it was sealed in the original box! I might have to make a video on it...

Good memories! My dad had one of those back in the day. That startup jingle is burned in my head. Never got dos sound to work as a kid, but that was on an nvidia chipset with me having no dos driver experience back then.

I would have thought any decent SATA HDD from the past few years would be capable of double the output a ATA133 port would allow. Fun setup though, always a joy to watch all this! On a side note SSHDs really shine in TV PVR boxes. Basically a few reboots and the OS/system software gets pushed to the flash and you do get a much smoother PVR!

Just got my uncle's old PC and it has a A64 3000+ too (Newcastle) which runs pretty hot on idle, on a MSI K8NM-FISR and a little Radeon 9600 Pro. Pretty decent retro PC, was looking for a suitable sound card and this Audigy seems to be a nice fit. Thanks for the video Phil !

Phil, your channel is best on youtube in retro pc theme. Every your video is always pleasure for me. Soulful and qualitatively :)

Great topic for a video! I remember using this card (along with a couple of SB Live!) with a third party driver that made them a real workhorse for music production on a slow system. The configuration interface allowed you to connect inputs and outputs through DSP effects, mixers, and even using DSP synthesizers that ran independently of the CPU. I think the driver was called "kX driver". Left me feeling like these cards were kind of neutered by their official drivers, but in hindsight they'd be great options even today for consumer audio.

Kids today.... don't know the struggle.... the pain....

All these years and I never knew that TAD stood for Telephone Answering Device. I suppose I could have Googled it, but... :-)

A very big advantage of the Audigy / Audigy 2 / Audigy 2 ZS cards in MS DOS is the fact that, through some weird magic (probably due to the way their emulation works), many speed sensitive games (especially those with the Turbo Pascal "200 divide by 0" error, or those with sound related speed issues) just work even on a Core 2 Duo PC without any type of throttling (Monkey Island, Jazz Jackrabbit, Lemmings, Titus the Fox are just a few examples). So these cards are pure gold for overkill Win98/WinXP builds with good DOS compatibility (too bad they don't have a real OPL3 :-) )

Still got one of these floating around in my spare parts. My son was using it (digital out using mini-8 to coax on a Yamaha TSS-15 amp) until we retired his X58 board a couple of years ago.

The Audigy line has some fantastic features - I've always loved them clear through to the X-Fi line. I think the DAC in these is still fantastic today with excellent sampling rates/SNR plus tons of features to play with to boot.

This man does gods work keeping old drivers available thank u from every retro man woman and child

Last year I got mine bundled with a FX5200 for 10 USD and it was one of the best deals I've made. For nostalgia's sake I'm considering an Audigy Rx for my current daily driver.

I still use my Audigy SE, I bought a motherboard for my modern machine with standard PCI specifically to use it

I had one of these, back in the Jurassic age...then on board sound got to the point where I didn't need them, then when I did need them again (music production with live WAV recording) there were better products (Line 6 HX, FocusRite etc.) I understand that they still make these things...which really blows my mind.

I had various Live series, then Audigy as well... few in that series back in the day. Good card.

Opened video at 486 views :)

Ahh, awesome. I have a Platinum CIB, with the audigy drive and remote. Now I have to give it a try.

I just bought the Audigy and the Live 5.1 for a Windows XP machine. US$ 6 each from a local store. They were recognized by windows but we didnt have the drivers at hand. Whish me luck 😂😂

This was THE card to get if you wanted serious sound in your Windows 9x powered Pentium 2 or 3!

Brilliant Phil. I have just managed to get hold of this very card. It appears to offer everything I’m looking for. Thanks for the recommendation and access to the drivers on your website 👍🏻

This is the card in my 2002 gateway xp computer. Midi sounds great for the older games.

that was my first sound card, pretty nice with a 5.1 altec lansing. the only other car i ever bough is the maudio 2496 (best suported card ever).

Two P.C.L episodes in a week!. Very versatile sound card. I guess the "Live!" has been dethroned then.

Very nice video, I was sleepy in work an now I'm not :3 tech just brings me to life

This a really nice soundcard. Under Windows 9x it's just equivalent to a sound blaster live.

Wow! DOS compatibility with PCI audio card. I thought this only worked with an ESS audio card. Now I just might be installing Tomb Raider 1 Gold for DOS after first buying this card Phil.

I have 4 complete in box Audigy 2s but no Audigy. I should fix that.

I paid 200 bucks for one of these when it first came out. I used most of the features on it though so it was worth it ...and the like 105dB signal to noise ratio was crazy good! The worst thing about it tho was all of the audio jacks were super close together so hooking up multi channel direct sound and a microphone was a nightmare and strained the jacks and cords. Lol

Have this exact card in my retro Tualatin build, together with an AWE64 Gold. Good stuff!

Perfect, will be grabbing one of these for sure and will use until I get lucky with an a3d card (prices on those on ebay are pretty high right now)

I am litterally about to install one of these into my win98 retrobuild, and downloaded the cds from your site 3 days ago! Its like you knew

Your last three videos is just the right content of your channel, quality retro gear! I prefer watching videos like this instead of new low end pc china parts. Watching you over the years I realize that you favourize more sound than graphics judging by quantity of videos uploaded for those two. We all know SoundBlaster created a audio standard and produced many great sound cards, but if you could in-depth have a look at Aureal Vortex 2 or Gravis Ultrasound please. In my humble opinion they are superior to Creative's counterparts. Best regards and thank you for great upload

I bought a couple of these for $2 when Goodwill Computer Works was clearancing them a few years ago. I guess I should've bought the lot of them! :D

i've had an audigy platinum ex for a while and could never get it working. doesn't install properly with any driver cd - might just be broken. so i bought one of these too. thanks for the driver cd!

Nice video! Have a 15 year old Audigy 2ZS thats still going strong in an old Dell w/ Linux Mint :0) Unfortunately my new Windows 10 build doesn't have a PCI slot, but debating getting a PCIe adapter to run it maybe with the KX drivers i used to use.... I miss it! Cheers!

I just love these cards. I always buy one when i find them below 10€. I have one in each retro PC i made and a few in storage. Both my audigy 2 cards needed the capacitor fix/upgrade to stop hissing and popping. The audigy just works better, cleaner and faster than the LIVE!, and i used my live 5.1 digital from 1999 to the late 2000's, after the LIVE i went with an Xfi. As for the audigy 2 i never could quite tell the difference between them. I had no experience whatsoever with the audigy series. When i got at building retro PC's i went with the card i knew, that was the live. And i was happy. Then i got a bundle of hardware and an audigy was in it. I tried it and instantly i was blown away! I can't have enough of them since then! There is also a 8mb waveset for MSdos called eapci8m.ecw

I had this card with the break out box. yeah that was cool.

Thanks Phil. These are great cards for sure.

Nice vid as always. Wait till next near-lock down, here in the Netherlands every time a lock down is in place people become insecure and stop buying stuff, specially on the 2nd hand market. With low amounts of buyers prices drop like crazy... its great.

AWESOME , as always an awesome video - awesome detailed information which I add to my knowledge and retro building.. say it would be cool if you could talk a bit about the CD music audio quality output on / listening - tweaking SB audio cards settings .. with Audigy / Audigy 2 / SB Live / SB Live 5.1 .. A LOT of the audiophiles would appreciate it .. ( best sound settings via SB software hubs for best quality output ) Don't know if that would interest others , but sure would for me ..

Great card. Have one running on my WInXP socket 478 build.

Nice video. I still own an Audigy Platinum Ex, that one with an external rack. It was really something a long while ago. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Phil

Loved my Audigy, ran it for many years but was left behind when I built my First Hackintosh in 2009

Always love your videos thanks for doing such. Wonderful job.

Still have my Audigy Platinum with 5¼" breakout box and remote, I wasn't that impressed as an upgrade from the Live!, X-Fi was better and I still have my Titanium HD installed

8:10 Got me thinking - Master... Master!.. Master of puppets is pullin your striiiings... Master... Master!

Im still using mine from early 2000s the sound is amazing better than modern so called "Hi Res DACs"

I used to use this card with Windows XP with my DVD drive plugged into the digital connector. I had a speaker set that had coaxial digital plug and I would watch dvd's with 5.1 sound that way, it was pretty awesome. Years later I played with this card in win7 and above, but it falls apart software wise past windows XP, even though it's compatible there's no real use case outside of dos/win98/winxp

Socket 754 systems are great, I've done a couple multi boot systems with them. Matched with a 6 series GeForce and an Audigy you you get official driver support from DOS/Win9x all the way to Windows 7. A program called EasyBCD will allow DOS and Win9x to be added to the windows 7 boot menu. Even 32-bit version of Windows 10 can be installed, though some of the drivers wont work.

Hey, what's the name of the second game you played? That looks fun. thanks

I love sound cards.... x3 edit: thanks for uploading the SB0770 alienware drivers to your website. it plays great in my girlfriend's rig... well sometimes. Windows Media Feature pack keeps breaking it.

Great! I have audigy 2 zs in Windows 10 64 bits. Great cable on ebay thank you...

Gonna build an old skool rig with Athlon II x4 640, R7 260X, and a Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS I plucked from my old PC. Wish me luck.

This video sounds interesting... **Cricket chirping** I'll show myself out

Man I remember playing Shogo, Blood, No One Lives Forever, original Unreal Tournament, Quake, and more with this card

Soy músico y durante años use el sintetizador interno que tiene la sound blaster audigy con un controlador. Como la extraño

Eax rocks 😎

I'm still so mad that my Quadro FX 3000 died, it was a fantastic card, dammit! However, nice video :)

Good video, thanks Phil!

Got 1 of these back in 2006, though mine was a different model. Mine has the front panel that fits in a drive slot n has a number if inputs / outputs. Still use it for transferring old recordings to cd or mp3.

I have one of these cards laying around. The last build I did, it was a choice between this or the sound blaster ae5 and I chose the ae5.

I was running an Audigy SE up to 2015 lol

I rather enjoyed this video. Brings back a lot of memories. Hey Phil, could you do a video on the comparisons between the Live!, Audigy, Audigy2/ZS, and the X-Fi cards?

How does it compare to built in sound for modern motherboards?

This video made me question my PC: why I keep hearing sounds if there is no PCI sound card?

Creative also offered standalone SPDIF dongles (CT4800/4801, I think) for the Digital Out jack. I use them to record stuff onto MiniDisc.

Wow! Another Friday vid

What games are at the end? most I don't know.

If you wanna hear sound coming from the back with headphone, check out Creative Super X-Fi, I am surprise not many people know about this.

Great video Phil! One question: at 9:02 you mention that the Audigy uses the default 4 MB soundfont in MS-DOS mode. I thought that was not possible without Windows and the card would use ECW files under pure DOS.