We all know Creative for their innovative productline: high quality videocards, webcams, top end speakers and the well-known superb Soundblaster and Audigy soundcards (the first and only cards & speakers which are THX certified!). The company was established in Singapore in 1981 by Sim Wong Hoo and came to conquer the European market in 1993. This afternoon, they presented a small part of their new product line (over 50 new products!) to the Belgian press in the prestigious Sofitell (Brussels).

The first part of the presentation was about the new line of Audigy 2 soundcards of which the Audigy 2 ZS stands out. It is of course a so-called ‘next generation’ Audigy 2 card and what’s new is that is has 7.1 speaker support Dolby EX and DTS ES decoding, but on top of that -and here’s where it gets really impressive- it offers 108dB SNR across 8 speakers. Now you’ve got to keep in mind that with every additional 6dB the soundquality improves around 10 times !

To top it all of, the Audigy 2 ZS will come with an impressive software bundle. What do you think: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six – Raven Shield AND … Lara Croft Tomb Raider – The Angel of Darkness ! Full versions !!!
The guys from Creative gave us a little demonstration of the capabilities of the ZS card by sending Lara through a few halls with small fountains. The EAX advanced HD sound effects give the game loads of un-be-lie-va-ble surrounding sounds.

Why was the audience (myself included) impressed ?
Well, you should know that Eidos and Creative teamed up to use all the capabilities of the Audigy 2 soundcard series to the fullest extent. The software (including a 7 band multichannel equaliser of ALL the sattelite speakers) can be adjusted to an almost freaky level.

Another important feature to mention here is the ‘DVD Audio’ quality which is -again- quite simply amazing. Unfortunatly you can only hear this top end quality sound with DVD audio enable CD’s and DVD’s but don’t worry, this will be the next standard. More and more (music)publishers are enableing their CD’s with DVD Audio. Now, I could go into more details, but I won’t bother you with all the technical details about the EAX enabled THX certified … blabla etc etc. (yup, I didn’t quite understand either - but I heard the demonstrations… and I was convinced !)

Moving on to the speakers, again, Creative has a very large and respectable line up here. From the design I-Trigue series to the ultra-powerfull MegaWorks 7.1 speakerset. What can I say? If you’ve got the budget, by all means, go for the MegaWorks 7.1 set. The sound if f**king amazing. But they’ve got a very large range of products, even for the console gamers Creative has the Inspire G series with a highly futuristic (or retro ‘50s hairdryer) look.

Next to that, Markus provided us with some scoops of upcoming products ... on which we’re not allowed to report. But here is a little sneak preview ;-)

Creative has a big range of products lined up for these last two quarters and it’s nearly impossible to mention let alone write about all of them here. But for the gamers and DVD viewers amongst us I can guarantee you one thing: you will have to go for some Creative products for maximum enjoyment, simply because they are … good quality at very reasonable prices – this is my opinion of course, you don’t share it? Feel free to let us know.

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