Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro Sound Card

Awesome

Strengths: easy to use and set up, 24 Bit 192khts, excellent sound quality, extensive external-device connectivity

Weakness: Buggy software, the AOL icon appeared on my desktop after running Setup

It has a very nice external control box and the way cool remote control. Make sure you get good speakers so that you can really appreciate the sound quality. Use it with Logitech Z-5450. It is the must-have sound card for hard-core gamers. Totally worth $99.99 I spend.
Highly recommended.

By udi - Jan 30, 2007

Good sound

Strengths: Breakout box, lots of inputs, firewire

Weakness: Blue led too bright.

I got this because the on-board sound was producing a slight but noticeable hiss. I installed this and the hiss vanished. I don't use the surround sound feature as I only use 2 speakers or headphones. Sound quality is good--I'm no audio expert. There were 2 things I don't like about it. The first is that the blue LED is way too bright. I covered 90% of it with electrical tape which made it much...
Read Full Review

I got this because the on-board sound was producing a slight but noticeable hiss. I installed this and the hiss vanished. I don't use the surround sound feature as I only use 2 speakers or headphones. Sound quality is good--I'm no audio expert.
There were 2 things I don't like about it. The first is that the blue LED is way too bright. I covered 90% of it with electrical tape which made it much better. Also, when you plug in headphones in the headphone jack the main speakers do NOT turn off. Some people may find this a feature they like but usually when I put on my headphones it's because I don't want to disturb the people around me. Maybe there's a setting I didn't find but one would think that it would be an obvious feature to have. I get around this by having an extension plugged into the sound card. When I want to listen to speakers I plug in the speakers. When I want to listen to headphones I unplug the speaker cable and plug in my headphones.
Edit: Finally found the option to turn off speakers when the headphones are plugged in. It was buried in the Audio Console.

By yohan - Jan 12, 2007

Best Sound Card with an Affordable Price Tag.

Strengths: Sounds amazing with movies, games, and music especially with 5.1 and above speakers.

Weakness: This requires an extra power connection inside your computer. The external box is useless if you do not have a spare power connection.

I owned several sound cards from Creative Labs. I must say this is the best that I have come across thus far that has a reasonable price tag. The external box has midi connections for keyboard, microphone, etc. For those without good pc speakers (preferably minimum of 5.1), this sound card may be overkill. Otherwise, I highly recommend this.

By skyfire - Dec 7, 2006

Item was purchased as a gift for...

Item was purchased as a gift for someone else. They appear to like it very much and have used it a lot to play music on the computer as well as transfer music from their old albums with the help of this sound card.

Product is over all very good.

By bloodfusion - Jan 14, 2007

Creative rocks

Strengths: Awesome sound quality, professionally built.

Weakness: The price is a little bit too high.

An excellent sound card with great performance. Though the softwares/drivers with the card are kinda bulky and confusing, I am still satisfied with the sound quality. Overall, it works great and is the best sound card that I ever have.

By araura - Oct 29, 2006