>Given the FS focus of this forum, I'd appreciate your before>and after assessment of the upgrade's impact on FS2004, when>you get the chance. Sure.Sorry for yacking about IL-2, but my relationship with FS2004 is somewhat emotional. Right now, we aren't talking. Next week, we will have forgiven each other, I'm sure. In the meanwhile, I rediscovered the original IL-2 with the fan-made dynamic campaign generator, and I'm having a heck of a lot of fun. Sure is fun to fly and fight at 30-50 fps :)Nevertheless, I jumped into FS9 for a quick flight and some benchmarks. It looks like a picked up 1-2 (25 to 27) fps in my default FRAPS benchmark. Nothing dramatic, but an improvement.However, the sound is much cleaner, and I didn't detect any of the usual pauses when loading a new ATC voice.So, it looks like a success. I'll be interested to see once I invest some time in it if the new sound card helps to smooth out things that I get like the occassional stutter.Your system is pretty similiar to mine, Gary. If you are experiencing any of the scratchy sound of other problems with your SBLive, I'd say go for it.

Thanks for the quick feedback. I have the occasional scratchy sound and the brief pause with a new ATC voice. The Audigy 1 is about $90 here in Oztralia, whereas the Audigy 2 is about $100 more again. Is there enough of a performance difference between the Audigy 1 and 2 to warrant going the Audigy 2 for these relatively minor FS issues, or would the Audigy 1 get me out of cracklyville too?Gary

Just because Creative choose to charge a premium for their soundcard with (IMHO) poor sound quality does not mean it is GOOD. Drag yourself away from the dream world of virtual aviation and pick up a music/electronics magazine and compare the ratings on the Audigy and Audiophile 24/96 - there is no contest.If you want good sound quality from a card that won't attempt to install conflicting buggy drivers on your PC system choose an Audiophile or similar professional product - there are many soundcards far better than the Audigy for less money that won't hog system resources and produce far better digital quality audio for less expense.Adam Moore

But I live in the dream world of virtual aviation! At least my computer does - the only other sound I hear other than FS or FS-related addons are the windows startup and shut down sounds. In other words I'm just looking for a crackle-free, reasonable quality sound output with minimum CPU overhead. Are there any sound cards under US$50 that will do this for me or should I stick with my SB live?Gary

Hi, Gary.I didnt' research extensively, but my understanding is that the main difference between the Audigy and Audigy 2 might be the 7.1 sound versus 6.1 sound, but that the core sound engine and quality was very similiar.Perhaps someone can chime in to confirm?

only the audigy 2 ZS has 7.1. the older audigy 2 is 6.1 so there must be a bigger difference there somewhere. or there wouldn't have been any improvements between the audigy and audigy 2 LS....

Aud & Aud/2 have different signal to noise ratios. /2's a cleaner card.On a side note, just to inject some humor, the SB Live cards do not have any hardware acceleration capabilities, thats why they give people such headaches when people have their little sliders set to full acceleration in DirectX. It actually slows down your machine because DirextX is having to emulate the missing hardware.As with all things in life, you get what you pay for and discussing virtues of sound cards without discussing speakers and case fans that drown them out completely is really rather silly. I know my speakers are buried under piles of paper and manuals and CD's and my sub-woofer is my foot rest so serious, who cares how good it sounds as long as it sounds good enough.

Is the Audigy ZL any different?Best,Joel

Sorry, I think it was answered above.Best,Joel