Tech: Better Laptop Audio - Creative Audigy2 ZS Notebook sound card

While many PCs these days have decent desktop audio setups (after all, many users are gamers, media buffs, audio professionals, etc.), most laptops are still equipped with the junky software-based or integrated sound solutions they came from the factory with.

The result? Hard drive noise in your headphones, circuit noise in your recordings, and junky output for your shiny 5.1 gaming speakers. The real solution is a laptop sound card. The market is pretty small right now, and if you want a PC card-based solution for your laptop audio needs, you're basically stuck with either the Creative Audigy or the Echo Audio line (the Echo cards are nice, but expensive). I bought the Audigy a couple months ago to accompany my Klipsch speakers.

Creative included its usual "kitchen sink" load of software, which is good and bad. Good because many of these apps are genuinely useful, and bad because it's tough to wade through them all to find the functionality you need sometimes. In terms of performance, while the card certainly uses its share of the CPU, the resulting sound is nice and clean. The noise floor isn't all the way to the bottom, but it's low enough that you'd have to risk hearing damage to really care. My main caveat, noted in other reviews of this card, is the lack of a physical volume knob, but it isn't a huge fault if you've got it connected to speakers anyway. All in all, a good stocking stuffer for the audiophile in your life.