Monday, February 18, 2002

I finally got myself a Sound Blaster Extigy this past weekend. A good percentage of the web searches that drive traffic here are people looking for info on the Extigy so I promise I'll write a more detailed review here in the coming weeks. Until then, I'll give you my initial impressions. I had a 10% off coupon for Best Buy good only for this past weekend so I waited until then to check out the Extigy. Since it only became available at the end of January I wondered if BB would even have it, since they can be a little behind on new computer products, and also because they don't always carry top models. After a little searching around the computer part of my local store I finally found it behind a counter, and there were a few there (the little paranoid part of me worried that there were several other freaks like me waiting to capture one at 10% off)-- Score! BB's price on the Extigy is $149, which is pretty competitive with the prices I found on Pricewatch, which range between $124 - $149. In doing this kind of comparison shopping you have to take into account that there's no shipping and instant gratification with the brick and mortar store. With 10% off the price was $134, plus an amazing $10 in tax (welcome to Illinois). The Extigy is a USB connected external sound card (for Windows PCs only) that shares the Audigy's high-fidelity specs, like 24 bit 96KHz sampling and full digital in and out. The unit itself is about the size of two VHS videocassettes laid next to each other, with jacks on the front and back. The Extigy does Dolby Digital 5.1 decoding, so there are outputs for front, center, rear and subwoofer speakers in the back. I don't have a surround set-up so I just run the front speaker outputs to my Harmon Kardon AVR25II receiver with JBL Monitor 1 speakers. The front inputs include optical in and out, line in and out, headphone and mic jacks, along with mic volume and master volume control knobs. The back also includes MIDI in/out which I have no use for. One small drawback is that the analog inputs and outputs are all 1/8" mini-jacks rather than RCA jacks as found on the Audigy Platinum EX (which is about $50 more and internal). I guess that's a cost saving and space saving maneuver -- one stereo mini-jack serves the function of two RCA jacks. But mini-jacks are a little more prone to physical wear and tear and resulting noise. However, the optical I/O is what I'm really interested in, and so they're not a deal-killer for me. Also, with some care, mini-jacks should not hurt the fidelity, provided you keep your cables in good shape. As I've noted before, I'm critical of internal PCI sound cards because the inside of a computer is a rotten environment for hi-fi audio processing -- there is just too much RF noise and unshielded electronics that interfere. As a result, most PC audio is far lower quality than the theoretical limitations of the hardware, and on-board sound is even worse. Many professional sound cards, like the Digi001, move the actual A/D hardware outside the comptuer, so that the PCI card is just an interface, and that results in much better sound. The external nature of the Extigy and it's cheap price are what attracted me to it. Although it's USB based, the Extigy relies on special Windows drivers--which I think is stupid--and so is not fully plug-and-play, and also is not Mac compatible. It took two installations to get it to work, though I'll note that I disabled by existing internal sound card for the second install, so it could be that it was interfering. After firing it up I only played with it a little, but I have to say that the sound quality is very good, and a definite step-up from my mid-range (i.e. more than $19) soundcard. The noise floor for recording analog audio was at least 10 dB lower than what I was used to experiencing -- around 70-79 dB vs. 55 - 60 dB with my old card. I haven't yet fully examined my signal path to make sure I'm sending the cleanest possible signal, so it may be that number will lower. I do a lot of recording with minidisc that I edit on my computer. Before I had to send it into the PC via the analog input on my soundcard, which means I lost a lot of the advantages of digital recording and would gain some noise. For basic voice interviews like I do it's not a huge issue, but not ideal either. By comparison, the direct optical connection from my minidisc deck's output to the Extigy was absolutely quiet. I don't know if it is entirely bit-accurate, but the sound is utterly true to the original to me. I also listened to some mp3s and CDs. The Extigy will only play CDs read digitally with the data sent over the USB. Most soundcards default to an analog connection between the CD drive and the soundcard, which is always intolerably noisy and low-fi for me. I could do direct digital CD playback on my old card and it was pretty good, but the Extigy is simply nicer sounding, with more depth and a broader soundfield. I didn't really put it through it's paces, but definitely sounds at least as good as mid-fi home CD players. MP3 playback was also much better. On 128 kbps mp3s there was some restoration to the high-end which can often get very harsh and brittle, resulting in an overall smoother, more pleasing sound. That doesn't mean that they sounded like CDs, but the improvement was very pleasant. On higher bitrate mp3s the clarity only improved. Not every mp3 I tried sounded so much better -- there's a lot of variation in source material and codecs that can affect the final mp3 -- but I can say there was a noticeable improvement with them all. My initial impressions of the Extigy is that it is a versatile and very nice sounding sound device that is an utter bargain at just $149 street price. It is not perfect, but then I don't expect perfect at that price. The bundled software is stupid and occasionally unintuitive (though I'll say that the software mixer is not as unintuitive as what's included in the Sound Blaster Platinum), so I recommend sticking with the more popular audio apps. After I've had a chance to use it a few weeks I'll post a more detailed usage report and review.
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