Creative Labs Sound Blaster Extigy Sound Card

Another cool feature of extigy is, the card is external so I don't have to crawl to the back of my computer and try to switch the jacks. I use The Logitech 4.1 THX speakers and The speakers produce the most awesome 3D sound when I watch Jurasic Park III, it seems like the dinasours were in the living room.

Creative Labs unfortunately has bad reputation of having the slowest customer service. I wish they will improve it in the future, since they are no.1 sound card company.

Overall, I recommend this external sound card. The price is right and the quality is very nice.


Too Many Flaws   June 10, 2003
Tony He (Kirkland, WA)
28 out of 30 found this review helpful

Great sound is almost a necessity to me, but like most college students, I opted for a laptop instead of a desktop. I felt that the only way to take full advantage of my 5.1 analog surround sound system was to connect my laptop to the SB Extigy. Connecting via USB was more or less a nightmare for me: playing anything through my CD-ROM drive produced loud pops and cracks that noticeably distracts from any music listening or movie watching (the Extigy was the ONLY USB device attached to my laptop at the time, and yes, I did enable DMA for my CD drive). Playing any material with a Dolby Digital stream, even after the movie had been copied to my HD (DivX with AC3 audio) was even a greater disappointment, especially since the Extigy so proudly wears the Dolby Digital logo. As long as I'm playing sound through USB on the Extigy with the Creative drivers, approximately 20% extra processing load is put on my 1.7 GHz Pentium 4-M processor. This extra processor usage is acceptable to some, but definitely not to gamers.

My laptop also has an optical-out link, so I hooked up my laptop to the Extigy using a [$] optical miniplug to TOSlink cable.... Virtually all the cracking and popping noises disappeared even when I played DVDs and DivX movies with AC3 audio. However, my Toshiba laptop's optical out port requires my old Yamaha sound drivers - not Creative's. This means that I can't have any EAX sound effects for music or games; it's a slightly disappointing tradeoff, though I'd rather have flawless output than EAX effects.

For those with desktops, don't even consider the Extigy. A PCI Audigy is cheaper and significantly better. For those with laptops without optical out, it's either 2.1 audio from your laptop without the Extigy, or up to 5.1 audio with the Extigy along with occasional loud pops (I would personally prefer clean 2.1 audio in this case). If you own a laptop with optical out, then get the Logitech Z-680. The cost of the Z-680 is just about equal to the cost of the Extigy + the cost of a mid-range analog 5.1 audio system, except the Z-680 has hardware Dolby Digital/DTS decoding built-in, with optical, coax, and analog inputs, plus 505 Watts RMS output (1000W peak! Take that Kiplish). Did I mention that they are also THX multimedia certified? Just icing on the cake.

Do yourself a favor and skip on the Extigy if you can. USB 1.1 has a relatively narrow bandwidth and USB (even Firewire) relies too heavily on the main processor for data transfers. Though Extigy is an interesting product and worth some merits, wait for the next generation of high-end external computer sound cards (or get the Z-680 now!).


False advertising. Limited software. Poor performance.   August 15, 2002
Yaron (Boston, MA USA)
17 out of 19 found this review helpful

Don't let the ads or products specs fool you. This sound card does not live up to what it promises. USB bandwith does not allow the Extigy to live up to the Creative standard of its other product lines. While you gain ease of installation and a remote, you lose all software, EAX HD (it claims to support it, but in fact does not) and other features. This product hogs CPU usage because it requires the computer to do most of the processing due to USB limitations. When your computer is doing many things at once, audio quality suffers. It claims to support S/PDIF in but in fact only supports it as a standalone. Any digital signal passed to the Extigy is converted to analog before being transferred to the computer resulting in a significant loss of quality and the impossibility of actual digital recording. I am completely disatisfied with every aspect of this product and am subsequently returning it.


Poor customer service for Extigy   March 12, 2002
JoeJoe10 (Washington, DC USA)
15 out of 21 found this review helpful

I bought my Extigy along with the Klipsch Promedia 5.1 system and could not get the two to work together. I started working with Customer support online because their support line is NOT toll free. Granted you can't get an instant response to questions via e-mail, I decided I would be a little patient with this one. The problem was, it would take them 1 week to reply to each of my messages. Also, they would misread part of the problem and offer me suggestions that don't even apply. They would later apoligize for it because they realized they didn't read my issue close enough (BTW, I had responses from 3 reps, so it's not just 1 person who doesn't read). All in all, it's been over 1 month and I still don't have any sound. Now that's patience. It's too bad because it seems like such a cool product. If only I could use it, I could write a more productive review. Good luck with your Extigy if you get one.


One word to describe this product, excellence.   April 14, 2002
11 out of 12 found this review helpful

I have been using the Extigy for about 3 months with Creative's Inspire 5.1 speaker system. From the time I extracted the product from the box in which it was held, to installation, there have been no problems. Installation was a breeze, and the bundle software was great. Depending on the location of your computer, the remote can be very handy. There also has many sound settings as well. One can change the way he or she hears a current song by changing the environment. Some environments included are bathroom, garage, cathedral, theater and many more. There is one draw back though; your computer can take a heavy hit if your system is a bit old. Me for example, I am using the Extigy with a Hewlett Packard P3 500-mega hertz 300DIMMram Windows ME computer. If you run the software included, it may take a few secs to load. Id says it's like waiting for Adobe photo shop to fully load on a basic system. Other than that, the Extigy is fantastic!