Creative Audigy 2 ZS Notebook

[adam777]

Hello all.
My PCMCIA CardBus controller is Texas Instrument PCI-1510 (i guess it's type II), have anyone experience incompatibilities with this one? (i saw the TI PCI-1520 is incompatible).
Any R40 users that purchased this are welcomed to share their experience.

Thanks in advance, Adam.

[a31pguy]

congrats on your purchase. The ZS is a superior card in my experience! Smartest thing creative did! Have you upgraded your drivers? The latest drivers supposidly address some problems with PCMCIA chipsets.

[adam777]

congrats on your purchase. The ZS is a superior card in my experience! Smartest thing creative did! Have you upgraded your drivers? The latest drivers supposidly address some problems with PCMCIA chipsets.

Hi, a31pguy.
I haven't purchased it yet - that's why i'm inquiring the incompatibilities issue.
You're more then welcome to share your experience (with more emphases on laptop-related issues: CPU overload etc.)

[a31pguy]

You'll love it. MP3s and DVDs are great. You should get WinDVD 6 to go with it that is specially built with Audizy ZX support.

Early drivers had some issues with the TI chipset - but it wasn't a creative problem - it's a TI problem, as several other pcmcia card vendors have noted. Later drivers have addressed this issue. Performance mode is on by default now.

Winamp plays amazingly through it. Set to hardware acceleration. No CPU load at all.

Haven't found too many DVD-audio titles to use though. Seems like the market isn't ready for 24-bit HD audio.

Trying to find the special cable for SPDIF connectivity has been difficult. It's a copper to optical cable - which the manual mentions but didn't include. Let me know if you get one with yours.

There are competing vendors to creative - but more on the digital encoding side of the house. Creative is focused on retail sales to the consumer. The other cards are focused on recording studios. However, from the reviews I read - there isn't too much difference in hardware but more on the driver support for specific applications.

[adam777]

What can i say?
You've been a tremendous help- it solve pretty much all the doubts i might have had.
Thanks again, Adam

[a31pguy]

Great! Enjoy!

But be forewarned - Intel in all their glory is coming out with a new chipset that is supposed to be a 32-bit integrated sound chip based loosely on the AC'97 audio chipset. It probably won't have the nice apps that creative has though and not for a few months at least.