Sound Blaster Extigy is the revolutionary, external, quality-audio solution from Creative. Designed to provide stunning digital audio to notebook or desktop users who cannot open their PCs--or would prefer not to--it installs quickly and easily by USB. A remote control is standard.
With 24-bit DACs and a 100 dB signal-to-noise ratio, hardware Dolby Digital decoding, multi-channel output, and 24-bit/96 kHz-compatible connectivity, the Sound Blaster Extigy gives a powerful, high-end audio and home-theater experience. It also offers EAX Advanced HD music features such as Audio Clean-Up, Time Scaling, and Dream, and can operate as a stand-alone Dolby Digital decoder for use with DVD players or entertainment consoles.
Quick Installation with USB Sound Blaster Extigy easily plugs into any available USB port on your PC or notebook. Connect your speakers, load the Sound Blaster Extigy’s suite of software, and elevate your music-listening experience forever.
Connect Your Digital and Analog Devices With an emphasis on versatility, you can now connect your PC or notebook to most digital entertainment devices such as DVD players, CD and MP3 players, MIDI devices, stereo and multi-channel speakers, headphones, and more. Featured ports include optical digital-audio and MIDI in/out, S/PDIF-in (coaxial digital-audio), line-in (analog), and mic-in.
Tweak Your Sound from Across the Room Convenient and fun, the front-panel control knobs and wireless remote provide you with total control of your sound experience. If you own surround sound speakers, you will love the one-touch CMSS button that turns any stereo recording, including MP3 and WMA music files, into a surround sound masterpiece. Be the first to benefit from the high-powered, easy-to-use Sound Blaster Extigy--the external Sound Blaster that adds stunning digital audio fidelity to your PC and notebook.
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and CriticismGreat 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!).
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