Frankly speaking, we never thought that the world’s famous sound card family SoundBlaster will ever get out of the PC case and stand next to it on the desk looking like a nice box with the whole bunch of wires around. Nevertheless, it happened: Creative today announced the launching of their new SoundBlaster Extigy, an external SoundBlaster Audigy solution.
The main reason that stimulated the coming of this solution seems to us the lack of room of the bracket for all sorts of connectors and outs, which are really numerous by SoundBlaster. Take a look yourself: the front panel of the new Extigy has an optical In and Out, Line In, Microphone In and Headphones Out. The rear panel is equipped with MIDI In and Out, SPDIF In, digital In and three connectors for satellite speakers and a subwoofer. Besides that, there is a mic volume regulator on the front panel of the device, general volume regulator and a remote control sensor.
Well, this nice device is certainly not 100% impeccable. Among its drawbacks we could mention firstly, an external 12V power supply unit, secondly, a not very reliable digital tract provided by the serial USB interface (Extigy is connected to the PC via USB). The quality of this USB interface in its turn depends a lot on the quality of the support granted by the chipset, on the quality of the drivers and number of devices connected.
Other than that, this is a normal SoundBlaster Audigy with 24bit 96KHz digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters ensuring 100dB SNR, with a built-in DSP, EAX support, Dolby Digital 5.1, etc. The recommended retail price of this device makes around $149 for the Asian region.