2003 Milestones

2003 (Autumn)

Creative Labs forges ahead with further development, which in turn leads to the launch of Sound Blaster® Audigy® 2 ZS, adding even more amazing features to those already available. Firstly Creative delivers the purest audio quality ever with 108dB SNR across all channels, ensuring that the solution is yet again THX® certified. However, this time Creative also delivers the THX Console, which allows users to setup their speakers to 100% perfection! Secondly Creative delivers 7.1 audio for the most immersive gaming and movie experience ever! Thirdly Creative adds another reason that makes the Sound Blaster range the best in the world. DTS-ES native support is added making the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS the only sound card in the world to natively support the decoding of both Dolby Digital® EX and DTS-ES content!

The fourth key development is the support for EAX® 4.0 ADVANCED HD™ that delivers a new and exciting feature in 3D gaming - Multi-Environments! This means that now gamers will be able to discern exactly which rooms opponents are in based on the audio characteristics of those rooms. Giving a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS gamer a key advantage! The fifth addition is the range of new Music enhancement tools that propel Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS ahead of any competitve solution with features like a multi-channel 7-Band Graphic EQ, Bass Boost and even Karaoke features on top of the many existing enhancement tools.

Finally Creative MediaSource 2 improves even further an amazing piece of software that allows users to play, rip, store, organize, enhance and manipulate many media types. All this on top of the already massive features, such as: Advanced Resolution™ DVD-Audio playback @ 24-bit/96kHz/5.1 and 24-bit/192kHz/stereo quality, True-Bit 24-bit/96kHz recording and ASIO 2.0 support. Three products in the range are released to target various user requirements, from the gamer with "Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS", to the audio-enthusiast with "Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum", to the musician with "Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro". Sound Blaster® is without question the leading audio product brand!

As 2003 draws to a close Creative finishes the year off in style with the launch of USB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX - The most feature-packed, highest fidelity and first USB 2.0 based audio solution ever! With almost all the features of the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS internal card (including the world-renowned 24-bit ADVANCED HD), Audigy 2 NX is targeted at the more discerning PC and Notebook users who either won't or can't open up their systems to upgrade from their basic on-board audio. It even ships with a remote control for easy arm-chair access to your favorite songs. USB Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX sets the pace for competitors to follow while shaping the landscape of audio products to come.

2003 (Summer)

Having brought the Sound Blaster® Experience to any and all users with Sound Blaster Extigy in early 2002, Creative now targets entry-level PC users and also mobile users with notebooks. Sound Blaster MP3+ has a small price-tag and compact size to match, but it's big in quality and features, as users have come to expect from Creative Labs. Developed to provide a far superior audio experience to that of on-board audio solutions Sound Blaster MP3+ was engineered to sound better, provide a variety of advanced audio features and be small enough to be carried along with a notebook while also only requiring power to be provided through the USB cable. Shipped with Creative MediaSource™ it allows the playback of a variety of popular media types along with the complete creation, enhancement and management tools required to handle the massive collections of music that many users now have. Sound Blaster MP3+ just made great audio more accessible and far more portable!

2003 (Spring)

Following on from the amazing success of Sound Blaster Audigy® 2 and Audigy® 2 Platinum, Creative look to target the more demanding audio user with Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX. With all the features of its siblings Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX offers additional high-end features that will prove irresistible to PC musicians everywhere. Firstly the External I/O module provides advanced connectivity that allows a massive array of devices and instruments to be connected. The External I/O module has some key enhancements over its internal brother on the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum. An additional Line-In port allows a total of 6 channels of analog audio to be recorded simultaneously instead of 4, while the external format and redesigned slimmer connector cable allows more flexibility in placing the I/O Module closer to the recording source and away from the noisy PC.

With additional controls, such as Master Volume (with Push Mute) and CMSS 3D on/off button, users now have better control of their audio environment at their fingertips. Finally with the front and back placement of the audio and data I/O the module allows for a better-structured permanent or temporary connection of recording/playback devices. The second major enhancement over the other Sound Blaster Audigy 2 products is the 24-bit/96kHz recording with ASIO 2.0 support. Now users are able to record multiple tracks of analog audio at the highest possible quality while taking advantage of the extremely low-latency and direct monitoring features that ASIO 2.0 has to offer. And so Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum eX becomes the best quality, most flexible and feature-packed product in its class!

Taking 3D game audio to even greater levels of realism and detail, Creative introduces the fourth generation of its highly successful PC 3D audio enhancement API, and is further increasing its lead over basic EAX capable sound cards and host based audio systems.

EAX 4.0 introduces the spatialization of multiple reverberant environments and an extensible library of audio effect algorithms. The Multi-Environment?feature of the EAX 4.0 API allows for the rendering of multiple, simultaneous audio environments and effects in real time. Developers can now create tremendously rich and highly defined audio landscapes, with different environments placed in 3D around the listener. The EAX 4.0 API also offers a host of new effects algorithms, allowing developers to incorporate studio effects such as chorus, flanger, frequency shifter, echo and many more, within a mixing framework analogous to traditional studio production systems.

Along with the release of the new EAX ADVANCED HD (EAX 4.0) API, Creative also introduces a revolutionary new 3D audio format called the "Interactive Spatial Audio Composition Technology" (ISACT). There is also an accompanying authoring tool called the ISACT Production Studio that can be used for creating interactive, multi-channel, 3D spatialized music and sound effects for games and other multimedia applications. This innovative new audio format can save content providers significant development time without sacrificing quality or forcing compromises.

Traditionally, a developer would have to create multiple versions of the same content for different speaker configurations. One for 5.1 speaker set-up, one for 4.1, and yet another for 2.1. With ISACT, they only need to deliver one set of multi-channel content, because ISACT will automatically scale to the number of speakers connected to a playback system. Unlike other formats, which assign audio tracks to a specific output, ISACT pans the audio tracks using 3D spatial coordinates. Playback systems such as the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card then mix the audio tracks using these ISACT coordinates and playback correctly, according to the speaker set up.

ISACT content is not limited to games. Any applications requiring multi-channel audio can benefit from this exciting new audio format. Creative's EAX 4.0 and ISACT Production Studio will be made available to game developers in winter 2003.