Verdict: It's expensive, but with so much on offer it's the cream of the crop for games and movies

For anyone who knows anything about PCs, Creative is a familiar name, and it will be no surprise to see a Sound Blaster card winning this group test. However, there's more revolution than evolution in the Audigy 2 ZS, as it's not much more than a revised Audigy 2. The big news is the addition of an extra surround channel, enabling the Audigy 2 ZS to catch up with rival cards that have offered 7.1 for some time.

Creative wins out by crossing virtually every audio 't' and dotting every 'i'. The spec list is bursting with buzz words that will leave you with a warm, fuzzy feeling as you unpack the impressively large box.

The card offers 24-bit/96KHz over all eight channels or 24-bit/192KHz playback in stereo. It also claims a very high signal-to-noise ratio of 108dB. Musicians will appreciate the ASIO 2 support, though not the fact that recording can only be done at 48KHz, which effectively means resampling the 44KHz standard that CDs use. EAX 3 is supported, with a patch adding EAX 4 support.

The card also boasts THX certification, so has been approved for use with home cinema equipment that meets the standard's requirements for power and frequency response. To make use of the extra audio channels the card has hardware decoding support for both Dolby Digital and DTS-ES 6.1, the latter being the only format to provide a totally discrete rear centre channel.

The next unique feature is DVD-Audio support. DVD-Audio is a format that uses the full capacity of a DVD to store high-resolution six-channel audio at a higher quality level than audio CDs. Creative is the only company to provide DVD-Audio support on the PC right now, but to date DVD-Audio discs are few and far between.

The outputs at the rear of the card are not colour coded, as Creative doesn't want to sacrifice ease of use for sound quality (the connections are gold-plated). A single FireWire connector is present on the back, and while there is a digital out it uses a 3.5mm jack format rather than the more standard optical or coaxial outputs. There's also a midi/gameport included on a separate bracket.

A large clear diagram assists with installation but you should allow plenty of time for installing all the applications on the CD. Once that's done there's certainly plenty to play with. Creative has done a better job of organising the bundled applications than it did with the original Audigy, but they still look as if they've been deliberately designed to look totally out of place on the Windows desktop.

An equalizer has been added so you can fine tune the sound, and there are also controls for bass management. This is where you adjust the crossover frequency - which is the point where the card hands over low-frequency duties to the subwoofer. Set it too high and your bass will sound boomy and loose, so it's a useful control to have. However, it's a lot harder to control than the equivalent settings on the M-Audio card as you have to hover your mouse over the slider to see the frequency. Time scaling is an application that enables you to speed up or slow down music without changing its pitch, though why you'd want to do something so ridiculous is beyond me. There's also Creative Multi-Speaker Surround (CMSS), which upmixes stereo recordings to fill all eight channels. The software package is rounded off by the inclusion of two full games: Raven Shield and Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.

During testing, the Audigy 2 ZS produced a fantastic wall of sound. The extra channels provide more impact in games, with plenty of surround effects being reproduced by the side channels. This really adds to the experience, and helps you to find out where enemies are shooting from. For DVD movies the extra channels are only a subtle improvement, but a welcome one nevertheless. In our performance tests the Audigy 2 ZS took second place in both tests, and was only slighty slower than the Hercules and Innovision cards.

The only real negative against the Audigy 2 ZS is its price, although you do get a lot for your money. For musicians the M-Audio card is preferable, but for the gamer and movie enthusiast the Audigy 2 ZS is simply the best sound card you can have in your PC.

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