"Segensreich Maschinerich" wrote in message
...

I'm not sure how many different cards named "Audigy 2" exist.

They're made by Soundblaster. There have been various iterations of the
Audigy - Audigy, Audigy Gamer, Audigy2, Platinum, ZS, and a few others I
believe. I don't know how much of it is simply marketing to give the
appearance of "something newer and better" and how much genuine difference
there is between them as far as their basic capacity to process digital
audio, though there might be differences. Maybe someone on here who has
intimate knowledge of their nuts 'n bolts could comment on that. There have
been bugs related to gaming and midi issues, some of which have been
resolved, some of which haven't.

There was
a card apparently called "Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro" which has been
tested with the (truly excellent, IMHO) freeware "Rightmark Audio
Analyzer". You can download the results of this test he
http://audio.rightmark.org/download.shtml

Thanks! Certainly more compelling to see data than rantings.