Rating: 
Summary: Useless piece of junk on XP and Win2000
Review: I first installed this card on an HP machine running Windows 2000 Advanced Server and... Viola! The first time Windows 2000 crashes and gives me the BLUE SCREEN since I first installed it a couple of years ago. I gave the card the benefit of doubt and thought that I had installed and uninstalled too many software and hardware that the machine might have become unstable.But recently I bought a brand new Dell Precision Worstation 530 running Windows XP Professional. Everything was working like a Swiss clock... until I installed the Audigy Platinum on it. Once I did that, I started getting hard crashes and blue screens. It crashed my machine more than 30 times before I finally trashed the card. The guys at Microsoft might have gotten sick of receiving my blue screen crash reports. I downloaded and installed the recent drivers from Creative's website (revision: AUD-WEBUP-W2-US, Date: 8/26/2002) and it didn't work. Contrary to Creative's claims, this card just doesn't work on Win 2000 and XP Pro machines, or at least the Audigy customer base who use Win 2000 and XP Pro are too small for Creative to bother with a fix. The sounds for gaming and CD play are good, I don't deny that, and it might be a cheap choice for a small home studio (it's not a genuine 24-bit though), but if you're using Win2K or XP pro, it's useless unless Creative finally realizes there's something terribly wrong with the driver and do something to fix it.
Rating:
Summary: Well, it certainly *looked* impressive...
Review: I had been drooling over the Audigy Platinum set up for a while, and finally saved up to get it. It's an impressive suite of hardware and software, and I'm told it really sounds great. Too bad the "downloadable" Win XP drivers utterly failed to work. Creative Labs customer support was unable to resolve my problem, which, basically, was circular: in order for the upgrade software to run it has to find the sound card; in order for the sound card to be found it has to be installed; in order for the sound card to be installed without crashing XP, you have to have the upgraded drivers in place. In short, I spent over 30 hours trying to get it to work with XP, and it just didn't. [On a related note, this is the first time since upgrading to XP that anything has been able to crash it...a dubious honor.] So, I'm back to my old SB AWE 64 card until they release the hardware with XP drivers *included* on the CD setup package. At that point, I fully intend to try again, and will re-rate the package (hopefully up from one star), but until then it was a very frustrating experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Audiophile quality for an incredible price & works with XP!!
Review: I had no idea this card would make such an incredible difference than the factory card that was in my system. This is truly audiophile quality for those that really can't afford to be an audiophile. Creative claims that with their 24-bit/100dB SNR that you can listen to MP3/WMAs, CD's and any stereo music with high definition audio clarity surpassing high-end home theatre receivers and now I believe them. And for this price? It is incredible and most don't even know it exists. I bought a logitech z-560 speaker system and it sounded great with my system. Then a guy at a certain store that rhymes with gest guy told me that this would help the sound. What an understatement. It took a while to get hooked up properly (call creative and make sure all is set up right, they are very helpful) but when it worked I was flat out astonished at the clarity and power without hiss or ANY distortion. And all for less than a low quality home system amplifier by itself. This sounds every bit as good if not better than systems well over a grand. Toss out that old soundcard or even a new one and do whatever it takes to install one of these. It is certainly worth it and once you download the drivers it works great with windows XP.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't Work in XP!
Review: I have the same problem as others have reported. The Audigy Platinum installs ok but fails to work. When I tell XP to test the sound device, it tells me that XP isn't able to use the Audigy and to contact the supplier. That's a joke as Creative's "support" is almost non-existant. The Audigy Platinum simply doesn't work foe me in Windows XP even with their latest XP "upgrades" installed. If you use Windows XP, save your money. Don't buy the Audigy Platinum.
Rating:
Summary: creative does it again
Review: i must say that i am very impressed with the amount of quality and features that creative put in this sound card. first of all it's powered by an e-mu chip, which is used in many high-end audio workstations and digital processor units. it also has the ability to output the digital output signal at 24 bit/96 kHz which dramatically improves the sound quality (compared to a cd's 16bit/44.1 kHz sound quality) the audigy drive is another helpful feature which allows easy access to spdif digital in and out, optical in and out, headphones out, mic in, analog in, 2 midi ports, firewire, and the infrared receiver for the remote. speaking of the remote it is one of the nicest features included with the audigy platinum. with it you can easily play any song in your mp3 collection (or wav,etc.) with the receiver. while many people claim that the processor is the same as the one in the sb live series its not. this processor has well over twice the power of the sb live series chips. while the included software with the sb audigy platinum wasn't that great the features and quality of the card easily make up for the high price. also i don't know what these people are complaining about it not working in win 2k or xp. i have had no problem with it in either of these os. sure there is a little tweaking to do in BIOS but it's easy enough (mostly disabling your motherboards built in sound card if it has one). so for anyone looking for a new sound card look no further than creative's sound blaster audigy series.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible Build, Worse Support
Review: I purchased this card in 12/01. After a very quirky install, the card worked well for 4 months and then went dead. It took numerous phone calls to get an RA. It then took Creative 4 months to return the card, which still didn't work. A few more phone calls and a new card arrived. After working for 3 months, died. I marked the card and returned for repair/replacement. After 4 months I received the same card back, not working. I was then sent a 5.1 card that I couldn't hook-up to the front panel. I am now junking this card and trying a new product. Will never use a Creative product again. I could excuse the problems, but not the shameful lack of customer support and service.
Rating:
Summary: I didnt see any problems
Review: I recently purchased and installed the audigy platnium(w/internal breakout box) and have had absolutely no problems with the card. I popped it in and XP(w/SP1) recognized it with no problems.I loaded up the driver disk and in less than 10 mins I was up watching DVD's in 5.1 digital audio. My advice: Get this card since its going down in price due to the introduction of the Audigy 2 line. Its a real steal!
Rating:
Summary: DOESN'T WORK IN WIN XP
Review: I was able to install card and software in WinXP and could download and install XP drivers. Disabled onboard sound card. But any software program I used to play music, the one with Soundblaster, Winamp, Windows player, all would only play for a song or two, then the computer would freeze. Soundblaster help was no help, two requests were answered with
1)a fix to disable some XP operation which uses CPU to handle power management. Their suggested methodology resulting in having to reformat and re-install XP
2) A request for the list of IRQs. Are they serious, this is still problem in XP? Anyway tried changing in BIOS, no effect.
Bottom line is the card I had, SB live, worked fine. I wanted the extra capability of the Platinum, but either it is incompatible with XP or it was a bad card. In any event, back it went and I will go back to SB live. Very disapointed in Soundblaster help service.
Rating:
Summary: Top notch sound card with the features I wanted.
Review: I've been using my Audigy for about a month. First, ignore the comments that it doesn't work with XP. Mine works fine with XP using the drivers download from the Creative web page. I bought it because I have a stack of old vinyl albums collected in the 60's and 70's that I want to put on audio CDs (since they are not available commercially as such). The Audigy Platinum makes that job much easier by putting the audio Line In connectors on the front of my PC. Standard stereo cables work fine without the need for an assortment of adapters or trying to decipher the tiny hieroglyphics on the sound card bracket. We also used it for some direct-to-disk recording with a microphone last week and it worked fine for that as well. The audio editing software that came with the Audigy was much easier than trying to do the same with a cassette deck. Again, having a real microphone jack and level control on the front of the PC made it simple to use. I used it to create a couple of MP3 disks and they play fine on my portable CD MP3 player. It was a bit of a pain to install the internal cables and the drawings in the manual didn't exactly match my unit. Even so, I managed to get everything installed and working in less than an hour. I haven't bought a set of 5.1 speakers yet but probably will since I sometimes watch DVDs using my PC. The sound from the card using my existing stereo speakers is fine regardless of the source of the sound.
Rating:
Summary: Top notch sound card with the features I wanted.
Review: I've been using my Audigy for about a month. First, ignore the comments that it doesn't work with XP. Mine works fine with XP using the drivers download from the Creative web page. I bought it because I have a stack of old vinyl albums collected in the 60's and 70's that I want to put on audio CDs (since they are not available commercially as such). The Audigy Platinum makes that job much easier by putting the audio Line In connectors on the front of my PC. Standard stereo cables work fine without the need for an assortment of adapters or trying to decipher the tiny hieroglyphics on the sound card bracket. We also used it for some direct-to-disk recording with a microphone last week and it worked fine for that as well. The audio editing software that came with the Audigy was much easier than trying to do the same with a cassette deck. Again, having a real microphone jack and level control on the front of the PC made it simple to use. I used it to create a couple of MP3 disks and they play fine on my portable CD MP3 player. It was a bit of a pain to install the internal cables and the drawings in the manual didn't exactly match my unit. Even so, I managed to get everything installed and working in less than an hour. I haven't bought a set of 5.1 speakers yet but probably will since I sometimes watch DVDs using my PC. The sound from the card using my existing stereo speakers is fine regardless of the source of the sound.
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