Rating: 
Summary: Top Notch Sound Dispersement
Review: As an event announcer (Gravity Games, World Champs for Freestyle Skiing in Deer Valley), this sucker takes my 80GB external Hard Drive and turns it into a magical collection of music that I can plug into ANY (absolutely ANY) soundboard, motherboard or speaker set. I have used this card with the sound system used during the Olympics for the Nordic events at Soldier Hollow, Utah and blasted the place. Sound quality is top notch, ability to hook into anything is not a problem. I have even used the mini-jack out for smaller soundboards (8channel) with fewer inputs for Mics.
On the home front, with a simple Altec Lansing speaker system, this card has tranformed my laptop, 80GB external HD and DVD player into a rockin home theater. I'm still trying to figure out the Creative software. There are so many bugs in that system it is painful, but I just use Windows MediaPlayer as a stereo and the Creative Software for the DVD. Remote should be working, but since I'm constantly packing it up for travel and events, I never remember to get it located appropriately, thus no remote. Check this sucker out. It can change the way you listen to music, and all of this came about after some little kid dropped my laptop and snapped the weld for my mini-jack output from my built in Yamaha soundcard...good thing I guess.
Rating: 
Summary: Rolled The Dice And Took My Chances
Review: Before buying an Extigy I read the reviews on this and other sites. The consensus was that people either love this device or hate it. Hoping that I would be one of the lucky ones, I bought
one from CompUSA. Following the installation my screen turned a hazy green - like looking at the monitor through an old Coke bottle. As I tried to open applications like the Creative Recorder, I found that the files I had loaded from the CD were corrupt. There were no downloads to fix any of the problems I encounted. I exchanged it at CompUSA for another one. I got the same green screeen on both my IMB and Dell laptops. The second installation CD had many of the same corrupt files.
It's going back this afternoon and I'll start looking for a different product.Good luck if you buy one of these - and keep your receipts!
Rating: 
Summary: Some definite glitches
Review: Cons: The price is dropping on this thing weekly. I'm using it on an brand-spanking-new Thinkpad under XP, and recording is a buggy disaster (among other things). CreativeLabs hasn't been timely in their responses to bug reports, so it's unclear if the hw is broken or not. Even if it's not, untimely response to real support requests isn't encouraging. I'm actually trying to use the product for real things. The software bundle is definitely light for the current price (notably, lack of a DVD player). Pros: There are many high end products which use USB. Yes, I would love it if they all used firewire, but precious few seem to. 24/96 is real, and extigy's price is cheap compared to certain other offerings (unfortunately, there may be a real reason why the price is less - see above). Over time extigy might be a real contender.
Rating:
Summary: False advertising. Limited software. Poor performance.
Review: Don't let the ads or products specs fool you. This sound card does not live up to what it promises. USB bandwith does not allow the Extigy to live up to the Creative standard of its other product lines. While you gain ease of installation and a remote, you lose all software, EAX HD (it claims to support it, but in fact does not) and other features. This product hogs CPU usage because it requires the computer to do most of the processing due to USB limitations. When your computer is doing many things at once, audio quality suffers. It claims to support S/PDIF in but in fact only supports it as a standalone. Any digital signal passed to the Extigy is converted to analog before being transferred to the computer resulting in a significant loss of quality and the impossibility of actual digital recording. I am completely disatisfied with every aspect of this product and am subsequently returning it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Sound Card
Review: First I'd like to start off by congradulating Creative Labs by making an outstanding Sound Card. I attached it with my Klipsh THX certified 5.1 speakers and I watched DVD's on it and it rocked!
Pros:
1. External, easy to move to living room for movies, bedroom for music, computer for games, etc...
2. It has Optical in (for DVD's), Optical Out (for speakers with a digital in), Line In (for cd players...), Mic in (for mics, der), Headphones (so i don't wake my parents up), Analog outs (for some speakers that take analog inputs), digital out, MIDI in, and MIDI out. The number of connections make the sound card easily compatible with numerous speakers.
3. It has CMSS for simulated surround sound, for people who like to listen to 2 channel (audio cd's) music with sound that fills the whole room from all sides
4.24 bit sound for excellent sound quality output
5.Hooks up with USB for fast connection and ease of use
6.Remote Controll (i love to sit on the other side of the room and just turn it on, off =P)
7.Definitly saves room if you prop it up vertically onto the side of your moniter
8.Gold plated connections for best music transfer
9.The software that comes with it is awsome, although i still prefer Windows Media. CONS:
1. External, I know it sounds contradictory but sometimes having a sound CARD placed in the computer maybe a little handier
2. When you share a USB port by have a 4 port-in-one gadget, the sound may crack resulting from lack of transfer speed 3. The dolby digital decoding gives out really small sound, so i have to turn my speakers fully up to hear the rumbles. (when speakers are turned up high, a low sizzling sound could be heard...) All the cons are minor problems, I have moved the card into the living room easily everytime I rent a DVD. You see in order to have 5.1 surround sound from DVD's, You must have a dolby digital decoding...most dvd's have optical out, where you can hook it up with Extigy's Optical In and you could use the extigy as a dolby decoder, giving you surround sound for the ships in Star Wars flying AROUND the room or the bullets zipping by you...this is the best sound card for people wanting something more than just a sound card for the computer and want excellent sound quality...I guarentee you'll tell the difference!
Rating:
Summary: Inoperative when received
Review: Fortunately for Amazon's good return policy I was able to return this unit. I hooked it up to an XP computer by the USB port. When I turned it on there was no output at the speaker jacks. The audio gain control was also faulty. My computer met all the necessary requirements and the Extigy software was installed properly. This unit looked like just the system I was looking for but I am sorely disappointed that the quality control people let this unit go in the condition it was in.
Rating: 
Summary: Too Many Flaws
Review: Great sound is almost a necessity to me, but like most college students, I opted for a laptop instead of a desktop. I felt that the only way to take full advantage of my 5.1 analog surround sound system was to connect my laptop to the SB Extigy. Connecting via USB was more or less a nightmare for me: playing anything through my CD-ROM drive produced loud pops and cracks that noticeably distracts from any music listening or movie watching (the Extigy was the ONLY USB device attached to my laptop at the time, and yes, I did enable DMA for my CD drive). Playing any material with a Dolby Digital stream, even after the movie had been copied to my HD (DivX with AC3 audio) was even a greater disappointment, especially since the Extigy so proudly wears the Dolby Digital logo. As long as I'm playing sound through USB on the Extigy with the Creative drivers, approximately 20% extra processing load is put on my 1.7 GHz Pentium 4-M processor. This extra processor usage is acceptable to some, but definitely not to gamers. My laptop also has an optical-out link, so I hooked up my laptop to the Extigy using a [$] optical miniplug to TOSlink cable.... Virtually all the cracking and popping noises disappeared even when I played DVDs and DivX movies with AC3 audio. However, my Toshiba laptop's optical out port requires my old Yamaha sound drivers - not Creative's. This means that I can't have any EAX sound effects for music or games; it's a slightly disappointing tradeoff, though I'd rather have flawless output than EAX effects. For those with desktops, don't even consider the Extigy. A PCI Audigy is cheaper and significantly better. For those with laptops without optical out, it's either 2.1 audio from your laptop without the Extigy, or up to 5.1 audio with the Extigy along with occasional loud pops (I would personally prefer clean 2.1 audio in this case). If you own a laptop with optical out, then get the Logitech Z-680. The cost of the Z-680 is just about equal to the cost of the Extigy + the cost of a mid-range analog 5.1 audio system, except the Z-680 has hardware Dolby Digital/DTS decoding built-in, with optical, coax, and analog inputs, plus 505 Watts RMS output (1000W peak! Take that Kiplish). Did I mention that they are also THX multimedia certified? Just icing on the cake. Do yourself a favor and skip on the Extigy if you can. USB 1.1 has a relatively narrow bandwidth and USB (even Firewire) relies too heavily on the main processor for data transfers. Though Extigy is an interesting product and worth some merits, wait for the next generation of high-end external computer sound cards (or get the Z-680 now!).
Rating:
Summary: Poor customer service for Extigy
Review: I bought my Extigy along with the Klipsch Promedia 5.1 system and could not get the two to work together. I started working with Customer support online because their support line is NOT toll free. Granted you can't get an instant response to questions via e-mail, I decided I would be a little patient with this one. The problem was, it would take them 1 week to reply to each of my messages. Also, they would misread part of the problem and offer me suggestions that don't even apply. They would later apoligize for it because they realized they didn't read my issue close enough (BTW, I had responses from 3 reps, so it's not just 1 person who doesn't read). All in all, it's been over 1 month and I still don't have any sound. Now that's patience. It's too bad because it seems like such a cool product. If only I could use it, I could write a more productive review. Good luck with your Extigy if you get one.
Rating: 
Summary: Sound Blaster Extigy is very nice and the price is right!
Review: I bought my Sound Blaster Extigy because of the price, but the USB features since I ran out of PCI slot. I was surprised that Sound Blaster Extigy is EXTREMELY easy to install. Just turn the sound card on and plug the USB cable to the computer and install the driver. I did it without any problem. Another cool feature of extigy is, the card is external so I don't have to crawl to the back of my computer and try to switch the jacks. I use The Logitech 4.1 THX speakers and The speakers produce the most awesome 3D sound when I watch Jurasic Park III, it seems like the dinasours were in the living room. Creative Labs unfortunately has bad reputation of having the slowest customer service. I wish they will improve it in the future, since they are no.1 sound card company. Overall, I recommend this external sound card. The price is right and the quality is very nice.
Rating:
Summary: problems with midi in extigy.help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I bought recently Extigy USB card, and I have a huge problem with midi. When I connect my midi controler trough this card, the midi recording is totally wrong. It changes rytms and records wrong music notes...does anybody know what`s wrong. Is it card, WinXP or maybe some settings?
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