Best Sound from Audigy 2 ZS

Question

I have a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro and I want the best sound quality I can get from my Sound Card.
In the Creative Audio Console, I have a few questions on what changes I should make. For the Decoder, do I click "Use Built-in Decoder" or click "SPDIF Passthrough (Dolby Digital / D T S Digital Out). For Bit Accurate, do I check "Enable Bit Accurate Recording" because for S/PDIF-IN and CD Digital it says "Unkown or invalid signal". And for SPDIF I/O, for SPDIF Input Settings do I click "default", "Dolby Digital/DTS SPDIF-In decode" or "SPDIF Bypass". And for the finial thing, for Digital Output (PCM) Sampling Rate Settings, do I check "44. KhZ (Stereo Only), "48 Khz" or "96 KHz".
I really do not know what those things do and if it will make a big difference but I want to get the best sound quality out of my sound card. Also if there are any other 3rd party drivers or utlities that will boot my sound performance, please let me know. I am going to hold up on upgrading to the X-Fi until prices go down. Thanks.

Answer 1

>For the Decoder, do I click "Use Built-in Decoder" or click "SPDIF Passthrough"
That would depend on the quality of the external decoder and how the decoder (ie. surround amplifier) and the card are connected. Since the Audigy is crippled in the sense that many of its features are not available through its SPDIF output - because it can't encode multichannel digital audio and won't digitally play 96 KHz Audio DVD for legal reasons - most users will have an analog connection between card and hifi components (e.g. 5.). In that case, "use built-in decoder" is the option to use. However, your receiver should have a true analog path, ie. the 5. or whatever inputs should not be digitized and go trough another DSP in the receiver. Otherwise, sound quality would suffer a bit from too many analog-digital-analog conversions. If your surround amplifier digitizes analog sources - as cheap models tend to do - a fully digital path might improve sound quality. But you will then be limited by the poor design of the Audigy's digital section. For example, sound of games will only be available in stereo over an optical cable (Video DVDs are not affected, their signal is transported correctly). Everyting considered, you might want to have two connections: optical for Video DVD pass-through ("external decoder"), analog for games and DVD Audio disks. Btw, the analog outs of the card sound very good, in my opinion.
>(Dolby Digital / D T S Digital Out). For Bit Accurate, do I check "Enable Bit Accurate Recording" because for S/PDIF-IN and CD Digital it says "Unkown or invalid signal".
Forget bit-accuracy with Creative Audigy sounds cards, these cards resample anything to 48 khz (if the central processor on the card is used in any way, shape or form). For bit-accuracy, you should get a different card. If your source is a CD, don't read the CD through the sound card. Don't even connect CD dri've and sound card - to remove a source of noise - but let Windows record disks digitally over the IDE bus. DVB/DVD is 48 KHz (or?), so CDs should be the primary victim of resampling. If you encode a CD into MP3, encode to 48KHz, ie. let the encoder to the resampling.
>And for the finial thing, for Digital Output (PCM) Sampling Rate Settings, do I check "44. KhZ (Stereo Only), "48 Khz" or "96 KHz".
I would use 48 KHz because that's the cards working frequency.