I'm returning my ZS today

well Best Buy didn't hit me with a restocking fee since Creative uses the sealed packaging...which was nice.

Anywho, apparently there's rumors of a ZS running the XFi chip in the works...maybe they'll have it work on our bus this time around.

Going from an Audigy desktop card to the Realtek integrated is a sonic kick in my ass

Yeah after experimenting with this since November I've concluded there is simply a hardware incompatibility with the 5720 and the A2ZS. I still don't understand how some people are able to get it working.

Is it just me or all the drivers (and the underlying hardware) on the 5720 are crappy except the processor and the video card:

Realtek drivers/hardware: crappy
camera: mediocre
intel wireless: MAJOR FECES
PCMCIA: crappy
card reader: won't read a 4GB sd card... crap

Am I missing anything???

there's a new set of Realtek drivers...came out this month...check them out.

still didn't fix the ZS issue but nonetheless, check them out

I installed them already, but didn't notice any changes (specially in the quality of the sound)

I try to stay away from driver updates unless I have problems or there is a significant set of improvements. Most of the time if it isn't broken you are better off not trying to fix it.

With my 5720 however, since I spent so much time on this problem pretty much every driver I have is up to date and downloaded directly from Sager.

I think pretty much all OEMs with the possible exception of Apple (most of the time) use lowest bidder components to cut costs in areas most people don't look at. People buy systems based on the CPU and graphics card. They generally don't compare the wireless hardware, PCMCIA, etc. They compare hard drives and memory based on speed and quantity, not quality.

While I don't necessarily think that the hardware in this notebook is garbage, some of it may not be the best choice for compatibility and integration with the rest of the system based on the target audience this laptop is marketed at.

What is surprising to me is that the sound card on the 8790 (realtek AC97) was "not bad"... But this so called "HD audio" has so many issues that I wonder why didn't they use the AC97 chipset instead...

Yep its purty stinkee

I'm looking at a few external USB sound devices...any recommendations?

Creative does have an external USB Audigy2 device. I don't know how it is but EA claims it won't work with Battlefield2. Turtle Beach seems popular and they are much cheaper but are less popular with games. They are very small and unobtrusive though.

I've had the same problems with sound as you guys are and I stumbled across something today. I just decided to play FEAR with hopes that all the weird sounds were gone but I plugged my headphones directly into the audigy card this time. Sure enough the sounds were coming through the headphones, but amazingly, my speakers sounded perfectly fine. I did this a few times to make sure it was constant, and well it does seem to work every time. Does this work for anyone else??

I've been using an Audigy2ZS in my Clevo M570A (should be the same mashine as the Sager 5760) - and until today had no real problems with the sound.

However, I upgraded the BIOS to add support for turning off the touchpad, and at the same time, I downloaded and installed updated drivers for the PCMCIA bus from Sager's website. After that, I experienced exactly the same soundproblems as described here. :-/

However, when I went back and reinstalled the drivers from Clevo, it seems to be working. I didnt get any "stupid sounds" after that. I didnt test in full, but I ran for 10 minutes without a problem efter installing the Clevo driver.

http://www.clevo.com.tw/download/ftp...=5&submit=+GO+

Another question about the Audigy2ZS, how on earth do you forward the sound to the builtin speakers? Before I bought the Audigy, I read that it was possible, but when searching the net I see only describtions that "when you have the Audigy2ZS plugged in, you cant use the internal speakers".

Can anyone help me get sweet audigysounds out of my builtin speakers?

I got the sound working with the build in speakers, but I get the sound if I enable EAX in the Creative EAX config.

To me this seems to be related to the BIOS/firmware I updated with, because I've run with the Audigy for months playing games that use EAX and I've had no problems along these lines before.


I used the firmware from this thread - http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=116386

You can redirect Audigy2 sounds through internal speakers using an option built in to the creative control panel. It's somewhere in the preferences and options if you search around for it. After you do that you should be able to plug in a headphone into the headphone jack. I'm not sure what this does to the sound quality but it's something I haven't tried but plan to now.

The problem is a bandwidth issue over the PCMCIA bus and since it does work for some but not others it seems to be a combination of hardware and drivers for this particular TI PCMCIA bus. I might try that Clevo driver to see if that works also. The built in audio seems to work pretty well for games but the biggest problem is that it uses up CPU cycles. EAX increases the bandwidth requirement for the Audigy2 card over the PCMCIA bus so disabling should help a lot since the squealing problem is due to bandwidth issues over the bus.

Yeah, just weird it worked for so long without any problems. It only started when I BIOS upgraded, and at the same time updated a few drivers - guess that'll teach me not to try to fix something that's not broken.

First time in my PC time a new driver messed something up this bad that a rollback couldnt fix it though.

I tried turning down the quality in DirectX, and as predicted, the problem was gone - the sound was however terrible. Its no fun playing an actionfilled 3d game and then hear cartoon like weak sounds :-/