Anybody with a SB Z?

Been reading reviews, seems decent for movies, games and music.

How bright are those stupid red LED's? I'd probably take a black sharpie and cover them up.

Shame Creative does not offer a non-disco version of this same card with a black cover.

Besides the lights it's small, not too much $$ and does not need any external power source.

I notice on a few Xonar they either have a 4 pin floppy or 4 pin molex, what a pain in the ass to route those up to a top PCIe slot.

Xonar cards are also freaking long instead of short and wide like SB makes them.

This card does offer pretty good audio for a modern day card. It fills my 5.1 surround sound speakers fully in all the games and movies I play, with pretty good depth. The only minor issue I have with it (and any card released in the past 10 years, for that matter) is I still get clipping when I am playing music with the sound adjusted using a digital equalizer. To eliminate the clipping I have to adjust the pre-amp down 1 - 1.5 dB. The last sound card I had that didn't clip at all while using the same speakers was the original Audigy.

The LEDs are pretty bright on this thing. It could light up the space through the side of your chassis a good 3 feet/1 metre.

The card is a good size in my opinion and looks pretty sexy. The only problem I had was on the top PCI-E x1 slot on my motherboard, the bottom-right screw holding the shroud on the card was hitting a small capacitor on the mobo. I had to replace the convex headed screw with a flat headed one of the same size. My motherboard is a Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H.

Black tape will work. I have the ZxR and it actually doesn't come with the led's.

The Z's cover can be removed with 4 screws which will provide access to the LEDs. You could wrap black tape around them and be good to go.

Thought I had already commented on this thread, anyways...

My only two gripes about mine is the difficulty of figuring out which port is which (i lost the manual), and that the Digital In only redirects it as stereo. To get Digital In that supports surround sound you will have to get a different card.

Otherwise, I think the card is great!

Gold plated jacks are nice but are they necessary or gimmick? I highly doubt you will corrode your jacks unless you live near the beach. I'd rather have the industry standard color coding too.
Clipping in music, that does not sound good for a card of this price.
I've never had that with either Realtek or Turtle beach.

As I expected the LED's are stupid bright. You can get the OEM without the LED's and shield but from all my searching it actually costs more then the standard Z which is odd.

One review noted the op-amp is adjusted too high and way too powerful so at full volume you get distortion.

If not for the fact it does not have windows 7 drivers I'd just stick with my Santa Cruz, it still works fine for being probably 12 years old now.

i have had the SBZ for about 4 months and it has missed a beat - drivers are solid.

in regards to sound quality if good but not as good as my previous sound card Asus Phoebus - but typical Asus poor drivers is the reason i got rid of the card.

Seems to be the major complaint, Asus drivers suck, they are not updated that often to fix issues and the software interface looks like it's from the 95' days instead of being more polished like the creative SB suite is.

I thought I read Creative used to include a overlay sticker with colors around the gold plated ports making it easier to recognize. Do they with the Z?