New Soundblaster Internal card coming

I knew not to expect much and I'm still disappointed. I guess Creative is done with discrete 7.1. GPU HDMI out > Sound Blaster.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Was this ever a thing?
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Their gaming cards (X-Fi, Audigy, etc.) prior to the 2011 Sound Core3D series had discrete 7.1 output. Their justification for dropping discrete 7.1 is that they don't sell 7.1 computer speakers (LOL) or not enough people use it, then again, how many people actually use 5.1 speakers? Headphones use seems prominent so they should just have one stereo output and an SPDIF connector for crappy Dolby/DTS 5.1; they could save several dollars not including all of those unnecessary connectors on their cards!

While 5.1 works well, there is a noticeable difference with the additional speakers in a 7.1 config so I'm not giving that up. I agree with what has been said in the other thread, these cards are targeted at streamers, not audio enthusiasts.
 
djoye said:
Their gaming cards (X-Fi, Audigy, etc.) prior to the 2011 Sound Core3D series had discrete 7.1 output. Their justification for dropping discrete 7.1 is that they don't sell 7.1 computer speakers (LOL) or not enough people use it, then again, how many people actually use 5.1 speakers? Headphones use seems prominent so they should just have one stereo output and an SPDIF connector for crappy Dolby/DTS 5.1; they could save several dollars not including all of those unnecessary connectors on their cards!
Click to expand...

So... I misunderstood. I agree :).

djoye said:
While 5.1 works well, there is a noticeable difference with the additional speakers in a 7.1 config so I'm not giving that up. I agree with what has been said in the other thread, these cards are targeted at streamers, not audio enthusiasts.
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Yeah, if you're going to go surround, 7.1 is worth it overall.

Factum said:
7.1?
I am still on a 7.1 soundcard with 7.1 speakers...7.1 is so much better (the inclusion of side speakers) than 5.1?
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Windows and games may be a bit different (more flexible), but generally the 'side speakers' are with 5.1, with 7.1 adding stereo rear channels.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Windows and games may be a bit different (more flexible), but generally the 'side speakers' are with 5.1, with 7.1 adding stereo rear channels.
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Somewhere in the dark past, the surrounds in a 5.1 'computer speaker' setup on PC were in the rear. With my Creative X-Fi card, it lets me choose either 7.1 or 5.1 rear surround, no side surround option. My GPU lets me choose either 5.1 rear or 5.1 side surround, regardless, when feeding any 5-channel source from the GPU over HDMI, my Denon receiver doesn't care and sends it to the side surrounds like god intended. Some games (Duke Nukem Forever) fall back to stereo if you're configured in 5.1 side or 7.1, the only surround modes it only recognizes are quadraphonic and 5.1 rear surround! The 5.1 side and 7.1 modes are considered 'home theater' modes in DirectX. What's equally annoying is that when you have Windows set to 7.1, most games that only acknowledge up to 5.1 will send audio to the rear instead of the sides due to there being no logic to catch that error or that just being accepted as correct. Fortunately newer audio middleware (Wwise and CRI ADX) recognizes when Windows reports >6 speakers and then puts the surround in the side speakers if the developer chose to limit their game to 5.1, this shows in Resident Evil 7 and Life is Strange: Before the Storm.

Edited for speeling
 
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I'm surprised people still buy internal. I was never a fan of creatives driver updates (or lack thereof).
 
Odigo said:
I'm surprised people still buy internal. I was never a fan of creatives driver updates (or lack thereof).
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They've been better than worse in the Windows 7 to 10 era, however, the hardware hasn't really been overly inspiring even as there are real opportunities for Creative in the audio market.
 
Odigo said:
I'm surprised people still buy internal. I was never a fan of creatives driver updates (or lack thereof).
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Care to share any examples of your disappointment with their "lack of driver updates"? They are still putting out new and rather prompt driver updates for X-Fi cards that came out 10-15 years ago. Compare that to say, Nvidia that has already mostly abandoned Geforce 500 series and older (only 8 years old), and AMD that has also mostly abandoned Radeon 6000 series and older (only 8 years old). I'm not really understanding when people say that Creative has bad driver support unless it's because they havn't actually used a creative card since Windows 98.
 
Last card I had, that I just recently got rid of, was a X-FI. I didn't have any issues but the driver updates were few and far between (year gaps). I guess it's fine if no one has problems.

GotNoRice said:
Care to share any examples of your disappointment with their "lack of driver updates"? They are still putting out new and rather prompt driver updates for X-Fi cards that came out 10-15 years ago. Compare that to say, Nvidia that has already mostly abandoned Geforce 500 series and older (only 8 years old), and AMD that has also mostly abandoned Radeon 6000 series and older (only 8 years old). I'm not really understanding when people say that Creative has bad driver support unless it's because they havn't actually used a creative card since Windows 98.
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I stand corrected. I see they had a updated in June. Prior was 2016.

Odigo said:
Last card I had, that I just recently got rid of, was a X-FI. I didn't have any issues but the driver updates were few and far between (year gaps). I guess it's fine if no one has problems.
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The AE-9 is by far the cheapest way of getting your hands on an ESS Sabre Pro DAC. External DACs that have it are typically in the thousands of dollars range. Its bargain basement really.

There is some Sabre Pro DACs you can order from China that are affordable, but none in a known good brand. (Topping, SMSL, etc.) The AE5 measurements are quite good, so it appears Creative knows how to engineer a good DAC. (Their external USB E5 DAC measures great too if you don't run it at max output)
 
VIC-20 said:
There is some Sabre Pro DACs you can order from China that are affordable, but none in a known good brand. (Topping, SMSL, etc.)
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These are known good brands- I have a Topping balanced DAC/Amp running higher end headphones and JBL studio monitors. SMSL makes similar products. Dead simple and sound great.

As to the AE9- given that you can't access the DAC directly, I don't see it has having much impact, and it's inside the system.
 
VIC-20 said:
The AE-9 is by far the cheapest way of getting your hands on an ESS Sabre Pro DAC. External DACs that have it are typically in the thousands of dollars range. Its bargain basement really.

There is some Sabre Pro DACs you can order from China that are affordable, but none in a known good brand. (Topping, SMSL, etc.) The AE5 measurements are quite good, so it appears Creative knows how to engineer a good DAC. (Their external USB E5 DAC measures great too if you don't run it at max output)
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Fairly irrelevant given how poor the IC amp likely is, etc.

By the way, the Strix raid dlx has a fairly high end ESS dac as well - but none of the measurements on these cards are done at the actual output. It just doesn’t matter.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
These are known good brands- I have a Topping balanced DAC/Amp running higher end headphones and JBL studio monitors. SMSL makes similar products. Dead simple and sound great.

As to the AE9- given that you can't access the DAC directly, I don't see it has having much impact, and it's inside the system.
Click to expand...

You misread. There is no known good brands (ie/such as Topping, SMSL) for Sabre Pros. Topping makes great gear. But they are all Sabre 2 channel DAC chips.
 
Mchart said:
Fairly irrelevant given how poor the IC amp likely is, etc.

By the way, the Strix raid dlx has a fairly high end ESS dac as well - but none of the measurements on these cards are done at the actual output. It just doesn’t matter.
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Measurements are done on the amp side and line-out. You can just line-out to a better amp. - For example: https://jdslabs.com/product/atom-amp/

https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/dac/asus-strix-raid-dlx.php

https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/dac/creative-sound-blaster-ae-5-hp.php

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ements-of-sound-blasterx-g6.7016/#post-158384

I'd sooner buy a Khadas tone board, but if you want a better DAC chip than the ESS mobiles, these sound cards are actually a viable option.
 
VIC-20 said:
You misread. There is no known good brands (ie/such as Topping, SMSL) for Sabre Pros. Topping makes great gear. But they are all Sabre 2 channel DAC chips.
Click to expand...

I was commenting on the brands, not the DACs used- which for an internal sound card I'm not getting excited about, not at least without significant cross referencing of third-party measurements. I'm certainly not taking Creative's marketing at face value, what a load of BS that is.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
They've been better than worse in the Windows 7 to 10 era, however, the hardware hasn't really been overly inspiring even as there are real opportunities for Creative in the audio market.
Click to expand...

With windows 95 and Windows 98 Creative drivers were horible I would have to install them all the time over again with that little bolt of lightning sound.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
I was commenting on the brands, not the DACs used- which for an internal sound card I'm not getting excited about, not at least without significant cross referencing of third-party measurements. I'm certainly not taking Creative's marketing at face value, what a load of BS that is.
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This isn't Creative:

https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/about.php

You are right, Creative specs are higher than tested. But they are very good on their new products and at least trade blows with some mainstream external DACs.
 
Stanley Pain said:
HDMI audio is pretty much superior to anything else if you're running it to a receiver.
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This can be untrue in many situations.
For surround you are likely correct, but not if the AVR amp has multi channel analogue in and the AVR DAC is not as good as that on your soundcard.
For stereo, HDMI is a terrible transport for sound quality. You only put up with it for surround because there is little other choice.
If the DAC in the AVR is any good you will find optical in is the better solution for stereo.
With a poor DAC you probably wont care which transport you use.
 
Looking through other reviews ae-9 and ae-7 are coming August 2019. Not holding my breath though. Thought going to be released months ago.
 
SIgh. No XLR out on the AE-9.
...and no PEQ
small_sb_command_eq.png
 
IdiotInCharge said:
So no real advantage over an optical DAC with XLR outputs and using Equalizer APO, then?
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Depends on the quality of each DAC and their analogue circuits.
Balanced is very helpful in noisy environments.
Otherwise it can give a slight benefit to background noise (make the background a little darker/can hear a few more twinkles if your kit is good enough) but the quality of the DAC and your equipment matter more.
Think of balanced as the icing on the cake.

I'm sure you know most or all of that, stated just in case.

ps
does EQ APO function with WASAPI direct mode etc?
Last time I used it, it needed the windows mixer.
 
Nenu said:
Balanced is very helpful in noisy environments.
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Agreed. I'm using it because the audio chain for the below because the signals go all over the place within my desktop setup:

  1. Optical DAC --> XLR to Nobsound pre-amp / switcher --> XLR to studio sub --> XLR to studio monitors
  2. Optical DAC --> XLR to Nobsound pre-amp / switcher --> RCA pair to tube headphone amp
This results in zero noise out to the studio sub and monitors.

As for the headphone amp having a balanced output but single-ended input, I'd prefer a balanced input however it's a short, non-contested run with decent RCA cables- and the balanced headphone output has an entirely different purpose in that the amplifier drives each side of the headphone separately. Doesn't matter for all headphones but does make a larger difference with some.

Nenu said:
but the quality of the DAC and your equipment matter more.
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Absolutely. If I were just powering headphones, I wouldn't worry about a balanced signal chain.

Nenu said:
ps
does EQ APO function with WASAPI direct mode etc?
Last time I used it, it needed the windows mixer.
Click to expand...

I honestly don't know, it's worth checking into. I've also used Razer's software as well as Creatives as my last board came with a license (to use with Realtek hardware).
 
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