Sound BlasterX AE-5 is 30% off Today Only

At about $105 or so with that coupon? Makes it a much better deal than the Sound Blaster Z line, in terms of price/performance.
 
Ever since MS reworked the Windows audio stack in Vista, I've been unable to see what these cards offer above and beyond my integrated audio. Besides some colored lights, what does the 100 really buy?
 
The sound quality is still night and day difference between onboard. If you're using $5 ear buds you won't notice the difference. It's basically instant to me when using an older X-Fi to anything onboard. Between X-Fi and the Z line I'd be hard pressed to the tell the difference however. I don't know if I will go with another SB after I stop using my Z, I might try investing one of the new USB style sound devices and see if I like it.
 
TrailRunner said:
Ever since MS reworked the Windows audio stack in Vista, I've been unable to see what these cards offer above and beyond my integrated audio. Besides some colored lights, what does the 100 really buy?
Click to expand...

Eh I'd say you're in a mixed boat here.

For one your motherboard has a pretty nice onboard setup all things considered. You also have a Sabre DAC and some decent amplification so what you have is pretty good all things considered. Haven't heard it myself but I'm sure it's sounds great. My LG V10 with it's tiny size also has a Sabre DAC and has audio quality better than anything I've heard to date.

So your onboard setup is certainly the exception to the rules in this case. To say you don't see the point of a sound card like this beyond lights shows you probably aren't a very big audio type of person.
 
bman212121 said:
The sound quality is still night and day difference between onboard. If you're using $5 ear buds you won't notice the difference. It's basically instant to me when using an older X-Fi to anything onboard. Between X-Fi and the Z line I'd be hard pressed to the tell the difference however. I don't know if I will go with another SB after I stop using my Z, I might try investing one of the new USB style sound devices and see if I like it.
Click to expand...

The Sabre DAC is certainly a good one. I haven't heard them all but the one that's in my LG V10 sounds amazing! I've owned a ton of stand alone DAP's over the years and none of them come close to even this cheap ~$150 used cellphone. Sabre to my ears is that good.
 
It really is a fairly big difference compared to on-board realtek audio. However if you are playing back to $20 budget headphones, then the quality difference will be lost. Personally I switched to the SB Katana soundbar, and for what it is I'm fairly amazed at it. If I didn't have that I'd buy this sound card instead.
 
I bought another one. I had one on launch and the software didn’t work well at all. Going to see how they’ve managed to fix things in recent driver update.
 
TrailRunner said:
Ever since MS reworked the Windows audio stack in Vista, I've been unable to see what these cards offer above and beyond my integrated audio. Besides some colored lights, what does the 100 really buy?
Click to expand...

A better sound card is what it buys. Onboard audio sounds terrible. Even a 20$ Asus Xonar card sounds better then onboard.
 
If it wasn't a creative product, I would jump on it, but their driver support, or lack of it specifically, is legendary.
 
Mut1ny said:
The Sabre DAC is certainly a good one. I haven't heard them all but the one that's in my LG V10 sounds amazing! I've owned a ton of stand alone DAP's over the years and none of them come close to even this cheap ~$150 used cellphone. Sabre to my ears is that good.
Click to expand...

I have a Sabre (U2 Async DAC ES9023+SA9023) on my big system for streaming airplay content from our phones and it /is/ pretty remarkable.
 
Out of stock. Personally, I've gone high-end (Grace Design M920), and nothing compares much to that, but then again, it's a $1800 unit (which goes on sale for $1200 once in a blue moon). I've had some mid-range ones like the Grace Design M9XX, and lower ones like Sound Blaster's, Objective 2's, etc. I still have the old Titanium HD's with upgraded op-amps, and they do well for the price. Gaming, music, etc. However, one factor that I very much appreciate with the higher end SB's and ASUS's are the auxilary inputs for recording outputs. To have AUX inputs at 24-bit 96,000 Hz and 24-bit 128,000 Hz, respectively, is a pretty nice feature to have that often gets overlooked.
 
zerogg said:
If it wasn't a creative product, I would jump on it, but their driver support, or lack of it specifically, is legendary.
Click to expand...

misterbobby said:
I bought my Sound Blaster Zx in February 2013 and do not recall ever having a single driver issue.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I mean it used to be pretty bad, and maybe to some extent still is. But like misterbobby I haven't had any issues with my SBZ drivers since I got the card, in both W7 and W10.
 
/rant=on

I bought my SB Zx like a year or two ago used on ebay for about $60 something. Replacing my X-Fi Fatality Extreme Gamer card. Couldn't tell a difference other than software. The SB Zx has mostly been fine on drivers for me in win7/8/10.

Only reason to keep going dedicated card for me has been the onboard audio has almost always had screeching noise or popping sounds on mainboards I purchased. Sometimes pulling off the PC Speaker off the mainboard fixed it, then upgrade to another board and maybe hear popping with any kind of harddrive activity.

Now the only frustration I get with my Sound blaster is on windows 10 resetting the whole driver stack with each bi-annual update (anniversary update, fall update...). Usually loose audio after the update and have to install driver again.
 
I bought a used ZxR recently and moved my ZX to my other PC, and I can't get the drivers or software to work.
Spent an hour trying, then I just I gave up.
That PC has a server board so no onboard sound so I was using a Plugable USB audio adapter that works decent, but since I had this spare ZX, I figured I'd slap that in there and use that.
 
RogueTrip said:
/rant=on

Now the only frustration I get with my Sound blaster is on windows 10 resetting the whole driver stack with each bi-annual update (anniversary update, fall update...). Usually loose audio after the update and have to install driver again.
Click to expand...
All you have to do is just change your settings in the Creative control panel right back which takes about 5 seconds as there's no need to reinstall the driver.
 
misterbobby said:
All you have to do is just change your settings in the Creative control panel right back which takes about 5 seconds as there's no need to reinstall the driver.
Click to expand...


For me it was more than that both times. I lost audio and the sound control panel wouldn't bring it back. After that all my profiles were missing in the soundblaster control center. My EQ is set to really cut out bass. Now my Profile is backed up when MS does it the next time.
 
RogueTrip said:
For me it was more than that both times. I lost audio and the sound control panel wouldn't bring it back. After that all my profiles were missing in the soundblaster control center. My EQ is set to really cut out bass. Now my Profile is backed up when MS does it the next time.
Click to expand...
I guess I did forget one thing that the fall creators update screwed up which was my ability to use my damn headphones. I always used to be able to switch back and forth between my headphones or speakers in the control panel but now switching to headphones does not produce any sound in the headphones. Even if I unplug my speakers and just use the headphones, my headphones still refuse to work which makes no sense as they are perfectly fine. Windows 10 really has been nothing but a klusterfuk when it comes to updates. It's screwed up Gears of War 4 several times plus installs newest video drivers whether you want them or not. Sadly for gamers there is nothing to do but bend over and take it as there's no other operating system.
 
RogueTrip said:
Now the only frustration I get with my Sound blaster is on windows 10 resetting the whole driver stack with each bi-annual update (anniversary update, fall update...). Usually loose audio after the update and have to install driver again.
Click to expand...

Really? I went through all of the major milestone updates and haven't had to change anything with my SBZ driver.
 
MavericK said:
Really? I went through all of the major milestone updates and haven't had to change anything with my SBZ driver.
Click to expand...
you must have some special magical version of Windows then because it's an absolute fact that both of the large creators updates reset the sound card drivers.
 
misterbobby said:
you must have some special magical version of Windows then because it's an absolute fact that both of the large creators updates reset the sound card drivers.
Click to expand...

I guess I don't know what to tell you, my SB Control Panel and sound have been working fine through all of those updates. I guess it's possible that they re-installed themselves, but I haven't had to do anything on my end.
 
MavericK said:
I guess I don't know what to tell you, my SB Control Panel and sound have been working fine through all of those updates. I guess it's possible that they re-installed themselves, but I haven't had to do anything on my end.
Click to expand...
Each update wiped the settings in my SB control panel, putting everything back to default. If you didn't change anything, then you won't notice that it put all the settings back to default.

I was also able to get the sound to work properly on my Xeon setup with my old ZX card.
Had to delete all Creative directories, remove the Creative entries in the registry, then reinstall the driver.
 
Zepher said:
Each update wiped the settings in my SB control panel, putting everything back to default. If you didn't change anything, then you won't notice that it put all the settings back to default.
Click to expand...

Ah, yeah if it's just settings then it's probably because I use a program called SB Switcher which controls the settings automatically, and resets them every time I reboot.
 
Does it have a decent headphone amp? I'm using a Forte because it has a decent headphone amp. Don't need more shit on my desk.
 
King of Heroes said:
I don't want to be "that guy", but if you're running digital to a receiver then why do you need a discrete sound card at all?
Click to expand...
That's what I was wondering, kind of more of my question... I mean are people primarily still using these for headphone/analog outputs?
 
I use studio monitors on my setups with the soundcards.

IMG_1699-cropped4.jpg
 
Code still works - I almost bit (simply because driver support for my SB Z is pretty lacking), but I kind of want to save that $105 in the hopes Dell puts their 34" Ultrawide on sale again just before or after Christmas.
 
Scarby Jones said:
That's what I was wondering, kind of more of my question... I mean are people primarily still using these for headphone/analog outputs?
Click to expand...

They should be using analog instead of running them digital. Hell, I'm not even a fan of this card because its not very moddable, no cycling of opamps. That's really the big reason for the ZxR and STX cards. Rolling them opamps looking for bliss. Although I have to say the addons for the ZxR are really cool, I love the ACM, the dual mic is pretty decent, no need for a headset mic, etc etc.
 
d8lock said:
I run analog 8 channel to my receiver.
Click to expand...
Aw, nice! Yeah, my current receiver is one of those screwed up hdmi onkyo rec'rs basically a 3rd or 4th rec'rs rank from main equipment/family room. I'll probably hold since I'm using optical and 2.1 setup in the office/gaming computer (no analog on that one, iirc). But that makes a lot more sense, not sure why I wasn't thinking about that for some reason. Thanks so much for the input, definitely makes a lot more sense now, Vs running integrated audio etc.
 
thesmokingman said:
They should be using analog instead of running them digital. Hell, I'm not even a fan of this card because its not very moddable, no cycling of opamps. That's really the big reason for the ZxR and STX cards. Rolling them opamps looking for bliss. Although I have to say the addons for the ZxR are really cool, I love the ACM, the dual mic is pretty decent, no need for a headset mic, etc etc.
Click to expand...
Thanks so much for the info, I'll eventually move an analog input receiver into office (w/ more speakers) and then might consider soundcard again. Right now just running 2.1 through Onkyo, it's junk because of hdmi switch issue. I could have repaired, but ended using as 2.1 via optical.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top