Here is why I use a soundcard for gaming instead of the onboard audio. Even with my Audigy RX-5 I can tell a difference in not only the sound quality but the performance of games. Especially games with huge explosions such as Rise of the tomb raider. Without the sound card some explosions were so big that they would cause frame drops. I was thinking it was the graphics card but sure enough I got that sound card and the explosions are much smoother now. So it's better sound but also better performance because it has it's own processor. So it doesn't have to tax the cpu at all. This is all from my personal experience of course. But in the brochure you will see what I am talking about. It really does relieve your main cpu of extra work leaving it to do more important things such as keeping up with graphics card demands. Look up bottlenecking for some of this and do your own experiments. Some games you can't tell but like I said for some games with huge explosions it does make performance smoother. Also keep in mind I'm not running a threadripper, ryzen cpu or a good intel cpu. I'm running an Fx 8350 so yes it's a very old cpu but it works very well and I think that sound cards really do benefit people with lower end systems in terms of performance. For sound quality it's no doubt. It definitely beats the onboard audio. system specs: Power Supply EVGA 1300watt with 108amps on the 12 volt rail Motherboard gigabyte 970a-ud3 cpu fx 8350 8 core Graphics Card Asus GTX 1060 OC 03GB The core gets to 1975Mhz and memory 8000mhz. Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster Audigy RX-5 Headphones HD 598 Senheisers
So... I've owned the majority of Sound Blasters (Pro, Awe32, etc) over the years, even a few of the ones with drive bay expansions. I've listened to a huge variety of USB headphones and other remedies - Xonar- . I would say the closest I got was with the Asus Rampage III Extreme, that was really good sound before it burned out six months in. I am now on a Rog Maximus Code. Fairly sure that technology had advanced, I swapped between that, a SB Extreme Music, a Xonar and a SBZ multiple times. The onboard is just tinny and muddy no matter what I do to it enhancement wise. No amount of work could bring happiness on the Astro A40's or my old Yamaha RX-V663. (Or the $240 Sony headphones, the Beats in-ear, etc.) Positional audio still works and well, maybe not as much on War Thunder. Just use one for a year turn away from the fire, listen and don't turn back.
Can someone tell me whether the upgrade from the soundblaster z to the sound blasterx is worthwhile? I place emphasis on good music enjoyment with Beyerdynamic headphones and gaming.
Bought it and the sound is very crisp. Just make sure you go into sound settings and change it to 32 bit or you will enjoy 24 bit sound quality. Make sure to restart your PC after installing the card and software and CZcams might need some adjusting on settings. mumbling was happening and had to figure that one out. Don't freak out if mumbling occurs just play with the settings until you figure it out. Games sound fantastic on soundblaster AE 5.
What are you having trouble with? I was having trouble with mumbling on CZcams and twitch. I fixed that by turning the mixer volumes to 0 then only increase smart volume. This is the only solution I came up with, but you can get it to work or just turn off the mixer completely. I also had another issue with the card which when I went from 5.1 to 7.1 headphones, I had to right click sound in the bottom left corner of windows and select troubleshoot sound problems which after doing that and testing it then it worked fine. I have the Sound Card hooked up so the headphones work with the front jacks on my computer case. It sounds amazing when you work out and the little quirks with it. Basically the mixer volume software on the blaster-x Library is kind of quirky. I sure hope they can figure out that one, but this solution should work if you still want to use it. I use the sound mixer just fine but it takes patience.
You pay attention !! Dynamic Range Decibels are not the same as SNR Decibels or Signal to Noise Ratios! Be careful! It's a misleading advertisement !! This Card has 116 dB of SNR and 122 of DNR. THIS IS NOT THE SAME!!
With your blind test, can you also add in a few external DACs/Amps at a similar price point as well? I'm a bit of an audiophile and use my PC a lot for listening to HQ FLAC music, traditionally I have used an External DAC and Amp to drive my Sennheiser headphones. Considering the price point, it really comes in close to a decent DAC/Amp combo, I'd like to see how it stacks up. Personally I'd almost rather run a PCIe card like that because of how much desk space and the number of cables it would eliminate. Just curious how it stacks up to; for example, my NuForce uDAC3 on some decent 50ohm headphones.
ZxR have the advantage to get 5.1 sound form the optical output, the EA5 dont, they only support stereo or 2.1 audio from the optical out, but for me its fine cause my speakers are the logitech z625 Wish have optical inpit but they are a 2.1 speakers and sounds far better than the analog conection. In the other hand the EA5 have a 32 bit DAC for the headsets and support 600 oms ... Thats a lot better than the ZxR's 24 bits 600 oms but gotta make sure that the audio you are consuming its recorrer that Way and... Thats not a lot. I stick with the EA5 cause its cheaper and better for the headphones and I dont get the advantage scince I only use a 2.1 audio system for speakers the price of the ZxR dont justify the advantage that I dont gonna get anyways...
Can you put it up against a z97 Maximus VII hero plz. most of us who bought devil canyon gear haven't had the need to upgrade to the new cpus yet because they aren't that much better for gaming. maybe compare it to a few motherboards??? Z97/Z170/Z270/X299 ??? :)
"Devil Dog" is 100% correct! Higher impedance doesn't mean that one piece of audio equipment is better than another. Any company can make a cheapo pos and design it with whatever impedance they want; At the same time however, higher quality components tend to use higher impedance in order to help ensure a cleaner signal. So although the greater resistance doesn't mean the equipment is good, it is typical that good equipment has a higher resistance. For the car guys/gals stumbling upon this you can think of it like a car's engine. Just because it has more cylinders doesn't mean it's more powerful, (a turbo charged V6 can easily out-power a selected V8) at the same time more powerful engines are typically built with more cylinders for higher displacement, etc. For the photographers/artists another analogy would be the rated Megapixel of a camera. Just because it's a higher resolution doesn't mean the image is any better. There are far more at play then simply increasing the amount of pixels in an image such as its shutter speed, lens quality, sensor quality, color accuracy, low-light exposure, etc. Low impedance: Use low-voltage high-current amps. The lower voltage is more easily susceptible to interference and noise being introduced to the signal. High impedance: Use high-voltage low-current amps. The higher voltage is less susceptible to interference and noise being introduced to the signal. Of course again, just because something is of low impedance doesn't mean it's lower quality and just because something is of higher impedance doesn't mean it's higher quality. The issue regarding impedance was really big with older tube amplifiers and isn't really of much consequence these days due to the drastic design change of how amplifiers are engineered and built.
Surely the key question here is 'how much are you prepared to spend on decent headphones / speakers' ? I'm not being elitist here, but transducers rule IME. We can talk about 'the myth of 24-bit audio' and a bunch of other stuff, but I guarantee you that something like the A-T MSR7 is going to let you hear a hell of a lot more detail than a $50 gaming headset. Whether that's important to you is a completely different issue - I suspect that if you're here, it is. Massdrop has put 'audiophile' cans well within the grasp of many gamers / PC users but you dont need to go with 300-ohm cans to get better sound.
Yup - UK gets hammered even worse than those of us in Oz, but my comment was for US head-fiers. Given that you have Amazon UK and I assume they sell used models, your keyboard is probably your best friend.
Everyone should be aware of THis Can the Sound BlasterX AE-5 support Dolby and DTS encoding for optical out? No; the Sound BlasterX AE-5 does not have Dolby and DTS encoding for optical out. No Dolby/Digital live or dts. etc.why? idon't know the tech support didn't understand either at creative.
No, it doesn't. But, generally speaking, high quality headphones tend to have a higher impedance. Higher impedance drivers tend to "stick closer to the signal". There's plenty of studio level headphones with 100 - 600 Ohm. There's very few of them with lower impedance and all of them that are still good are fairly modern, because building a low impedance driver for headphones that still sticks close enough to the original signal isn't all that simple.
Creative redefined soundcard through the years. I have the sound blaster AWE64 gold still now that a sound card and with descend synthesis in it. "Sound cards" these day's are just audio interfaces with fancy stuf on it. And I understand why people want that, Creative sees a market in those and has very powerful dsp chips to make it sound good. lts all about better crisp audio , stereo, low noise , low latency and channels which is one of the many focus points of today's audio card quiet boring though.
Hi all this sound card before the new update it sucks now you can not use more laudio of the microphone and bad and you can not handle you can not use the microphone with headphones and a crap
Hi all this sound card is not the one they say and a simple sound card like all those that in fact the n1 creative menu and horrible messy and doesn't do what normally we used to do with the normal sound control panel and everything was simple with this menu can't handle anything the equalizer and useless can't hear her voice microphone Headphone Headset voice comes out of the dale I bought hoping It was different and that was what they were saying but not that much and I removed and or put my and stupid to put video of the lights and many other things people want when spends $150 clear sound and speak into the microphone hears her voice sound and okey but everything else not please remove this menu and horrible for the rest and okey but do not say that this card and best of the other sound card
I feel bad. PCWorld is not as popular as it used to be. Maybe take some pointers from Linus Tech Tips? Idk.. I remember in like 02-08 pc world was much more relevant. What's going on?
This was great - I liked that you had the basic mobo guy and the DAC guy too.
Here is why I use a soundcard for gaming instead of the onboard audio. Even with my Audigy RX-5 I can tell a difference in not only the sound quality but the performance of games. Especially games with huge explosions such as Rise of the tomb raider.
Without the sound card some explosions were so big that they would cause frame drops. I was thinking it was the graphics card but sure enough I got that sound card and the explosions are much smoother now. So it's better sound but also better performance because it has it's own processor.
So it doesn't have to tax the cpu at all. This is all from my personal experience of course. But in the brochure you will see what I am talking about. It really does relieve your main cpu of extra work leaving it to do more important things such as keeping up with graphics card demands.
Look up bottlenecking for some of this and do your own experiments. Some games you can't tell but like I said for some games with huge explosions it does make performance smoother. Also keep in mind I'm not running a threadripper, ryzen cpu or a good intel cpu.
I'm running an Fx 8350 so yes it's a very old cpu but it works very well and I think that sound cards really do benefit people with lower end systems in terms of performance. For sound quality it's no doubt. It definitely beats the onboard audio.
system specs:
Power Supply EVGA 1300watt with 108amps on the 12 volt rail
Motherboard gigabyte 970a-ud3
cpu fx 8350 8 core
Graphics Card Asus GTX 1060 OC 03GB The core gets to 1975Mhz and memory 8000mhz.
Sound Card Creative Sound Blaster Audigy RX-5
Headphones HD 598 Senheisers
So... I've owned the majority of Sound Blasters (Pro, Awe32, etc) over the years, even a few of the ones with drive bay expansions. I've listened to a huge variety of USB headphones and other remedies - Xonar- . I would say the closest I got was with the Asus Rampage III Extreme, that was really good sound before it burned out six months in. I am now on a Rog Maximus Code. Fairly sure that technology had advanced, I swapped between that, a SB Extreme Music, a Xonar and a SBZ multiple times. The onboard is just tinny and muddy no matter what I do to it enhancement wise. No amount of work could bring happiness on the Astro A40's or my old Yamaha RX-V663. (Or the $240 Sony headphones, the Beats in-ear, etc.) Positional audio still works and well, maybe not as much on War Thunder. Just use one for a year turn away from the fire, listen and don't turn back.
Guys, when do you will have subtitles?
I was thinking of getting a sound card to use with my Astro TR40's, but I'm slightly deaf in my right ear. Would you consider this a good or bad idea?
Can someone tell me whether the upgrade from the soundblaster z to the sound blasterx is worthwhile? I place emphasis on good music enjoyment with Beyerdynamic headphones and gaming.
hi guys will this boost performance for my corsair sp2500 I current one have fatality champion edition.
Bought it and the sound is very crisp. Just make sure you go into sound settings and change it to 32 bit or you will enjoy 24 bit sound quality. Make sure to restart your PC after installing the card and software and CZcams might need some adjusting on settings. mumbling was happening and had to figure that one out. Don't freak out if mumbling occurs just play with the settings until you figure it out. Games sound fantastic on soundblaster AE 5.
I'm literally having so much trouble with the warbling. any suggestions? new to PC stuff :/
What are you having trouble with? I was having trouble with mumbling on CZcams and twitch. I fixed that by turning the mixer volumes to 0 then only increase smart volume. This is the only solution I came up with, but you can get it to work or just turn off the mixer completely. I also had another issue with the card which when I went from 5.1 to 7.1 headphones, I had to right click sound in the bottom left corner of windows and select troubleshoot sound problems which after doing that and testing it then it worked fine. I have the Sound Card hooked up so the headphones work with the front jacks on my computer case. It sounds amazing when you work out and the little quirks with it. Basically the mixer volume software on the blaster-x Library is kind of quirky. I sure hope they can figure out that one, but this solution should work if you still want to use it. I use the sound mixer just fine but it takes patience.
You pay attention !! Dynamic Range Decibels are not the same as SNR Decibels or Signal to Noise Ratios! Be careful! It's a misleading advertisement !! This Card has 116 dB of SNR and 122 of DNR. THIS IS NOT THE SAME!!
With your blind test, can you also add in a few external DACs/Amps at a similar price point as well?
I'm a bit of an audiophile and use my PC a lot for listening to HQ FLAC music, traditionally I have used an External DAC and Amp to drive my Sennheiser headphones. Considering the price point, it really comes in close to a decent DAC/Amp combo, I'd like to see how it stacks up.
Personally I'd almost rather run a PCIe card like that because of how much desk space and the number of cables it would eliminate. Just curious how it stacks up to; for example, my NuForce uDAC3 on some decent 50ohm headphones.
How is this compared to Creative ZxR??
ZxR have the advantage to get 5.1 sound form the optical output, the EA5 dont, they only support stereo or 2.1 audio from the optical out, but for me its fine cause my speakers are the logitech z625 Wish have optical inpit but they are a 2.1 speakers and sounds far better than the analog conection. In the other hand the EA5 have a 32 bit DAC for the headsets and support 600 oms ... Thats a lot better than the ZxR's 24 bits 600 oms but gotta make sure that the audio you are consuming its recorrer that Way and... Thats not a lot. I stick with the EA5 cause its cheaper and better for the headphones and I dont get the advantage scince I only use a 2.1 audio system for speakers the price of the ZxR dont justify the advantage that I dont gonna get anyways...
This soundcard or the Asus Xonar Phoebus Pro?
RGB makes it more pleasant, if you get fragged, while staring at your PC instead of the monitor. ;-)
But it doesn't support DTS encoding over optical. What a bummer! No HD audio for my AVR setup, so I have to keep my Sound Blaster Z.
Can you put it up against a z97 Maximus VII hero plz.
most of us who bought devil canyon gear haven't had the need to upgrade to the new cpus yet because they aren't that much better for gaming.
maybe compare it to a few motherboards??? Z97/Z170/Z270/X299 ??? :)
I will have a PC Gaming man cave once again with at least 5 speakers like I did in 2002. that will require a soundblaster!
"Devil Dog" is 100% correct!
Higher impedance doesn't mean that one piece of audio equipment is better than another. Any company can make a cheapo pos and design it with whatever impedance they want; At the same time however, higher quality components tend to use higher impedance in order to help ensure a cleaner signal. So although the greater resistance doesn't mean the equipment is good, it is typical that good equipment has a higher resistance.
For the car guys/gals stumbling upon this you can think of it like a car's engine. Just because it has more cylinders doesn't mean it's more powerful, (a turbo charged V6 can easily out-power a selected V8) at the same time more powerful engines are typically built with more cylinders for higher displacement, etc.
For the photographers/artists another analogy would be the rated Megapixel of a camera. Just because it's a higher resolution doesn't mean the image is any better. There are far more at play then simply increasing the amount of pixels in an image such as its shutter speed, lens quality, sensor quality, color accuracy, low-light exposure, etc.
Low impedance: Use low-voltage high-current amps. The lower voltage is more easily susceptible to interference and noise being introduced to the signal.
High impedance: Use high-voltage low-current amps. The higher voltage is less susceptible to interference and noise being introduced to the signal.
Of course again, just because something is of low impedance doesn't mean it's lower quality and just because something is of higher impedance doesn't mean it's higher quality.
The issue regarding impedance was really big with older tube amplifiers and isn't really of much consequence these days due to the drastic design change of how amplifiers are engineered and built.
Surely the key question here is 'how much are you prepared to spend on decent headphones / speakers' ? I'm not being elitist here, but transducers rule IME. We can talk about 'the myth of 24-bit audio' and a bunch of other stuff, but I guarantee you that something like the A-T MSR7 is going to let you hear a hell of a lot more detail than a $50 gaming headset. Whether that's important to you is a completely different issue - I suspect that if you're here, it is. Massdrop has put 'audiophile' cans well within the grasp of many gamers / PC users but you dont need to go with 300-ohm cans to get better sound.
£150 minimum, I use ath m50x
Yup - UK gets hammered even worse than those of us in Oz, but my comment was for US head-fiers. Given that you have Amazon UK and I assume they sell used models, your keyboard is probably your best friend.
Everyone should be aware of THis
Can the Sound BlasterX AE-5 support Dolby and DTS encoding for optical out?
No; the Sound BlasterX AE-5 does not have Dolby and DTS encoding for optical out.
No Dolby/Digital live or dts. etc.why? idon't know the tech support didn't understand either at creative.
superuser.com/questions/1078608/cant-use-dolby-digital-or-dts-encoding-the-audio-format-is-not-supported
this or the strix raid dlx?
better than the zxr vom creative ?
No nothing beats the ZxR currently! I have have one next to my SLI GTX 1080.
Higher impedance does not mean better headphones.
No, it doesn't. But, generally speaking, high quality headphones tend to have a higher impedance. Higher impedance drivers tend to "stick closer to the signal". There's plenty of studio level headphones with 100 - 600 Ohm. There's very few of them with lower impedance and all of them that are still good are fairly modern, because building a low impedance driver for headphones that still sticks close enough to the original signal isn't all that simple.
Creative redefined soundcard through the years. I have the sound blaster AWE64 gold still now that a sound card and with descend synthesis in it.
"Sound cards" these day's are just audio interfaces with fancy stuf on it. And I understand why people want that, Creative sees a market in those and has very powerful dsp chips to make it sound good. lts all about better crisp audio , stereo, low noise , low latency and channels which is one of the many focus points of today's audio card quiet boring though.
Чуваки, ставьте экран перед микрофоном, сопенье ваше аж слух режет.
ps слушаю с картой АЕ5 как раз))))
Hi all this sound card before the new update it sucks now you can not use more laudio of the microphone and bad and you can not handle you can not use the microphone with headphones and a crap
Hi all this sound card is not the one they say and a simple sound card like all those that in fact the n1 creative menu and horrible messy and doesn't do what normally we used to do with the normal sound control panel and everything was simple with this menu can't handle anything the equalizer and useless can't hear her voice microphone Headphone Headset voice comes out of the dale I bought hoping It was different and that was what they were saying but not that much and I removed and or put my and stupid to put video of the lights and many other things people want when spends $150 clear sound and speak into the microphone hears her voice sound and okey but everything else not please remove this menu and horrible for the rest and okey but do not say that this card and best of the other sound card
Hardcore sound
I feel bad. PCWorld is not as popular as it used to be. Maybe take some pointers from Linus Tech Tips? Idk.. I remember in like 02-08 pc world was much more relevant. What's going on?
Old comment, but they should go back to a print magazine.
I have Realtek ALC1150 onboard sound. much better then any SB sound card.
No realtek shit is better than SB newver cards :-) even realtek 1220 no.
Lol realtek is garbage