I think maybe a whole Sound Blaster history would be cool; expensive, but cool. There are so many models, it would cost hundreds to do unless electromyne helps ya out. Were talking SB1, SB2, SB Pro, SB Pro2, AWE32, AWE64 and so many in between. Ppl can bash Creative all they want, but they still wouldn't be doing it, if they were crap. (Well, there was that A3D thing that just wasn't cool)
+GiSWiG Exploring sound cards, to me this is something I don't want to rush :) One card at a time. There will be a review on a retro Sound Blaster soon :)
+GiSWiG Agreed, that's a heck of a great idea for a video[series?]. Phil does a good job hitting the finer points and that would be cool to see him do. +PhilsComputerLab Phil, generally speaking, your fan base is likely to enjoy a longer video which shows the details of each generation of SB card. While I have no right to speak for them, observations seems to lean strongly in that direction. Your continuing reviews of video cards have been very well received. For example, you have helped me, an industry veteran of 38 years, learn a few things I didn't know. Have enjoyed your series of video's greatly and would like to encourage you to do many more!
Still using a X-Fi Xtreme Music as well. I can't quantify it, but it still sounds better than onboard audio to me. The AE-5 is the first card in a long time to make me consider upgrading.
Had to retire mine due to a lack of PCI slot on the last motherboard I got. Loved the front panel 5'25 insert. Now I'm stuck wiring everything though back yet again, like a crazy person.
I use the Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium PCI-E at 1:49, better than the newer Creative cards. Also Windows 10 compatible. I recommend the Daniel K drivers!
I am using an X-Fi Xtreme Music in one of my Windows 7 builds with modified drivers and it is rock solid and sounds great. I also have an X-Fi Titanium PCI-E in an Windows XP build using the standard drivers from Creative and although the sound is great, the control panel keeps crashing when i adjust sound settings. I am going to download some modified drivers for the Titanium in the hopes it stops the crashes.
but for the price you might get an external one. this audio card cost here as much as a Cambridge Audio DACMagic Plus. you then lose the EAX stuff but you get a high-end DAC and headphone amp as well as a multi input pre-amp with fully balanced output.
There is plenty of videos explaining why perception of quality above 16-bit 44.1kHz is largely placebo based. The moment the number of Dolby channels used surpassed the number of ears a human has, audio hardware manufacturers began resorting to gimmicks. Creative software - if you analyze it, has very little to do with sound at this point. The make the cards glow, they provide in-game visual assists. The design is about the look more than it is about function. But hey, how else are they expected to keep selling a product! I've been preparing a soundcard review (from a negative standpoint) and been running tests over the last 2 weeks. I tell you this - if you need a spectroscope to differentiate quality and can't pass a blindfold test, then it's all gimmicks. Creative knows it well. Sony is in the same situation, where they use excessive visuals to market sound equipment, while being unable to physically prove that improvement over CD quality is worth forking over extra cash. There are situations where higher quality matters. For instance, I write music and I deliberately work at highest quantization settings, because I re-process sound. Just like with video, if you want slow motion, you have to shoot at high frame rate. If you re-sample instruments and slow them down, or feed multiple filters which degrade the soundwave integrity, you need quality to begin with. The question is, how many people do that on regular basis? Next to none! I'm not trashing high end sound. All I'm saying is that they advertise niche application as if it was an essential for the masses. They may be fooling the consumer, but they themselves are perfectly aware of what they're doing and why. If they didn't, they'd be out of business,
I disagree. I can certainly tell the difference between 44.1kHz and beyond. I'd say 48kHz or higher is what you'd ideally want to target for stereo output, but as soon as you start going the surround sound route, 48khz starts to not be enough anymore. I also work with MIDI music, and whenever I make a recording of the MIDI playback, 48 kHZ, and especially 44.1 introduces clipping in the recording that is not present at all when merely listening.
I work with MIDI music also and re-sample sounds or regular basis. When converting 44.1 to 44.1 many times over a thing begins to occur similar to the rolling shutter effect in video. Since the exact point where each sample is taken is not synchronized, then over time, the soundwave will begin losing high tones and will flatten. 48kHz gives a bit of an extra buffer that offsets degradation before it becomes noticeable. Filtering, as I've already said, also crunches away data with high pitches always being the first to suffer. But all those are work applications. Merely listening to sound - I can't tell whether something is 44 or 48. I ran a blindfold test on couple of friends and the guess ratio is pretty much 50/50. People can't tell. If you show them what they're listening to and ask which one they think is better, then 9/10 they'll say that 48kHz sounds better. Don't have to trust me. Set up your own experiment. Get a few friends over and ask them to identify sound quality without knowing which source is which.
My favourite sound blaster is my X-Fi Titanium PCI-e version! I just love it, have been using it since many many years with modded PAX drivers, also works with windows 10!
Remember getting my first Sound Baster with the CMS chips. Very fond memories. The AWE will always have a special place in my heart for at least trying to be an MT32 since those things were so expensive. But Pro Audio Spectrum were also very cool cards. Just a shame they had such a short run and lack of support.
I have so many fond memories with my Sound Blaster cards. My first one was the Sound Blaster 2.0 and the next one was a Sound Blaster Pro. I am quite happy with my Sound Blaster Z right now.
I second this. I tried to replace my Soundblaster X-fi with the Z, and the Z sounded very "emulated". I returned it and Im STILL using my X-fi which is excellent.
I know this video was a long time ago but I'm getting ready to build a new machine & was looking for some reviews on this product. The fact that there is no optical in is an issue for me. I watch 4k movies thru my 4k player hooked up to my Sound Blaster Z PC & not having the necessary connection keeps me from wanting to purchase this product. Thank you for a thorough review.
Last Creative card I used was the Audigy 2ZS or whatever it was called. Still have it actually, and works great on my Linux boxes. Latter switched to Xonar DX. Good sound and works very well under Linux. For my latest Ryzen build I ditched the Xonar and resorted to onboard. Granted I don't have "audiophile" quality speakers or headsets, but things sound just as good.
I wish I'd kept my original Sound Blaster, too. I also upgraded it with the CMS chips, but it left with my Tandy 1000SL/2. I never thought that I'd want it again! I *think* I went from that to a Pro (which I also wish I still had) to an AWE32 (which I do still have-- learned my lesson!). I've been through a bajillion sound cards since then, but the AWE32 is almost always in one of my retro boxes. I know, nobody asked, but the AWE32 was the last Creative sound card I really loved-- the Live! was the last one I bought from them because of what they did to Aureal. NEVER FORGET! :)
Why do you even care what happened between Aureal and Creative? They're businesses and they competed against each other for your business, and one lost. Either way, they don't even know you exist, so why act like a fanboy over it?
I use the Creative X3 on my modern PC. Its is AMAZING. Clarity, Treble and Bass Excellent. The Separation between instruments and sounds is extraordinary. Works great in 7.1 Dolby too. I use it with my 7.1 A/V home theater receiver using Optical Toslink connection.
Hate to burst your bubble, but 7.1 over Toslink isn't a thing. Even if the sound card will work in 7.1 mode with Dolby Digital LIve enabled, the signal is down-mixed to 5.1 and compressed for transmission over Toslink.
@@TheEvox81 Yes, The Creative x3 manual reads it can produce Dolby Digital 7.1 Virtual. Not sure exactly what that means but my A/V receiver has all 7.1 speakers enabled when I have it connected to the x3 so 7.1 must be working. Sounds good to me.
I remember Sound Blaster fondly. My 1st SB was the SB 16 for an Acer Acros 486SX/25, sometime in 1993. Fast forward to mid-late 1997 and I bought a SB 64 PCI for an Acer Aspire P200 "tower". I built my 1st PC in April 2000 and used a SB live value card. That card went through several PC builds and I decommissioned it since it didn't do high res audio (24 bits / 96 KHz) and the last pc I built got flaky and went to another system...and bought a new Asus soundcard (still using it) that has high res audio. Why I didn't buy an Audigy 2 I don't know. ;)
My personal experience dates all the way back to the Sound Blaster 16. I actually just picked up a Sound Blaster Live 24-Bit for my Pentium II 450 build for $8 shipped on eBay. Everytime the wife asks why I need old computer parts I just tell her to blame Phil. :D
I would be using my X-Fi Fatal1ty card but my new machine (skylake build) has no PCI slots :( I wanted to keep it in my build but the only mobo's at the time where like 100 dollars more for that feature and I was like "I can just pick up a sound card in PCIe flavor down the road" lol still waiting for down the road *money* lol
I remember my awe 32 and live 128 the most. They did kick the internal built in audios behind quite well back then. I am grabbing my old P4 that I found stashed at my parents, I do believe it has the live 128 in it - will re-visit when confirmed ;).
No internal Sound Card can beat a same priced external DAC, because of internal electrical interference. For me one of the best sounding Soundblaster Cards, was the Audigy2 zs platinum, specially at the time it was released.
For me the Audigy 2 was a fucking piece of shit because it had a horrible crackling sound problem that couldn't be fixed. I decided it was made by a bunch of absolute retards.
My first SoundBlaster was the SB16, I've just replaced my SB Z Fatality as it would glich sound depending on what W10 update I got... I literally got the AE-5 today and it's a great card, the software (SB command) is far better than the Z, but like the Z I use Optical Out and you have to find the setting in the app to turn it on, the app has evolved somewhat and you can find it under Playback, select Digital and enable "Play stero mix to digital output", I now get sound and 5.1, great card even after 3 years from this review.
Another great one Phil :D Couple of things i'll say here. My personal experience with Sound blasters goes back to the AWE32, then Audigy2 ZS, then X-fi Extreme Music. Since the X-fi i've used an HT Omega Striker or onboard, until recently. As much as i've loved some of those sound cards over the years at this point i feel like if you really want the best sound from your rig buying external USB DAC and Amp's are by far the best sounding and most cost effective way to go. Something like an SMSL M3 or a Fiio E10K are likely going to sound better for less money.
I like the Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus SABRE32-class Hi-res 32-bit/384 kHz PCIe Gaming Sound Card and DAC with Dolby Digital and DTS. I currently own it. PS I remember Creative was giving people the upgrade from AE-5 to AE-5 Plus. I recommend the AE-5 Plus over the none Plus. There is a clear difference and it uses Sound Blaster Command software and it's a clear difference then the software you used and trust me that version is a huge upgrade.
I used from SB AWE32 to Audigy 2. After I changed to XMOS + external DAC and never come back again. It is far more playable via changing Capacitors, moding the clock, and power supply etc to fine tune the sound.
My platinum Drive still keep in the case but no use. Haha, the built in DIR9001 to spdif is good, I used to connect coxial out to my external DAC. It sounds great with Kx-driver.
My REVEAL SoundBlaster Compatible card that came with my first Packard Bell computer was a workhorse. I miss that card so much. It lasted from 1994 all the way through till 2004, a good 10 years. Now-a-days, that's no big deal as a lot of computer hardware is useful for a decade or so. But back in the 1990's, very little computer hardware was useful two years after it was purchased. Those were different times, computer hardware had a very short lifespan back then. But the REVEAL sound card was an exception. It even allowed me to listen to early MP3's back when CPU's were not powerful enough to decode MP3's without dedicated hardware. It wasn't exactly perfect, but it did give my 486DX2 the ability to play music without skipping.
Nostalgia is the best. My first card was an Adlib, I was floored, and a couple years later bought a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 when it was released! That is my nostalgia card. On another note, does the new SB AE-5 do wavetable synthesis? For my random retro gaming, it is a must! Makes a HUGE difference! I got lucky and picked up a SB XFI Titanium which has a 24bit DAC, processor, and wavetable synthesis!
Just this week I got a Sound Blaster X-Fi HD external USB sound card for my main rig at home. Not too long ago I would have found it nonsense and said that on-board audio has gotten good enough that a dedicated sound card doesn't really matter anymore, but... it really does make a noticeable difference. Paired with a decent set of headphones (I have a Sennheiser HD558 hooked up) I can mostly hear more detail than before. Subtle little layers of music that I never noticed before, but also tiny glitches and distortion that were barely audible before are more obvious now. It's inspiring me to step up my game even further with the rest of my audio equipment.
Yeah, that can also help to get improved audio. The thing is though, I didn't buy this USB sound card specifically to use for my main rig. It was mostly meant to have a portable device that allows me to make high-quality audio recordings from a bunch of digital music instruments and synthesizers. It should be better at that than the usual on-board audio device on a PC or laptop. That the Sound Blaster allows me to enjoy better audio from my main PC during its downtime is mostly a welcome bonus.
the soundblaster is an external dac/amp, it's not the built in one. it just connects via pci instead of usb and is less portable but can get more power.
You know, watching your videos really make me relax, this amazing old hardwares, and the inside you give us bout then, is something that i really like. I dont even need a soundcard, as i mainly game on my rig, but i always bought then for the looks, and of course upped quality came as a bonus. This new AE-5 is apealing, time to change my phoebus for sure! Thx for the great 11:34 experience! Cheers from Brazil my dear!
I might be guilty of nostalgia, but the best sound card that had this incredible wow fator in terms of quality was the sound blaster AWE32. Sure technology moves on, but none that came afterwards was able to blow me away ever since.
Haven’t had a sound card since the fatality pro. Excited to try this tomorrow! I still don’t like the RGB stuff. I look at my monitor when I game, not my pc… Great video!
For the past 13 years I've been using a high quality USB DAC and amplifier that I've built myself. Gaming, music, anything. I don't understand why anybody buys sound cards as a peripheral anymore, especially since it's noisy inside the PC case.
Still rocking with my X-Fi Titanium!! This card tho, looks pretty badass, too bad is not being sold in my country at the time of this writing this comment :
Great card, dynamic, clear and powerful sound, unfortunately with the new software Sound Blaster Command the equalizer has been limited to only 12dB on both the AE-5, AE-7 and AE-9, early versions of the AE-5 software allowed EQs up to 24dB. Because of this my Sound Blaster Z whose software allows equalizing up to 24dB still sounds better than my AE-7 on my new Sennhaiser 560s, Sad .... Please Creative give us back the 24dB EQ, let full power flow.
I have two of the "Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional"s (what a mouthful!!). I absolutely love them and have never seen a need to upgrade. Eventually they may die, or the PCI-E interface may be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable, but for now I'm happy with what I have.
My Creative Soundcards so far: (oldest to newest) 1) Sound Blaster 32 PnP 2) Audigy 2 ZS 3) X-Fi Titanium 4 ) X-Fi Titanium HD I don’t know, if my next will still be a creative. I kinda like the STX II by ASUS.
My first gaming computer had the SB Audigy 2 and I loved it. Then sound started switching to mobo and I've been kinda meh. Now that there's a new SB card coming out with everything I want, to quote Wayne from Wayne's world... It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine...
I love that first ISA card!You've totally walked me through the past of all of my old sound cards! I used to buy those (up to the Sound Blaster Live!) to make my computer play games better. *Had to correct they typo that said video cards instead of sound cards.
Anyone else find it odd that you can get a quality motherboard for less than the price of a sound card? My new build came with an ASUS PRIME Z370-P. Which is a really good board except for the sub par sound chipset. So since that's my only complaint I've decided to slap a sound card onto it that costs more than the motherboard it self does. Which seems kind of odd.
Re speaker type, the speaker system usually won't handle this, or it will handle it poorly. If you're plugging speakers and your sub direct into the 5.1 analog ports you definitely want to set this correctly as it will not just send lows to the sub, but also _not_ send them to the speakers.
+151 Guiding Light What do you mean by "PCIe power pins"? If you're talking about the four pin molex connector, then no, that is optional IF you want to use the RGB-LED lighting. Phil mentioned this rather clearly. If you're just using the card to do it's job as a sound card, the power connector is not required. Or did you mean something else?
I still have the sound blaster live 5.1 card,just recently took it out of my desktop because the pc tanked.Long story short that sound card has been thru hell and back,tossed and forgotten in a bin of parts,moved several times.Damn thing still works great and sounds lovely.
The best sound card is the Titanium HD. Full hardware EAX 5.0 and much much more. The AE-5 should have a model with a hardware DSP to process sound, sorta like Recon3D and X-Fi
I recommend most people DISABLE any feature like Crystallizer that modifies the audio. I have an Auzentech X-Fi Forte from EIGHT YEARS AGO, as well as really good speakers from Audioengine. I can't tell the difference between the Forte, the DAC in the speakers or a recent Soundblaster that I borrowed just to test... I can tell the difference between the onboard sound from my 5-year old motherboard (Realtek ALC892). I haven't tested any other Realtek chips though, but I wonder if good sound cards have much IMPROVEMENT left to be had over the previous best cards or external DAC's of high quality?
I'm looking at all these old cards he has and wondering how in the hell they are so damn clean! They all look new. Ultrasonic cleaner? Anyways great video. I am still using a Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme Gamer. I had the Audigy before that. My next build will have this AE-5! I would love to get my hands on X-Fi Titanium edition.
Switched from a Titanium HD + Soundblaster Z combo to this. The Sound-quality is absolutely incredible and the improved surround software also sounds alot better than SBZ (surround doesn't steal as much bass and fidelity as it does on the SBZ and also sound clearer).
i still have my old Audigy 2ZS with the front panel controller. It still sounds amazing today paired with good speakers! I remember that those sound cards more or less came with the Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo X high end PCs along with the front panel controllers with the remote. I have 2 of these Scaleo X and both of them came with the Sound blasters.
Creative are such a cool company and they make a stunning difference in many games that support highly detailed audio experience. I could not imagine playing without, it makes awesome games better, just pair such a card with some of creatives speakers or similar high quality brands. Computer speakers er not that expensive, but still i see many people only having the cheap ones or simply their monitor sound and maybe a headset. Headsets can be good, but with 20+ experience i recommend you all to prioritize sound as highly as you prioritize your graphics! It is like watching a great movie and have no soundtrack, well you don´t know what you are missing, if you never tried it... It makes all the difference. Take it from a professional music composer ;)
I remembered I've used an old sound blaster card in a 2001 pentium 4 Gateway PC running Windows XP and it was a Sound Blaster Audigy 2.0 24-bit and I remember how great Diablo II sounded with that card
One of my x370 mainboards has this built in, renamed to creative mb5, even has the same sabre DAC in fact it has an alc1220 as well! Aorus x370 gaming5. best soundcard ive ever heard by a mile is the auzentech X-Plosion, its based on a high end c-media chip and even has user changeable op-amps, not to be confused with the crappy c media chips found in cheap motherboards, its a beast
Phil, the Audigy and Audigy 2 don't do 24/96 natively-- the internet is full of proof to show this. the X-Fi was the first Creative card set to do *true* 24/96 and is still a great performer to this day. however, just a note for the future, if you're going to be doing videos later including anything with an nForce chipset, I heavily suggest those get the Audigy when it comes time for testing. as someone that lived off a machine with dual Opterons and an overglorified nForce 430 chipset (and all the fun USB issues you get with more than 5 devices plugged in at one time), it is by far the best solution that doesn't get glitching or any of that fun stuff, and sadly only with the updated daniel_k driver set.
The Audigy 2 was the last piece of crap I bought from that fucking retarded company. It had a horrible crackling sound problem and none of the suggested fixes worked. What a bunch of fucking imbeciles.
Hey Phil, could you record a video where you compare hardware-accelerated EAX from an X-Fi card with software-emulated EAX on the AE-5 on a few legacy games? A comparison of positional 3D audio would be cool too. I'm very curious how the software emulation is holding up these days.
I'm tempted to go for one, I've recently changed my motherboard and now get a lot of static. Tried quite a few things to rectify it, but nothing really seem to help.
Drivers are a Creative weak point, but their cards are very good. For many years as far as until today I am using cards of their production. Great material. Thanks Phil
You should look at DanielK's driver sets. He does a lot of tweaking and refining that you might find appealing. Although, to be fair to Creative, their driver efforts in the past few years have been very good.
Charon Underground this is true, my sound blaster X-Fi Titanium the drivers for Windows 7,8,10 are all buggy and for Windows 10 the card doesn't work right. The newest OS I can use is Vista without problems as for 7 once in a while the driver dies and I have to restart the computer to fix it.
@SilverX95 If the x-fi drivers bug out in windows (starts distorting sound) you can fix it by just changing the output mode, e.g flipping it from surround to stereo and back or vice versa. You can also just toggle the sampling rate back and forth. Instant fix without having to reboot.
You skipped the Xfi Titanium HD :( It's what i use, sure, it is an Xfi based card but it was one of creative's legitimate attempts to create an audiophile based card. It uses RCA outputs/inputs, has only 2 3.5mm jacks for mic and line in, and cannot do surround sound except through using digital output to an external receiver. It's a complete anomaly of a card compared to all others creative ever produced.
Hey PhilsComputerLab :) Honestly, the only reason I would use a sound card would be a.) backwards compatiability for games in the 2000s as that supported EAX for surround sound and ALchemy. b.) So that I can have Windows DirectSound be translated to a Dolby Signal that can allow for digital surround sound in games ( most notably Valve games like the Orange Box ). I have a spare stereo receiver laying around these days, so surround sound gaming is something that comes to my mind often.
The best Sound Blaster card was the Sound Blaster 16 paired with a Wave Blaster daughter card. It sounded fantastic with games especially ones with midi support. And it had a good midi authoring tool by Cakewalk. Using both the 4 operator FM chip and the wave blaster one could create some interesting sound mixes. The wave table based Waveblaster was one of the best sounding internal midi devices made. Nowadays it doesn't really make much sense to have a sound card. Onboard audio for games has improved a lot in the last 15 years. Those who work with professional audio applications are better served using external digital audio devices connected via HDMI or optical which almost all PC's have now.
Fun fact, you don't need alchemy to run doom 3 or quake 4 with EAX on modern windows, because they alredy use OpenAL by default, so these are not affected by the change in audio architecture.
@@philscomputerlab Yes, plus there is the fact it lets you select EAX on windows 10 if you have a EAX capable card installed with the proper drivers and all.
I almost fell off my c hair when I read that e-mail! I've asked if I could test that new Audigy card for Windows XP / EAX gaming. It could be the ultimate Windows XP card?
Weirdly enough one of my favorite parts of this video is the fact that the board you are testing with has an IDE port. Ahhh nostalgia! Great review as always Phil. Keep up the great work! :)
Great video, I too kept most of my soundcards from over the years (seem to have almost 30 cards........). For me I think the best sound blaster was when they got to the SBLive, I guess that's when they sounded good enough you didn't really need to spend $1000+ on an RME/Echo Audio/M-audio card if all you were doing was making music with plugins.
I still have a X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional that I use with my main Windows 10 gaming PC. Have found no reason to upgrade. Newer Creative sound card feel like a downgrade to me.
Great Video... just what i was looking for! I really love this Soundcard- but there is one thing that bothers me alot: It does not support Dolby Digital Live / DTS-Connect! That is the only thing i miss...
Aww, no mention of the ISA-interfaced AWE32 that was more of a notable arrival than the AWE64 looking at what the previous paradigm was. I remember it well as I was in the GUS camp and we were at a bit of an online war. :-)
I gave up on Creative a long time ago, when it became obvious that they were more about marketing than tech, and when CPUs got fast enough to do high-quality audio processing in software. The last card I bought was an Asus Xonar DX, because I wanted to try 5.1 over TOSLINK to my Logitech Z-5500d, but I was already happy enough with on-board audio. My current gaming rig is a laptop that has a Creative Sound Blaster Recon3Di sound chipset, and it's not anything special. It's just a bunch of silly effects (which may even be implemented in software in the driver for all I know), most of which are meant to make up for the horrendously cheap speakers that Dell put in the laptop. My personal opinion is that effects are only useful for fun or to make up for suboptimal speakers, and that on-board audio has been quite sufficient since at least the time that Windows Vista was released - especially if you're not using a surround speaker setup.
If you're using crap speakers then yeah. But if you're using a good pair of cans dedicated soundcards DAC's are wayy better than what integrated audio can output. my sennheiser phones had a lot of static interference when playing games until I got a soundblaster z on the cheap a few years back. 4 years later the card still works great aside from the lens cover on the card fell off due to the adhesive gone dry but that can be reapplied with some hot glue.
@@oOignignoktOo1 I don't think that's been all that true for at least the last decade. Fortunately I have crap hearing, so I don't have to spend a lot of money to get acceptable sound in any case lol.
Imho the 'best' (or at least my favourite) soundcard Creative ever launched was the AWE32 and its successor the AWE64. I remember back in the DOS-days I was stoked to run across a MOD-player that directly supported loading the samples into the memory of the AWE32 and treat it as a form of soundfont. I think there even was a MOD-player for windows later on that supported the same but I'm not sure on that one.
The price is too prohibitive in my opinion. You can get ok sound from the integrated sound card most of the time, if not I am sure you can find an external DAC that is cheaper than this. To each his own I guess, but I would not pay more than 50 dollars for a sound card when my integrated sound card sounds ok.
Has creative stopped the practice of using lower quality DACs for the main/front jack? also: * Unfair competition and killing Aureal (and every other competitor they can) * recently they bought the company that made nvidia soundstorm audio processor, again killing the promising competition. * Many bugs and bad sound quality on the soundblaster PRO/16 (expensive cards in their moment). Also in many other serious issues in other soundcards. * Not admitting incompatabilities with some chipsets issues with more modern cards, (live, x-fi, maybe more...) * Not releasing drivers for later windows releases, in order to render useless perfectly capable (and not so old) cards. This is demonstrated with free drivers like KX driver (and that is when they don't legally pursue driver tweakers/developers, as they did many times). No more creative for me, thank you!!!
Hm, super high end DAC stuck right next to a PWM LED controller? May as well just use the onboard sound. I loved Sound Blasters back in the day, but time has not been kind to vendors clinging to add-in boards for functionality built into every PC motherboard. If you really need HQ audio (and in most cases you just don't), you can get an actual no-BS DAC with USB or TB interface for the same price. It doesn't glow funny colors. What next? A 3C-905XZ network card?
I snagged an SB Recon 3D on a great sale when the next gen came out since my onboard audio was a bit noisy (mostly only noticeable without sound playing). Having the equalizer available was a bit helpful due to some of my headsets (notably the Corsair HS-2) were a bit flat sounding by default, but the drivers were capable of delivering what I wanted if pushed. Otherwise though, I mainly use it for it's optical input. I have a TV as one of my monitors and have multiple game consoles hooked up to it as well. It's convenient to not have to switch headphones between console and PC use, and also works great if I'm watching content on my PC while console gaming and being able to hear and control both sources. Any of the other bells and whistles really don't matter to me.
How about making a dedicated review on X-Fi series (pci-e titanium especially)? We'd like to see the comparison between native EAX versions and backwards compatible perfomance, comparing audigy and X-Fi performance. And addressing some of issues like drivers functionality (fixed recently with titaniums), EAX performamce in several games (GTA: San Andreas has issues with using eax, like it doesn't use it, or GoldSrc games that worsen SFX sample rate when using dsound.dll). That would be cool!
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Loved the history recap through the cards, you have the whole set! Nice
+RetroManCave Yup I'm a hoarder >
I think maybe a whole Sound Blaster history would be cool; expensive, but cool. There are so many models, it would cost hundreds to do unless electromyne helps ya out. Were talking SB1, SB2, SB Pro, SB Pro2, AWE32, AWE64 and so many in between. Ppl can bash Creative all they want, but they still wouldn't be doing it, if they were crap. (Well, there was that A3D thing that just wasn't cool)
+GiSWiG Exploring sound cards, to me this is something I don't want to rush :) One card at a time. There will be a review on a retro Sound Blaster soon :)
+GiSWiG
Agreed, that's a heck of a great idea for a video[series?]. Phil does a good job hitting the finer points and that would be cool to see him do.
+PhilsComputerLab
Phil, generally speaking, your fan base is likely to enjoy a longer video which shows the details of each generation of SB card. While I have no right to speak for them, observations seems to lean strongly in that direction. Your continuing reviews of video cards have been very well received. For example, you have helped me, an industry veteran of 38 years, learn a few things I didn't know. Have enjoyed your series of video's greatly and would like to encourage you to do many more!
No mention of the ZxR Phil?
Sounblaster X-Fi Platinum here! Still sounds awesome after 12 years!
Still using a X-Fi Xtreme Music as well. I can't quantify it, but it still sounds better than onboard audio to me. The AE-5 is the first card in a long time to make me consider upgrading.
Had to retire mine due to a lack of PCI slot on the last motherboard I got. Loved the front panel 5'25 insert. Now I'm stuck wiring everything though back yet again, like a crazy person.
I use the Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium PCI-E at 1:49, better than the newer Creative cards. Also Windows 10 compatible. I recommend the Daniel K drivers!
TheAslinger Me also on the Platinum, but on win7 pro.
I am using an X-Fi Xtreme Music in one of my Windows 7 builds with modified drivers and it is rock solid and sounds great. I also have an X-Fi Titanium PCI-E in an Windows XP build using the standard drivers from Creative and although the sound is great, the control panel keeps crashing when i adjust sound settings. I am going to download some modified drivers for the Titanium in the hopes it stops the crashes.
Glad to see that some people care about sound cards. Even a basic SoundBlaster is way better than most integrated sound options.
but for the price you might get an external one.
this audio card cost here as much as a Cambridge Audio DACMagic Plus.
you then lose the EAX stuff but you get a high-end DAC and headphone amp as well as a multi input pre-amp with fully balanced output.
no. just no.
Jeremy Johnson child
Creative PCI Sound Card Master Race.
I prefer ISA Sound Blaster 16.
RGB on a sound card.You have got to be fucking kidding me.
I only have red lighting on my sound card... Fml.. Got the SbZx. Good card and good extras.
It really should have been blue and yellow only
There is plenty of videos explaining why perception of quality above 16-bit 44.1kHz is largely placebo based. The moment the number of Dolby channels used surpassed the number of ears a human has, audio hardware manufacturers began resorting to gimmicks. Creative software - if you analyze it, has very little to do with sound at this point. The make the cards glow, they provide in-game visual assists. The design is about the look more than it is about function. But hey, how else are they expected to keep selling a product!
I've been preparing a soundcard review (from a negative standpoint) and been running tests over the last 2 weeks. I tell you this - if you need a spectroscope to differentiate quality and can't pass a blindfold test, then it's all gimmicks. Creative knows it well. Sony is in the same situation, where they use excessive visuals to market sound equipment, while being unable to physically prove that improvement over CD quality is worth forking over extra cash.
There are situations where higher quality matters. For instance, I write music and I deliberately work at highest quantization settings, because I re-process sound. Just like with video, if you want slow motion, you have to shoot at high frame rate. If you re-sample instruments and slow them down, or feed multiple filters which degrade the soundwave integrity, you need quality to begin with. The question is, how many people do that on regular basis? Next to none!
I'm not trashing high end sound. All I'm saying is that they advertise niche application as if it was an essential for the masses. They may be fooling the consumer, but they themselves are perfectly aware of what they're doing and why. If they didn't, they'd be out of business,
I disagree. I can certainly tell the difference between 44.1kHz and beyond. I'd say 48kHz or higher is what you'd ideally want to target for stereo output, but as soon as you start going the surround sound route, 48khz starts to not be enough anymore. I also work with MIDI music, and whenever I make a recording of the MIDI playback, 48 kHZ, and especially 44.1 introduces clipping in the recording that is not present at all when merely listening.
I work with MIDI music also and re-sample sounds or regular basis. When converting 44.1 to 44.1 many times over a thing begins to occur similar to the rolling shutter effect in video. Since the exact point where each sample is taken is not synchronized, then over time, the soundwave will begin losing high tones and will flatten. 48kHz gives a bit of an extra buffer that offsets degradation before it becomes noticeable. Filtering, as I've already said, also crunches away data with high pitches always being the first to suffer. But all those are work applications. Merely listening to sound - I can't tell whether something is 44 or 48. I ran a blindfold test on couple of friends and the guess ratio is pretty much 50/50. People can't tell. If you show them what they're listening to and ask which one they think is better, then 9/10 they'll say that 48kHz sounds better.
Don't have to trust me. Set up your own experiment. Get a few friends over and ask them to identify sound quality without knowing which source is which.
My favourite sound blaster is my X-Fi Titanium PCI-e version! I just love it, have been using it since many many years with modded PAX drivers, also works with windows 10!
Christopher H. Same creative recently added back in support for the titanium series so it runs on Windows 10.
I had a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio,was a awesome card,Probably one of the last creative cards that had proper stable drivers imo.
Remember getting my first Sound Baster with the CMS chips. Very fond memories. The AWE will always have a special place in my heart for at least trying to be an MT32 since those things were so expensive. But Pro Audio Spectrum were also very cool cards. Just a shame they had such a short run and lack of support.
I have so many fond memories with my Sound Blaster cards. My first one was the Sound Blaster 2.0 and the next one was a Sound Blaster Pro. I am quite happy with my Sound Blaster Z right now.
I still use my old X-Fi XtremeMusic - it's just great! I had the Z for a while, but the outputs were noisy, so I got rid of it.
I second this. I tried to replace my Soundblaster X-fi with the Z, and the Z sounded very "emulated". I returned it and Im STILL using my X-fi which is excellent.
Imagine how far would Aureal go with their Vortex sound cards, if Creative didn't drop their lawsuits..
I know this video was a long time ago but I'm getting ready to build a new machine & was looking for some reviews on this product. The fact that there is no optical in is an issue for me. I watch 4k movies thru my 4k player hooked up to my Sound Blaster Z PC & not having the necessary connection keeps me from wanting to purchase this product. Thank you for a thorough review.
used to have the xtrememusic before i got a pc with no pci bus. then i found a used ae5 at a pawn shop for 25 bux! best buy ever.
Awesome review!
i liked how you brought out all the previous versions which brought me back in time lol
Last Creative card I used was the Audigy 2ZS or whatever it was called. Still have it actually, and works great on my Linux boxes. Latter switched to Xonar DX. Good sound and works very well under Linux. For my latest Ryzen build I ditched the Xonar and resorted to onboard. Granted I don't have "audiophile" quality speakers or headsets, but things sound just as good.
I wish I'd kept my original Sound Blaster, too. I also upgraded it with the CMS chips, but it left with my Tandy 1000SL/2. I never thought that I'd want it again! I *think* I went from that to a Pro (which I also wish I still had) to an AWE32 (which I do still have-- learned my lesson!). I've been through a bajillion sound cards since then, but the AWE32 is almost always in one of my retro boxes. I know, nobody asked, but the AWE32 was the last Creative sound card I really loved-- the Live! was the last one I bought from them because of what they did to Aureal. NEVER FORGET! :)
Why do you even care what happened between Aureal and Creative? They're businesses and they competed against each other for your business, and one lost. Either way, they don't even know you exist, so why act like a fanboy over it?
@@MrRobarino But they didn't win with a better product-- creative just sued aureal and lost repeatedly until they drained Aureal of money.
I use the Creative X3 on my modern PC. Its is AMAZING. Clarity, Treble and Bass Excellent. The Separation between instruments and sounds is extraordinary. Works great in 7.1 Dolby too. I use it with my 7.1 A/V home theater receiver using Optical Toslink connection.
Hate to burst your bubble, but 7.1 over Toslink isn't a thing. Even if the sound card will work in 7.1 mode with Dolby Digital LIve enabled, the signal is down-mixed to 5.1 and compressed for transmission over Toslink.
@@TheEvox81 Yes, The Creative x3 manual reads it can produce Dolby Digital 7.1 Virtual. Not sure exactly what that means but my A/V receiver has all 7.1 speakers enabled when I have it connected to the x3 so 7.1 must be working. Sounds good to me.
@@computerenthusiast402 As long as your happy with the end result.
I remember Sound Blaster fondly. My 1st SB was the SB 16 for an Acer Acros 486SX/25, sometime in 1993. Fast forward to mid-late 1997 and I bought a SB 64 PCI for an Acer Aspire P200 "tower". I built my 1st PC in April 2000 and used a SB live value card. That card went through several PC builds and I decommissioned it since it didn't do high res audio (24 bits / 96 KHz) and the last pc I built got flaky and went to another system...and bought a new Asus soundcard (still using it) that has high res audio. Why I didn't buy an Audigy 2 I don't know. ;)
I recently bought an x-fi extreme gamer for 20€ and i really like it.
My personal experience dates all the way back to the Sound Blaster 16. I actually just picked up a Sound Blaster Live 24-Bit for my Pentium II 450 build for $8 shipped on eBay. Everytime the wife asks why I need old computer parts I just tell her to blame Phil. :D
Похоже, что моя жена знакома с вашей, так как задает такие же вопросы.
I have a ZR but went back to X-FI for the drive bay.
Creative needs to bring back the 5.25 drive bay
My first Sound Blaster was the PCI 128. Today I'm using a Sound Blaster Z series. It´s a amazing Sound Card.
I'm still using an X-fi extreme music pci version.Great card.
Same here! I also have an Audigy 2 in one of my spare systems. Using DanielK's driver sets on both because I like the tweaks he's done.
Nice. Yeah Dan K. made it so much easier for us.
I would be using my X-Fi Fatal1ty card but my new machine (skylake build) has no PCI slots :( I wanted to keep it in my build but the only mobo's at the time where like 100 dollars more for that feature and I was like "I can just pick up a sound card in PCIe flavor down the road" lol still waiting for down the road *money* lol
Do you use OpenAL or Alchemy much?
I use OpenAL for winamp mostly. I dont bother with alchemy.
I remember my awe 32 and live 128 the most. They did kick the internal built in audios behind quite well back then. I am grabbing my old P4 that I found stashed at my parents, I do believe it has the live 128 in it - will re-visit when confirmed ;).
No internal Sound Card can beat a same priced external DAC, because of internal electrical interference. For me one of the best sounding Soundblaster Cards, was the Audigy2 zs platinum, specially at the time it was released.
For me the Audigy 2 was a fucking piece of shit because it had a horrible crackling sound problem that couldn't be fixed. I decided it was made by a bunch of absolute retards.
@@Kalumbatsch I had the same problem with mine!!
My first SoundBlaster was the SB16, I've just replaced my SB Z Fatality as it would glich sound depending on what W10 update I got... I literally got the AE-5 today and it's a great card, the software (SB command) is far better than the Z, but like the Z I use Optical Out and you have to find the setting in the app to turn it on, the app has evolved somewhat and you can find it under Playback, select Digital and enable "Play stero mix to digital output", I now get sound and 5.1, great card even after 3 years from this review.
Got in past sb16 vibra and SB X-Fi elite pro, now got SB32AWE, 64Gold, Audigy2, X-Fi Titianium.
Thanks for the info on the need (or lack of) for the molex. Great review!
After watching this video I had to buy the sound card to replace my great Recon 3D card. Great video thanks.
Another great one Phil :D Couple of things i'll say here. My personal experience with Sound blasters goes back to the AWE32, then Audigy2 ZS, then X-fi Extreme Music. Since the X-fi i've used an HT Omega Striker or onboard, until recently. As much as i've loved some of those sound cards over the years at this point i feel like if you really want the best sound from your rig buying external USB DAC and Amp's are by far the best sounding and most cost effective way to go. Something like an SMSL M3 or a Fiio E10K are likely going to sound better for less money.
I like the Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus SABRE32-class Hi-res 32-bit/384 kHz PCIe Gaming Sound Card and DAC with Dolby Digital and DTS.
I currently own it.
PS I remember Creative was giving people the upgrade from AE-5 to AE-5 Plus.
I recommend the AE-5 Plus over the none Plus.
There is a clear difference and it uses Sound Blaster Command software and it's a clear difference then the software you used and trust me that version is a huge upgrade.
I also used sound blasters in the early 90's to today.
I used from SB AWE32 to Audigy 2. After I changed to XMOS + external DAC and never come back again. It is far more playable via changing Capacitors, moding the clock, and power supply etc to fine tune the sound.
My platinum Drive still keep in the case but no use. Haha, the built in DIR9001 to spdif is good, I used to connect coxial out to my external DAC. It sounds great with Kx-driver.
My REVEAL SoundBlaster Compatible card that came with my first Packard Bell computer was a workhorse. I miss that card so much. It lasted from 1994 all the way through till 2004, a good 10 years. Now-a-days, that's no big deal as a lot of computer hardware is useful for a decade or so. But back in the 1990's, very little computer hardware was useful two years after it was purchased. Those were different times, computer hardware had a very short lifespan back then. But the REVEAL sound card was an exception. It even allowed me to listen to early MP3's back when CPU's were not powerful enough to decode MP3's without dedicated hardware. It wasn't exactly perfect, but it did give my 486DX2 the ability to play music without skipping.
Nostalgia is the best. My first card was an Adlib, I was floored, and a couple years later bought a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 when it was released! That is my nostalgia card. On another note, does the new SB AE-5 do wavetable synthesis? For my random retro gaming, it is a must! Makes a HUGE difference! I got lucky and picked up a SB XFI Titanium which has a 24bit DAC, processor, and wavetable synthesis!
Just this week I got a Sound Blaster X-Fi HD external USB sound card for my main rig at home. Not too long ago I would have found it nonsense and said that on-board audio has gotten good enough that a dedicated sound card doesn't really matter anymore, but... it really does make a noticeable difference. Paired with a decent set of headphones (I have a Sennheiser HD558 hooked up) I can mostly hear more detail than before. Subtle little layers of music that I never noticed before, but also tiny glitches and distortion that were barely audible before are more obvious now. It's inspiring me to step up my game even further with the rest of my audio equipment.
You could also use an external dac/amp, i think that's what most people use.
Yeah, that can also help to get improved audio. The thing is though, I didn't buy this USB sound card specifically to use for my main rig. It was mostly meant to have a portable device that allows me to make high-quality audio recordings from a bunch of digital music instruments and synthesizers. It should be better at that than the usual on-board audio device on a PC or laptop. That the Sound Blaster allows me to enjoy better audio from my main PC during its downtime is mostly a welcome bonus.
+uzimyspecial
Disagree, most people actually don't use an external DAC. Most people use onboard sound and connect a set of cheap speakers.
the soundblaster is an external dac/amp, it's not the built in one. it just connects via pci instead of usb and is less portable but can get more power.
Fiio dac's are much better for sound than your soundblaster.
You know, watching your videos really make me relax, this amazing old hardwares, and the inside you give us bout then, is something that i really like. I dont even need a soundcard, as i mainly game on my rig, but i always bought then for the looks, and of course upped quality came as a bonus. This new AE-5 is apealing, time to change my phoebus for sure! Thx for the great 11:34 experience! Cheers from Brazil my dear!
I might be guilty of nostalgia, but the best sound card that had this incredible wow fator in terms of quality was the sound blaster AWE32. Sure technology moves on, but none that came afterwards was able to blow me away ever since.
Haven’t had a sound card since the fatality pro. Excited to try this tomorrow!
I still don’t like the RGB stuff. I look at my monitor when I game, not my pc…
Great video!
For the past 13 years I've been using a high quality USB DAC and amplifier that I've built myself. Gaming, music, anything. I don't understand why anybody buys sound cards as a peripheral anymore, especially since it's noisy inside the PC case.
Still rocking with my X-Fi Titanium!!
This card tho, looks pretty badass, too bad is not being sold in my country at the time of this writing this comment :
Great card, dynamic, clear and powerful sound, unfortunately with the new software Sound Blaster Command the equalizer has been limited to only 12dB on both the AE-5, AE-7 and AE-9,
early versions of the AE-5 software allowed EQs up to 24dB.
Because of this my Sound Blaster Z whose software allows equalizing up to 24dB still sounds better than my AE-7 on my new Sennhaiser 560s,
Sad .... Please Creative give us back the 24dB EQ, let full power flow.
How does this compare to the Soundblaster Z?
I do nt kno
I have two of the "Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional"s (what a mouthful!!). I absolutely love them and have never seen a need to upgrade. Eventually they may die, or the PCI-E interface may be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable, but for now I'm happy with what I have.
My Creative Soundcards so far: (oldest to newest)
1) Sound Blaster 32 PnP
2) Audigy 2 ZS
3) X-Fi Titanium
4 ) X-Fi Titanium HD
I don’t know, if my next will still be a creative. I kinda like the STX II by ASUS.
Mine is like yours, X-Fi Titanium HD. But I'd like something new. What do you think?
awesome vid dude,was thinking of getting the AE-5 so this was a huge help.
I really like mine!
My first Creative was Sound Blaster X Gamer from 1999...was my first Internet ítem that I bought
My first gaming computer had the SB Audigy 2 and I loved it. Then sound started switching to mobo and I've been kinda meh. Now that there's a new SB card coming out with everything I want, to quote Wayne from Wayne's world...
It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine...
X-Fi Titanium FATAL1TY
the best surround sound in games in my opinion, thanks to cmss-3d
True
I Can obtain Titanium HD. I suposse it Has Golden connectors and better noise ratio then new fancy series
I love that first ISA card!You've totally walked me through the past of all of my old sound cards! I used to buy those (up to the Sound Blaster Live!) to make my computer play games better.
*Had to correct they typo that said video cards instead of sound cards.
Anyone else find it odd that you can get a quality motherboard for less than the price of a sound card? My new build came with an ASUS PRIME Z370-P. Which is a really good board except for the sub par sound chipset. So since that's my only complaint I've decided to slap a sound card onto it that costs more than the motherboard it self does. Which seems kind of odd.
Re speaker type, the speaker system usually won't handle this, or it will handle it poorly. If you're plugging speakers and your sub direct into the 5.1 analog ports you definitely want to set this correctly as it will not just send lows to the sub, but also _not_ send them to the speakers.
Might just get the SoundBlasterX AE-5 for my new PC.
Tempting isn't it?
yep
yeah I know that's the only reason I said "might"
+151 Guiding Light
What do you mean by "PCIe power pins"? If you're talking about the four pin molex connector, then no, that is optional IF you want to use the RGB-LED lighting. Phil mentioned this rather clearly. If you're just using the card to do it's job as a sound card, the power connector is not required. Or did you mean something else?
Bought it few weeks ago. Best thing I've done in a while. It does everything I need. ASIO only work exclusive tho compared to my previous Audigy 2 ZS.
I still have the sound blaster live 5.1 card,just recently took it out of my desktop because the pc tanked.Long story short that sound card has been thru hell and back,tossed and forgotten in a bin of parts,moved several times.Damn thing still works great and sounds lovely.
The best sound card is the Titanium HD. Full hardware EAX 5.0 and much much more. The AE-5 should have a model with a hardware DSP to process sound, sorta like Recon3D and X-Fi
No XP drivers for that card, so that's a real shame.
True, but Alchemy works fine enough, and there's always the original Titanium and custom drivers.
I recommend most people DISABLE any feature like Crystallizer that modifies the audio. I have an Auzentech X-Fi Forte from EIGHT YEARS AGO, as well as really good speakers from Audioengine. I can't tell the difference between the Forte, the DAC in the speakers or a recent Soundblaster that I borrowed just to test...
I can tell the difference between the onboard sound from my 5-year old motherboard (Realtek ALC892). I haven't tested any other Realtek chips though, but I wonder if good sound cards have much IMPROVEMENT left to be had over the previous best cards or external DAC's of high quality?
I'm looking at all these old cards he has and wondering how in the hell they are so damn clean! They all look new. Ultrasonic cleaner? Anyways great video. I am still using a Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme Gamer. I had the Audigy before that. My next build will have this AE-5! I would love to get my hands on X-Fi Titanium edition.
Switched from a Titanium HD + Soundblaster Z combo to this. The Sound-quality is absolutely incredible and the improved surround software also sounds alot better than SBZ (surround doesn't steal as much bass and fidelity as it does on the SBZ and also sound clearer).
Finally! I've just waited for this proper review of this Modern day of Sound Card.
Thanks! Phil!
i still have my old Audigy 2ZS with the front panel controller. It still sounds amazing today paired with good speakers!
I remember that those sound cards more or less came with the Fujitsu Siemens Scaleo X high end PCs along with the front panel controllers with the remote.
I have 2 of these Scaleo X and both of them came with the Sound blasters.
Creative are such a cool company and they make a stunning difference in many games that support highly detailed audio experience. I could not imagine playing without, it makes awesome games better, just pair such a card with some of creatives speakers or similar high quality brands. Computer speakers er not that expensive, but still i see many people only having the cheap ones or simply their monitor sound and maybe a headset. Headsets can be good, but with 20+ experience i recommend you all to prioritize sound as highly as you prioritize your graphics! It is like watching a great movie and have no soundtrack, well you don´t know what you are missing, if you never tried it... It makes all the difference.
Take it from a professional music composer ;)
I remembered I've used an old sound blaster card in a 2001 pentium 4 Gateway PC running Windows XP and it was a Sound Blaster Audigy 2.0 24-bit and I remember how great Diablo II sounded with that card
Sorry, but for me a Soundblaster is only a Soundblaster with an OPL3 or 100% compatible.
Bastet Furry A nice sounding wavetable is also acceptable
But they still have an OPL on board somewhere. ;)
One of my x370 mainboards has this built in, renamed to creative mb5, even has the same sabre DAC in fact it has an alc1220 as well! Aorus x370 gaming5. best soundcard ive ever heard by a mile is the auzentech X-Plosion, its based on a high end c-media chip and even has user changeable op-amps, not to be confused with the crappy c media chips found in cheap motherboards, its a beast
Phil, the Audigy and Audigy 2 don't do 24/96 natively-- the internet is full of proof to show this. the X-Fi was the first Creative card set to do *true* 24/96 and is still a great performer to this day.
however, just a note for the future, if you're going to be doing videos later including anything with an nForce chipset, I heavily suggest those get the Audigy when it comes time for testing. as someone that lived off a machine with dual Opterons and an overglorified nForce 430 chipset (and all the fun USB issues you get with more than 5 devices plugged in at one time), it is by far the best solution that doesn't get glitching or any of that fun stuff, and sadly only with the updated daniel_k driver set.
Audigy 2 ZS over digital output does AFAIK.
The Audigy 2 was the last piece of crap I bought from that fucking retarded company. It had a horrible crackling sound problem and none of the suggested fixes worked. What a bunch of fucking imbeciles.
Hey Phil, could you record a video where you compare hardware-accelerated EAX from an X-Fi card with software-emulated EAX on the AE-5 on a few legacy games? A comparison of positional 3D audio would be cool too. I'm very curious how the software emulation is holding up these days.
I'm tempted to go for one, I've recently changed my motherboard and now get a lot of static. Tried quite a few things to rectify it, but nothing really seem to help.
Drivers are a Creative weak point, but their cards are very good. For many years as far as until today I am using cards of their production. Great material. Thanks Phil
You should look at DanielK's driver sets. He does a lot of tweaking and refining that you might find appealing. Although, to be fair to Creative, their driver efforts in the past few years have been very good.
I was try kx drivers and another unofficial and they were better than drivers from creative. Now i am using Sound Blaster Z. This card i very good.
Charon Underground this is true, my sound blaster X-Fi Titanium the drivers for Windows 7,8,10 are all buggy and for Windows 10 the card doesn't work right. The newest OS I can use is Vista without problems as for 7 once in a while the driver dies and I have to restart the computer to fix it.
@SilverX95 If the x-fi drivers bug out in windows (starts distorting sound) you can fix it by just changing the output mode, e.g flipping it from surround to stereo and back or vice versa. You can also just toggle the sampling rate back and forth. Instant fix without having to reboot.
@ Zeratuhl
thanks for the tip, I'll give that a try when i can.
You skipped the Xfi Titanium HD :( It's what i use, sure, it is an Xfi based card but it was one of creative's legitimate attempts to create an audiophile based card. It uses RCA outputs/inputs, has only 2 3.5mm jacks for mic and line in, and cannot do surround sound except through using digital output to an external receiver. It's a complete anomaly of a card compared to all others creative ever produced.
The 4-pin molex connector is only required if you use the RGB strip that comes with the sound card. The internal RGB lights will work without it.
Hmm I'm sure I tested this. But it's been a while and I can't remember 100%.
Still have all my soundblaster cards
Hey PhilsComputerLab :)
Honestly, the only reason I would use a sound card would be
a.) backwards compatiability for games in the 2000s as that supported EAX for surround sound and ALchemy.
b.) So that I can have Windows DirectSound be translated to a Dolby Signal that can allow for digital surround sound in games ( most notably Valve games like the Orange Box ).
I have a spare stereo receiver laying around these days, so surround sound gaming is something that comes to my mind often.
32 bit 384KHz don't mean shit. Decent headphone amp power, and low output impedance means something. Finally!
Love the siaund blastah ah ee foive ! great video mate! cheers!
MOLEX?!? Really. What year is it?
The best Sound Blaster card was the Sound Blaster 16 paired with a Wave Blaster daughter card. It sounded fantastic with games especially ones with midi support. And it had a good midi authoring tool by Cakewalk. Using both the 4 operator FM chip and the wave blaster one could create some interesting sound mixes. The wave table based Waveblaster was one of the best sounding internal midi devices made.
Nowadays it doesn't really make much sense to have a sound card. Onboard audio for games has improved a lot in the last 15 years. Those who work with professional audio applications are better served using external digital audio devices connected via HDMI or optical which almost all PC's have now.
Fun fact, you don't need alchemy to run doom 3 or quake 4 with EAX on modern windows, because they alredy use OpenAL by default, so these are not affected by the change in audio architecture.
Are you sure you get the reverb in Room 3 right at the beginning?
@@philscomputerlab Yes, plus there is the fact it lets you select EAX on windows 10 if you have a EAX capable card installed with the proper drivers and all.
Very informative review! Thanks!
pretty cool card, and grats on creative reaching out to you with the free SB! :)
I almost fell off my c hair when I read that e-mail! I've asked if I could test that new Audigy card for Windows XP / EAX gaming. It could be the ultimate Windows XP card?
Dam Phil! You got every Sound blaster card
I love sound cards... I find them interesting...
Weirdly enough one of my favorite parts of this video is the fact that the board you are testing with has an IDE port. Ahhh nostalgia!
Great review as always Phil. Keep up the great work! :)
Awersome review of great sound cards ! I never had a sound blaster, I was used to Hercules cards, they were sound blaster compatible :)
You reminded me of the memories of a Diamond monster brand graphic card.😄
I still run an E-mu 0404 pci sound card from creative. The quality and the settings are so good I just can't replace it with consumer cards.
Great video, I too kept most of my soundcards from over the years (seem to have almost 30 cards........). For me I think the best sound blaster was when they got to the SBLive, I guess that's when they sounded good enough you didn't really need to spend $1000+ on an RME/Echo Audio/M-audio card if all you were doing was making music with plugins.
Eax compatibility can be worked out to the degree on any other sound card with unofficial fix and alchemy
I still have a X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional that I use with my main Windows 10 gaming PC. Have found no reason to upgrade. Newer Creative sound card feel like a downgrade to me.
Great Video... just what i was looking for! I really love this Soundcard- but there is one thing that bothers me alot:
It does not support Dolby Digital Live / DTS-Connect! That is the only thing i miss...
True. I use a 5.1 Logitech speaker with two optical input, I reckon it sounds nicer through the analogue ports, than the TOSLINK.
Aww, no mention of the ISA-interfaced AWE32 that was more of a notable arrival than the AWE64 looking at what the previous paradigm was. I remember it well as I was in the GUS camp and we were at a bit of an online war. :-)
Yea I didn't have one at the time, but I do now, so there will be a video soon :D
I gave up on Creative a long time ago, when it became obvious that they were more about marketing than tech, and when CPUs got fast enough to do high-quality audio processing in software. The last card I bought was an Asus Xonar DX, because I wanted to try 5.1 over TOSLINK to my Logitech Z-5500d, but I was already happy enough with on-board audio.
My current gaming rig is a laptop that has a Creative Sound Blaster Recon3Di sound chipset, and it's not anything special. It's just a bunch of silly effects (which may even be implemented in software in the driver for all I know), most of which are meant to make up for the horrendously cheap speakers that Dell put in the laptop.
My personal opinion is that effects are only useful for fun or to make up for suboptimal speakers, and that on-board audio has been quite sufficient since at least the time that Windows Vista was released - especially if you're not using a surround speaker setup.
If you're using crap speakers then yeah. But if you're using a good pair of cans dedicated soundcards DAC's are wayy better than what integrated audio can output. my sennheiser phones had a lot of static interference when playing games until I got a soundblaster z on the cheap a few years back. 4 years later the card still works great aside from the lens cover on the card fell off due to the adhesive gone dry but that can be reapplied with some hot glue.
@@oOignignoktOo1 I don't think that's been all that true for at least the last decade. Fortunately I have crap hearing, so I don't have to spend a lot of money to get acceptable sound in any case lol.
Imho the 'best' (or at least my favourite) soundcard Creative ever launched was the AWE32 and its successor the AWE64. I remember back in the DOS-days I was stoked to run across a MOD-player that directly supported loading the samples into the memory of the AWE32 and treat it as a form of soundfont. I think there even was a MOD-player for windows later on that supported the same but I'm not sure on that one.
The price is too prohibitive in my opinion. You can get ok sound from the integrated sound card most of the time, if not I am sure you can find an external DAC that is cheaper than this. To each his own I guess, but I would not pay more than 50 dollars for a sound card when my integrated sound card sounds ok.
Has creative stopped the practice of using lower quality DACs for the main/front jack?
also:
* Unfair competition and killing Aureal (and every other competitor they can)
* recently they bought the company that made nvidia soundstorm audio processor, again killing the promising competition.
* Many bugs and bad sound quality on the soundblaster PRO/16 (expensive cards in their moment). Also in many other serious issues in other soundcards.
* Not admitting incompatabilities with some chipsets issues with more modern cards, (live, x-fi, maybe more...)
* Not releasing drivers for later windows releases, in order to render useless perfectly capable (and not so old) cards.
This is demonstrated with free drivers like KX driver (and that is when they don't legally pursue driver tweakers/developers, as they did many times).
No more creative for me, thank you!!!
I just checked the ratings for their sound cards on Newegg or Amazon and read the critical reviews... you're absolutely right. Creative Labs sucks!
@@ServantofJC well thats a shame their xifi mb3 software was top notch
That software looks really slick. The last sound card I purchased was an Asus but the software is really disappointing.
a Soundchip from ESS? No way! :D
I'm still using the Z and it has been fantastic so far. This new AE-5 is nearly twice the price, which I don't quite understand.
Hm, super high end DAC stuck right next to a PWM LED controller? May as well just use the onboard sound.
I loved Sound Blasters back in the day, but time has not been kind to vendors clinging to add-in boards for functionality built into every PC motherboard.
If you really need HQ audio (and in most cases you just don't), you can get an actual no-BS DAC with USB or TB interface for the same price. It doesn't glow funny colors.
What next? A 3C-905XZ network card?
In your opinion, is the AE-5 worth the extra money over the SB Z?
I snagged an SB Recon 3D on a great sale when the next gen came out since my onboard audio was a bit noisy (mostly only noticeable without sound playing).
Having the equalizer available was a bit helpful due to some of my headsets (notably the Corsair HS-2) were a bit flat sounding by default, but the drivers were capable of delivering what I wanted if pushed.
Otherwise though, I mainly use it for it's optical input. I have a TV as one of my monitors and have multiple game consoles hooked up to it as well. It's convenient to not have to switch headphones between console and PC use, and also works great if I'm watching content on my PC while console gaming and being able to hear and control both sources.
Any of the other bells and whistles really don't matter to me.
How about making a dedicated review on X-Fi series (pci-e titanium especially)? We'd like to see the comparison between native EAX versions and backwards compatible perfomance, comparing audigy and X-Fi performance. And addressing some of issues like drivers functionality (fixed recently with titaniums), EAX performamce in several games (GTA: San Andreas has issues with using eax, like it doesn't use it, or GoldSrc games that worsen SFX sample rate when using dsound.dll). That would be cool!
Sounds like YOU should make such a video...
I wish they could have figured out how to power the rgb's through the pcie slot like Ram was able to pull it off through the dram slot.
I still have my Sound Blaster Live 5.1 in a box somewhere.