Creative Labs shows high-end Sound BlasterX AE-9

#5616280 Posted on: 12/11/2018 07:28 PM

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I feel like Creative Labs only exists because of their diehard fans from the 90s. Their customer support is bad, their prices are bad, they very obviously plan for obsolescence, and they're too "exclusive" in their approach to things. I'm actually a bit surprised they're still around, since they have plenty of competition for their other products too.

in a perfect world, the shortest (length) circuit is always the best.
with D/A and A/D conversion, it's still true but can be improved by removing the signal from a noisy environment (circuit boards are noisy by nature and the power regulation itself can introduce noise on the mobo).
there's a better case to be made for an add-on card than integrated sound. but even so the mobo has come from the point where the sound card was a necessity to a luxury.
but especially because there's a break-out box for this, this product is unnecessarily bulky and expensive, requiring at least a mATX case.
for less money you can honestly get better or as good quality by an outboard DAC/ headphone amp.
If we're talking digital signals, the length of the circuit doesn't really matter all that much. The best sound quality you can get is to have the DAC external in a shielded enclosure using a fiber optic cable, and I'm sure having its own discrete power source wouldn't hurt either.

#5616308 Posted on: 12/11/2018 08:20 PM

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My Xfi-Titanium is 10 years old and the last Driver update was in Q1.2017 so whats the prob man?
I recently replaced all caps on my Xfi-Ti because of aging failure.

The snap crackle pop problem maybe? Which they never ever addressed but instead blamed everyone and their dog for it. I remember at first they blamed the nforce chipset for it and i actually replaced my MB by a VIA one back then and the problem was still there. Personally Creative is on my do not buy ever again black list. **** happens but Creative should have acknowledged the snap crackle pop problem and instead of blaming everyone should have tried to find a solution and if no software solution was available then they should have replaced all the cards like MS did with the 360.

I still have my X-FI Platinum lying around. It's a nice looking and very expensive drop stop. I should try it with Daniel K drivers one day.

#5616346 Posted on: 12/11/2018 09:33 PM

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using an ASUS Xonar card on my HERO, with modded files from UNi Xonar

#5616369 Posted on: 12/11/2018 11:29 PM

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slyphnier
So in order to have a good sound i need to pop $300 each 5 years for mobo that can barely overclock my CPU to it's turbo clocks? :O

I see that you focus on the DAC that is good if you have a beans sized headphones , headphone AMP or speakers with AMP but if you just have a regular headphones then what ?
I can tell you what , you barely hear the really good high resolution DAC on the mobo , ok let's say I'll buy good speaker system wait it has a DAC inside with SPDIF copper or Optical connection - then why do I need the DAC on the mobo or the dedicated sound card ?

Since i changed around 7 mobos in the past 19 years i can tell you the only ones that cared enough to have proper output that i came across (not only DAC resolution) were Epox boards with NF2 chipsets , and even then some revisions had just a basic DAC without proper headphone AMP.

So right now i have right in front of me an ASUS Z97 DELUXE with all the bells & whistles and the mega powerfull CRYSTAL SOUND 2 that costed more than $350 4 years ago (took it second hand year and a half ago with some crappy i3 and 8 gigs RAM for my GF for just $150). Guess which one can pop my ear drums out through my headphones CRYSTAL SOUND 2 or Creative X-FI Titanium.It is not the ASUS.And despite the fact that the Realtek inside has the mighty SNR of 112dB compared the the very bad 109dB of the Creative I just can't hear the Realtek in first place

So all in all it is good to have a dedicated Sound Card the same way it is good to have a dedicated GPU so when you swap the mobo not look how good the audio is but how good the actual mobo is for it's money in the matter of power components , slots arrangment , PCB thicknes (oh yes I lost one GPU a decade agoe cause it bended and a friend lost his mobo for the same reason) , and then the trivial stuff how big is the BIOS panel with swtiches and how much output ports the mobo has.

#5616398 Posted on: 12/12/2018 02:16 AM

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Good soundcards are a dying breed, most motherboards these days offer an audio solution that is plenty enough for the 99% of end users. However, there are always audiophiles that would like that litt...

Creative Labs shows high-end Sound BlasterX AE-9
uses an ESS Sabre 32 digital-analog converter which we assume is the same as the ES9016 from the AE-5 . The DAC would have a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 129 dB.

Not possible with an ES9016, it has a DNR of 124dB, its S/N will be a fair bit less.
If 2 are used in tandem that would result in an absolute best case of 127dB.
It is using a better DAC chip than the 9016 no matter the use case.

I'm quite looking forward to what it will be and how good the end result.