Creative Labs shows high-end Sound BlasterX AE-9

#5714510 Posted on: 09/25/2019 10:47 PM

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15+ Years of Creative Soundcards here and never had any issues.

My current Sound Blaster ZxR is working flawless as well.

#5714877 Posted on: 09/27/2019 04:23 AM

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I have an X-fi Titanium HD Pro PCI-E version, in my i7 4790k machine, really high-end model with replaceable op-amps, it's was made in 2011 or so. Love it. Have a Audigy RX 7.1 in here as was on a budget, it sounds pretty good, much better than Realtek could ever hope for. I can and do produce audio but I can entirely hear the difference. Even decent car audio doesn't come remotely close to a good sound card + Thimeo Stereo Tool + Winamp (yes, that old thing!).
Never an issue, only just have to make sure you get the right drivers for the X-fi as some are just cheapie cards that are junk, others mid-range ones are nice, top-end is really a real deal. I remember upgrading from an X-fi Fatality pci-e to a Titanium HD Pro, I could clearly hear the difference. You just can't download one driver pack and run them all though, there's a bunch of different ones hence people think their soundcard is broken when they get the wrong drivers for it. Have to pull the model number or hardware ID to find out and be sure.
Have been using since I had the Sound Blaster 16 media kit for my AMD 486, which came with a non-pnp SB16 and a 2x Matashita (?) CD-ROM that said 'Reveal' on it, and the sound card is where you plugged in the IDE-like cable and audio cord for it. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have gotten into Doom as I got a shareware edition on CD-ROM as a sampler.
Doom, Heretic, Descent, Warcraft... I loved all of those, they were all shareware but you couldn't pry me off that thing back in 1994~1995.
So maybe I am partial, but rightfully so. They've been good to me, and I still use their sound cards in my audio work. Maybe there is better, surely, but this is good enough and works for me.
Motherboard audio? Never, no thank-you, even if there is no mouse-movement interference etc like on some cheap board, it still just sounds flat and lifeless and the recording line-in's are always so easy to peak / clip due to the high noise floor VS a good sound card. I don't care if the motherboard has the highest-end Realtek chip out there, or the latest Snark Barker. It will not be a Sound Blaster.

#5714886 Posted on: 09/27/2019 05:42 AM

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Can't wait to see your face when not being able to tell the difference between modern motherboard audio and Sound Blaster on blind test

#5714888 Posted on: 09/27/2019 05:48 AM

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Majority seems to miss the point that if you want better sound, you need better speakers / headphones. This is what 100% improves the sound.

Better DAC/AMP will only slightly refine it. The difference might not even be noticeable.
Spending more money on DAC/AMP than speakers or headphones is the worst investments out there.

Obviously, if sound card features (sound recording, mixing, etc...) are the first priority, it is totally different topic.

#5715076 Posted on: 09/27/2019 04:30 PM

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I wish that was the case.
I do audio production, and yes I have a good amp and boxed 6x9 car speakers here. If that was the case, I wouldn't have to spend an additional 60~250$ on a fancy sound card (granted, the Audigy Rx is maybe 'meh' compared to a 200$ option, but it'll do until I get around to getting a better one, I'm on a fixed income). I can't tell much difference in games, that could be routed through the monitor for all I care, but making music and listening to the music of others must go through a good sound card. I hear a lot of more subtle notes that are completely / mostly masked/missed by cheaper and integrated audio solutions. It's been that way for a while. There is also the fact that my instrument software for some of my audio software runs on the legacy E-MU chip on X-fi and Audigy Creative cards, as that's where I started developing it back in 1/2006.

#5717385 Posted on: 10/05/2019 07:27 PM

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Onboard HD Audio codecs are good but rarely very good or excellent - the emphasis is on low implementation costs, not high sound quality.



Blind tests are for subjective quality testing, which evaluates lossless compression or some audiovisual 'enhancement' that cannot be represented by one single parameter.

For frequency response, THD, and noise, I trust instrumented audio tests performed with RightMark Audio Analyzer or similar suite, thank you.



Audiophile grade headphones have to be connected to an audiophile grade headphone amplifier, which is rare in computer sound cards. That's the reason why BlasterX AE series get a lot of attention.

Good desktop speakers (such as compact studio reference monitors) are probably fine with any decent external sound card that uses a good quality DAC.

#5717439 Posted on: 10/06/2019 12:13 AM

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Just sold my Sound Blaster AE-9 on ebay along with my Logitech Z906 speakers. I'm now getting audio directly from the HDMI socket on my graphics card and i'm using a Denon AVR-X1600 receiver with 5.1.2 Klipsch speakers. What a difference. The quality of the new setup is breath-taking. Movies/Games/Music all sound way better.

#5717450 Posted on: 10/06/2019 01:59 AM

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Onboard HD Audio codecs are good but rarely very good or excellent - the emphasis is on low implementation costs, not high sound quality.



Blind tests are for subjective quality testing, which evaluates lossless compression or some audiovisual 'enhancement' that cannot be represented by one single parameter.

For frequency response, THD, and noise, I trust instrumented audio tests performed with RightMark Audio Analyzer or similar suite, thank you.



Audiophile grade headphones have to be connected to an audiophile grade headphone amplifier, which is rare in computer sound cards. That's the reason why BlasterX AE series get a lot of attention.

Good desktop speakers (such as compact studio reference monitors) are probably fine with any decent external sound card that uses a good quality DAC.
You can buy dedicated dac/amp like Topping a30/d30 for cheaper price that will outperform internal soundcard any day.

also most soundcards got headphones amp on them.

#5717522 Posted on: 10/06/2019 12:55 PM

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Top-end headphones are all you need for great surrond sound - in the end, you only have two ears, not seven or twenty one.
The Sennheiser HD650/660S would be a good match for the BlasterX AE-9, and Sennheiser HD800 would be absolutely the best you can get - unless you move into active studio monitors territory.

Topping A30/D30 combo is priced similarly to BlasterX AE-5 and AE-7, though it's much cheaper than AE-9.

But the main selling point of the BlasterX AE-series is the discrete audiophile-grade Xamp headphone preamplifier, which easily outdoes most hi-end equipment on the market. This kind of solves the chicken-egg problem - once you have hi-end headphones and uncompressed/ lossless music library, you're only restricted by the quality of the source material.

#5717533 Posted on: 10/06/2019 01:59 PM

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Creative sound cards with expensive av receivers, analog multichannel inputs and expensive cables still, is superior than any digital connections. I could never drop my ae-5.

#5717693 Posted on: 10/07/2019 08:35 AM

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No it doesn't https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-sound-blasterx-ae-5.9114/
Not even for the same price.

However, the role of soundcard is working with the sound and features. I don't think it's fare to compare it against dedicated dac/amp.
It offers more than simple dac/amp unit.

It just doesn't make much sense to buy AE5 and only use it for pure stereo output (headphones). It wastes its all other potentials.

#5717948 Posted on: 10/07/2019 11:46 PM

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It looks like Creative has released a limited edition for some markets,
Sound BlasterX AE-9 PE
SKU# 70SB178000001

The difference is the absence of both mic inputs, the 48V phantom powered XLR and the 3.5 mm jack, on the breakout box (hence PE == Playback Edition).
It should retail for about $250 AFAIK.

#5717949 Posted on: 10/07/2019 11:47 PM

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No it doesn't
Not even for the same price.

All I see is that the Blaster AE-5 performs very well in the tests. Topping DX3 Pro is surely a nice device, and the latest top-level AK4497 DAC chip from Asahi Kasei Microdevices looks great - but DX3 Pro is still more expensive than BlasterX AE-5 and about the same as BlasterX AE-7, just like the Topping A30/D30 combo.
BlasterX AE-9 shall perform somewhat better than BlasterX AE-5 and AE-7, since it has a higher-quality ES9038PRO DAC and low-noise power circuits. The replaceable preamps in sockets is just a gimmick that no-one shall ever seriously consider though.

Either way, I can only greatly appreciate the fact that today's consumer audio cards come with audiophile-class quality without carrying the price tag typical for the hi-end audio market. Every consumer card Creative Labs introduced before BlasterX AE-5 / BlasterX G6 just doesn't perform even half as good.

It just doesn't make much sense to buy AE5 and only use it for pure stereo output (headphones). It wastes its all other potentials.
Nah. All this 'SBX Pro Studio' suite is not doing anything useful. Surround is a software plugin which somehow converts stereo to surround, but this cannot substitute for pre-mixed surround tracks and object-based sound rendering (in games). It can also apply headphone HRTF to surround sound - which is useless if your gamed or movie player software support native HRTF processing. The Crystalizer compander plugin looked promising back in 2005, but in practice it cannot magically undo the irreversible damage inflicted throughout the course of the Loudness War, it really does nothing to make 128KB MP3s sound the same as uncompressed WAVs ... and so on and so forth. The included software is basically only good for enabling the Direct Mode in the control panel, then it can be forgotten.

And if you must use 5.1 AV receiver setup, there's little sense in using a sound card when you can just connect it with a HDMI cable, as most of these receivers use the same ESS Sabre DACs anyway.

#5739785 Posted on: 12/10/2019 10:34 PM

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Hi all.

I would like to complete ultimate audio chain for gaming... Currently I have Sennheiser HD 6xx that are plugged into onboard sound card.

Would this improve my gaming experience in any way?

Would this be a better choice than say Sennheiser GSX 1200 Pro ?

How is it compared to Asus or Evga solutions?

Thanks

#5739825 Posted on: 12/10/2019 11:26 PM

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Hi all.

I would like to complete ultimate audio chain for gaming... Currently I have Sennheiser HD 6xx that are plugged into onboard sound card.

Would this improve my gaming experience in any way?

Would this be a better choice than say Sennheiser GSX 1200 Pro ?

How is it compared to Asus or Evga solutions?

Thanks

If you get no helpful response here, try asking in the following subforum : https://forums.guru3d.com/forums/soundcards-speakers-hifi-file-formats.23/