Creative labs launches quartet of Sound Blaster X peripherals

[HEXUS]

There's a trio of new headsets and a 7.1 HD audio external USB sound card.

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[neonplanet40]

Probably the worst product support of any company I have ever known. ESPECIALLY with their sound cards. I would never buy a product from them again/

[AlexKitch]

Never really understood the point of dedicated sound cards. Onboard audio hardware, with a decent pair of headphones or speakers, is *so* good these days that I'm surprised there's even much of a market any more.

[Bane2087]

Never really understood the point of dedicated sound cards. Onboard audio hardware, with a decent pair of headphones or speakers, is *so* good these days that I'm surprised there's even much of a market any more.

Onboard audio is in fact usually terrible unless you are using the digital outs with an external DAC of some kind. It's terrible because they use cheap ass DACS on the analogue outputs and they have horrible SnR and distortion. Not to mention all the interference from the other components inside the PC.

You don't need to be an audiophile to tell the difference either and if you have half decent cans or speakers you are doing them a disservice with some Realtek chipset source.

[jag272]

Never really understood the point of dedicated sound cards. Onboard audio hardware, with a decent pair of headphones or speakers, is *so* good these days that I'm surprised there's even much of a market any more.

i pretty much thought the same until getting my Soundblaster Z from Jonj, have been very happy with it. I certainly don't use all the features of it but the sound is definitely better and while I don't use it all the time, the Crystalizer is pretty nice too on some songs. Ofcourse to an extent, you can probably get custom audio drivers to implement all these features without the soundcard, I just never really cared enough to check.

I'm still not sure I would have bought it full price as frankly soundcards are quite expensive, but I've certainly noticed the difference. All that said, as you can see from my system on my profile, I cheaped out on the board a bit. The audio chip is still a relatively high end realtek chip, but isn't as good as the even slightly more expensive boards.

That said I'm probably not using the card to it's full potential, I like to think my hearing is good, I certainly play cod4 by sound for example and have very good reactions to sound, but what I found when that 192vs320vsflac test got posted up in general discussion was that I'm not too great at identifying. I could tell 192 apart from 320 and FLAC easily, but 320 vs FLAC i'm pretty sure I just fluked.

[gwp]

Mark, can Hexus group test the G5 against USB amplifier dacs like Dragonfly and Meridian, and against the Asus Xonar Essence STX II soundcard?

[kalniel]

Never really understood the point of dedicated sound cards. Onboard audio hardware, with a decent pair of headphones or speakers, is *so* good these days that I'm surprised there's even much of a market any more.

I haven't tested the most recent motherboards, but back when I last tested it (see hexus review of the xonar xense card+headphones gaming set) onboard sound was noticeably inferior to a dedicated sound card. Upgrading motherboard (and CPU/ram and OS license) is an awful lot of expense and bother compared to just buying a cheap dedicated card.

I'd gladly test a recent motherboard, but would be very skeptical that it could match a decent sound card and headphones for analogue music reproduction.

[KeyboardDemon]

Mark, can Hexus group test the G5 against USB amplifier dacs like Dragonfly and Meridian, and against the Asus Xonar Essence STX II soundcard?

I'd like to see that, I'd particularly be interested in finding out how bad the bloatware is now. I've used Creative products a couple of times and have been put off using soundcards as a result of the amount of marketing junk that got forced on to the PC when I used them.

[AlexKitch]

Onboard audio is in fact usually terrible unless you are using the digital outs with an external DAC of some kind. It's terrible because they use cheap ass DACS on the analogue outputs and they have horrible SnR and distortion. Not to mention all the interference from the other components inside the PC.

You don't need to be an audiophile to tell the difference either and if you have half decent cans or speakers you are doing them a disservice with some Realtek chipset source.

Well, all of that is true, but maybe I should be more specific - I don't understand the point of *high-end* dedicated sound cards. I'm no 'audiophile', but probably somewhere halfway along the scale. I've spent decent money on sound cards in the past and I'm still just not convinced that the quality of audio scales linearly with the price tag, beyond about £30.

At the moment I'm using the bog-standard Realtek hardware on my motherboard. Albeit digital out, into a high quality amplifier. Sounds fantastic

[Bane2087]

The problem is while dedicated soundcards are clearly better than most onboard affairs as far as I know there are no good soundcard makers. ASUS use reasonably decent components in their Xonar stuff but drivers are barely competent at best, Creative Labs stuff took a step backwards in quality after X-fi and only their most expensive Z cards are actually any good in terms of sound quality. Their driver support has always been awful too.

Almost all of them have little to no official Linux support, and driver updates for even supported OS tend to come at a snails pace. I'm currently wrestling with audio issues here and there with my Xonar Xense card in Windows 10 and that's with third party drivers because ASUS ones are even worse.

[shaithis]

I haven't tested the most recent motherboards, but back when I last tested it (see hexus review of the xonar xense card+headphones gaming set) onboard sound was noticeably inferior to a dedicated sound card. Upgrading motherboard (and CPU/ram and OS license) is an awful lot of expense and bother compared to just buying a cheap dedicated card.

I'd gladly test a recent motherboard, but would be very skeptical that it could match a decent sound card and headphones for analogue music reproduction.

Maybe if your nit-picking or using a £500 pair of headphones.

Most people are using <£50 headphones and are not going to notice much difference, if any, by spending more on a soundcard.

I even recently switched to a USB headset and can still say the SQ difference is hardly noticeable over on-board of Xi-Fi driven sound.

Those that want clarity would probably be better off using on-board + external DAC anyway.

[kalniel]

I used a pair of £30 headphones and a pair of ~£200. The difference was very noticeable on both.

[shaithis]

My review used a pair of £30 headphones and a pair of ~£200. The difference was very noticeable on both.

Was it an A-B blind test?

[kalniel]

Was it an A-B blind test?

Single blind on the card front, but not the headphones, since they feel incredibly different on the noggin.

As I say, that was a) analogue, b) several years ago, maybe things have significantly improved, but the computers tested are still in use so my point about upgrading card vs buying a new motherboard should stand

[MrFawlty]

The new stuff looks good, but I wish they would spend more time developing more stable drivers for the products available now. Windows 10 drivers are still not available for most of their stuff - surely they had a team working to get it ready for launch?

[shaithis]

The new stuff looks good, but I wish they would spend more time developing more stable drivers for the products available now. Windows 10 drivers are still not available for most of their stuff - surely they had a team working to get it ready for launch?

They have always been late to the party in my experiences.....and in a number of cases just stop support for a slew of products when a new OS releases.