Creative unveils Sound BlasterX AE-5 audio card at E3

Shawn Knight

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Add-in sound cards are a dying breed, especially in this day and age of advanced motherboards loaded with bells and whistles. Onboard audio isn’t a new thing, mind you, but manufacturers have greatly improved the quality of integrated audio to the point where many no longer fool with a third-party solution.

That said, there are still a handful of companies that cater to audiophiles. Perhaps the most well-known is Creative Technology Limited who at E2 2017 added a new member to its Sound BlasterX Pro-Gaming Series of PCIe audio cards.

At the heart of the Sound BlasterX AE-5 is a quad-core Sound Core3D audio DSP and a 122dB ESS Sabre-Class DAC, the latter of which offers 32-bit/384kHz lossless playback and “true audio fidelity” for high-definition audio in music, movies and games. The card also features what Creative calls the world’s best gaming headphone amplifier for PCs, a custom-designed discrete headphone amp with a SNR of 116dB.

Those concerned with visuals should note that the Sound BlasterX AE-5 is the first sound card to feature a built-in RGB controller powered by the Aurora Reactive Lighting System. RGB lighting has infiltrated virtually every other PC accessory and hardware type so it’s not all that surprising to now see them on sound cards.

The Sound BlasterX AE-5 goes on sale next month priced at $149.99. There’s also a Pure Edition in the works with four LED strips that’ll command $179.99 come August.

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Looks great but I'm suss on their claims. Would love to see an actual review comparison with Xonar. E.g. I have a Xonar Essense STX SNR 124dB and THD < 0.001% which is basically the same as the Creative and it is years old.

Looks like the modern comparison is the Strix series.
 
Looks good, but why can they not color code the connections? This has been a pet peeve of mine with Creative from the beginning! All 5 connections have very hard to see little imaging of what goes where, but when you're reaching behind your PC case, you can not see them.

Have to get the manual or print a picture, so you can see what order your 5.1 speakers connect, or where you headphones plug into ect...

Creative needs to take the next step in "User Friendly"
 
Up til about 5 years ago, add in sound cards weren't always a total waste of money and 10 years ago they were practically a must but these days they make very little sense. They're very, very niche and if Creative thinks they can still make a profit from them, good luck to them. Asus nearly broke the land speed record getting out of that business a while back.
 
Looks good, but why can they not color code the connections? This has been a pet peeve of mine with Creative from the beginning! All 5 connections have very hard to see little imaging of what goes where, but when you're reaching behind your PC case, you can not see them.

Have to get the manual or print a picture, so you can see what order your 5.1 speakers connect, or where you headphones plug into ect...

Creative needs to take the next step in "User Friendly"
When I bought the Audigy 2 ZS back in the day, they included a sticker you could put on the I/O plate so that was better than nothing... The PCMCIA version of the Audigy 2 ZS had a breakout cable which was color coded...

But yeah, creative and several other boutique sound cards like their "gold plated" ports, and you're lucky if they stamp out what each are on the plate.
 
Up til about 5 years ago, add in sound cards weren't always a total waste of money and 10 years ago they were practically a must but these days they make very little sense. They're very, very niche and if Creative thinks they can still make a profit from them, good luck to them. Asus nearly broke the land speed record getting out of that business a while back.

Asus never made good sound cards anyway. Xonar, and occasionally Creative, still put out good cards. The low end market for add-in sound has evaporated, but the high end is still alive and well
 
Still using an X-Fi Titanium because no new sound card has ever had as good volume normalization as Creative's old X-Fi cards.

New drivers of new hardware may be worlds better, but jesus christ the control panel and software features are significantly worse to the point I returned the (Soundblaster Z) card.

I even have an Essence STX, a $200 card, sitting in my closet unused, because ASUS software had no volume normalization and made listening to numerous things (ie; video content and music) a terrible experience.

I can only wonder what will happen when I'm finally forced to upgrade to an OS beyond 7..
 
Considering most headphones now come with USB connectors, I don't see this being useful.
Not high end... not by a long shot. You are going to get pretty poor quality audio components in any USB headphones compared to a decent headphone amplifier.

Asus never made good sound cards anyway. Xonar, and occasionally Creative, still put out good cards. The low end market for add-in sound has evaporated, but the high end is still alive and well
Isn't Asus = Xonar = Strix Audio?
 
Not high end... not by a long shot. You are going to get pretty poor quality audio components in any USB headphones compared to a decent headphone amplifier.

I wouldn't disagree, but this isn't aimed at high end. If it were, it would have XLR, stereo or RCA inputs and it wouldn't likely bother with the lighting. The kind of headphones you're talking about would likely go into a preamp or DAC.
 
Considering most headphones now come with USB connectors, I don't see this being useful.
Not high end... not by a long shot. You are going to get pretty poor quality audio components in any USB headphones compared to a decent headphone amplifier.

Asus never made good sound cards anyway. Xonar, and occasionally Creative, still put out good cards. The low end market for add-in sound has evaporated, but the high end is still alive and well
Isn't Asus = Xonar = Strix Audio?
Yes, yes and yes.
 
Motherboard solutions have come a long way, but there are still bad solutions out there. One nice thing about owning a separate audio solution is that you don't need to worry about it when buying a new motherboard - you can focus on other things such as connectivity, overclocking capability, etc. In that scenario, a $50 soundcard isn't an awful investment.

If you're after a really good quality solution to play your high bit rate flacs and so on, you might favour an external DAC, which unlike onboard/internal solutions, is not susceptible to electrical interference from the motherboard itself. Better still, a good external DAC with a separate AMP allows you to use really good quality headphones and/or passive speakers on your desktop. Sure, you're limited to stereo, but it's potentially very good quality stereo. They're starting to show up with built in blue tooth now, which gives them added utility around the house.

A soundcard is only really required if you're after headphone virtualization in games. For the gamer who just plays Overwatch and listens to a bit of Spotify, a good onboard audio solution with a half decent set of speakers or cans is plenty good enough.
 
I wouldn't disagree, but this isn't aimed at high end. If it were, it would have XLR, stereo or RCA inputs and it wouldn't likely bother with the lighting. The kind of headphones you're talking about would likely go into a preamp or DAC.
With even mid range $100-400 headphones, the headphone amp in these cards is a long way ahead of onboard sound. You don't strictly need to go high end headphones to get a noticeable benefit.

I don't have experience with a discrete headphone amp so can't comment on quality gains to those or what market they might be applicable to.
 
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