Hello fellow Gurus, as the title suggests.Mostly for gaming, YouTube music.I'm leaning towards either the SB-Z or Strix Soar. But mostly something that'll do it exclusively, as in, take the work off of the CPU. Any other suggestions beside the two above is welcomed. Thank you for your time.
CPU load is nothing this days. It might been back in Pentium3 days. What is your sound setup? Speakers, headphones?
I currently own both the sound blaster Z and the Asus strix soar, they both are good sound cards for what your asking for. But the Strix soar have advances over the SBZ. One thing is the soar headphone amp is stronger then the one on the sbz, of course it wont drive those super hungry headphones, so don't expect an HE-500 to get it justice from it, as it wont. I seen some one actually tried to plug an HE-500 into the soar and the result wasn't pretty. My HD700 worked very very well on the soar's headphone amp. The SBZ does have an headphone amp ,but you can not set the impedance settings and its dynamic. While it will work with some headphone's but not that well for ones that need a lot of power that the SBZ hp amp can't provide. I found it sound signature on the SBZ to be transparent, which i found to not work so well with an couple of headphones. Of course my HD700 Didn't pair that well with the SBZ as the HD700 was very bright to the point my ears was getting tired. Other headphones may work just fine depending on the type of sound you want or the type of sound that they produce. While with the soar because of having an op-amp socket, you are able to customize the sound of the Front L & R channels. So say if you had an pair of headphones that are bright in the high's, you could use an op-amp to smooth that out. Now of course you could do that with EQ seettings, but i found to get better results with op-amp swapping but that just me. SBX surround on the SBZ does work very well as long you config it correctly, as SBZ works best when it's down-mixing 5.1 to headphones.If you do not do this then SBX surround won't sound or work that well. The Soar doesn't have this requirement but gives you 3 different options for it virtual headphone tech,Balanced, Front panned and rear panned, I only used the balanced setting when I'm gaming and i found it to do an pretty good job. So did SBX surround on the SBZ, but I liked how well the virtual surround tech that asus used. I not saying that one is better then the other,but I saying you might like one over the other or even equally. One issue with the Sound blaster Z is the control panel settings always reset to speakers from headphones when you reboot, i would have thought creative would have fixed this by now but they haven't. Some one had to make an 3rd party program to stop it from happening. This issue doesn't happen on the soar at all, as each output has it own settings. Honestly the only reason to go for the sound blaster z is if you still playing legacy games such as older games that offer EAX that you need alchemy to re-enable again or games that are openAL that offer EAX. Or maybe you want the transparently of the sound blaster Z. But like I mentioned the soar have op-amp socket, so you can also install an op-amp that does just that, if you don't mind an little work. From taking the soar shield off and swapping the op-amp. In your case since you are using 5.1 speaker's it would only benefit you if your using stereo or headphones unless you want your front speakers of your 5.1 to be tweak differently then the rest.
Thank you for the in depth response.My headphones aren't fancy lol, Sennheiser HD 419...but it does an excellent job with positional audio and pretty much every thing else.I plug them into the headphone jack on the speaker control hub as it's right on the desk. I'm kind of glad you gave the Soar some props as I don't want to deal with software and driver problems. :thumbup: Thanks again.
This isn't an issue I've ever experienced. Mine has randomly switched from speakers to headphones, but has never switched from headphones to speakers on reboot. Mine did recently decide to change the speaker/headphone configuration from 2.0/2.1ch to 5.1ch all on it's own. I blame Windows 10.....it's a buggy mess still. Creative's drivers for the SBZ have been exceptional. I've had a Recon3D USB, a Recon3D PCIe and an SB-Z and the drivers have been rock solid for me. Not a single hickup at any point that was directly caused by the drivers themselves. Obviously, there will always be a group that has a different experience.
I dont understand why would you spend $100 to make your lower end headphones sounds better. If you plan on upgrading to proper headphone, yeah it could be worth it. Otherwise stay with on-board or get Xonar DG, that would be enough to make the difference.
I've never had software issues with the ZXR. It also has upgradable opamps and two settings for the integrated headphone amp. *If* that's an alternative, at least.
EMI shield.Had that problem on my old P45 system where the sound card would let out a static pop through the speakers whenever the system was booting up.Don't want to risk that again, so EMI shields are a must have for me.
I have never experienced this either. Have used my SBZ in Win7, Win8.1, and Win10 and this has never happened to me.
Why not get standalone USB dac + amp? You can get FiiO E10k for $75. With this, you will get much lower static, since it will be outside of PC and having better protection. And after if you decide to step-up your headphone game, it will hold up. People driving their HD600 and some other higher end headphones with it. Anyway, it's just an option. See what you actually need / fits you better and decide from there.
It could be an issue related to the SBZ oem model's as I seen plenty of other people that had this issue as well. But I always found it strange to be happening. You would think that it would stay on the setting when you rebooted. Yea that could work and there are other good options besides that Fiio E10k out there as well. That if he wants to just get something for his headphones and not something for both. But he could just use his titanium for his Z5300 5.1 speakers and an external dac amp for his headphones or any future headphones he may switch to.
Thanks sverek and GenClaymore.It's funny you guys mention that cus I'm going to have to switch to headphone use almost exclusively in a few months.I'll have to move the system into the living room so my kid can get her first room. A headphone upgrade and external DAC will be nice when the time comes.Never had experience using high-end headphones (these are the most expensive I've ever used :O), much less an external DAC to drive them..and switchable opamps lol..it's a whole new world..
