Creative Sound Blaster Z Series

im not here to debate or argue, you are entitled to your own opinion, i was only sharing my experiences with both cards that i have owned. I dont have some sort of secret agenda of making out my XFi as a better card, far from it..all i said is i heard minimal difference for the $150 price tag that i paid..i would of kept it anyhow if it wasn't for all the issues i was having.

 

I would still try to make the Z work properly if I was you, don't give up on it, it's a great card and offers more than the xfi.

edit: just wondering, you weren't plugging your speakers into the headphone output on the Z, were you?

 

I doubt it. The maxim amp has anti clicking thingy so you shouldn't hear any realy clicking when you power on PC. Line out doesn't have that and you can hear the clicks. So I assume he is using line out.

 

I had my speakers connected to the middle hole in that photo, so the third one from each end... which is for the front speakers from my understanding ..I really tried to make it work because i loved the surround feature on it, plus the headphone amp was quite useful, but no matter what I did i had no success..my speakers even started popping randomly and I started to fear it would damage the speakers :/

 

Could be the drivers causing DPC latency issues maybe?
Check with LatencyMon.

 

new drivers: http://support.creative.com/Product...SET=prodfaq:PRODFAQ_21402,VARSET=CategoryID:1

SBZ_CD_LD_1_00_16.exe

Added Enhancement / Features:
•Multiple fixes that improve the driver's overall stability and performance
•Added support for ASIO playback

 

cheers dude

EDIT: thought ASIO was already working prior to this driver?

 

Hmm... That is the same changelog than before as far as I can tell, need to check 'em out tomorrow.

EDIT:
Well, can't spot any difference anywhere. Yet at least.

 

it says it's for Z and Zx in change log. was the ASIO support previously only officially announced for ZxR?

 

It has been supported for a while, since the previous driver.

 

Officially? if so, that latest change log makes no sense lol. Either way, I didn't notice anything new with this driver. I really wish they added some hotkey control for some features (surround, output switching) that would be great. Dream on, I guess.

 

Yep.

EDIT:
I found one issue: When I use headphone out, Flash videos (or anything that plays audio through flash) are incredibly loud. They are unusable even with ACM, just way too loud and blast my ears to kingdom come. Line-out doesn't have that issue.

 

Same with my Xonar Xense; was wondering if that was just an ASUS thing or not.

 

hmmm, I don't have that problem. I watch youtube quite a bit and use the headphone out. haven't tried line out, but headphone out should be louder anyway, even though I think I remember seeing Anarion post that he the volume difference between the 2 is non existant.

 

I think the headphone gain is automatic with Z(x) so depending on what headphone you use, it might not make much difference. It is hard to notice the volume difference at least in my case. They are almost the same, headphone out is a bit louder but it's not that large difference. But anyway, I have no freaking idea why Flash audio has that problem. Nothing else has that. If I sue HTML5 youtube player and watch the same video, the volume level is pretty much the same though line out, headphone out and line out when using Flash version too. When I use headphone out the Flash version blasts my ears. This doesn't make any sense to me and I'm certain it didn't do this before. What Flash version are you guys using?

 

oh so you think it started happening after the latest driver update? I don't think I've actually been on YouTube since I updated the driver. Will try some videos later and post back.

 

Yep, also I'm not sure if I had this problem yesterday. I did update Flash today though...

 

No problems here with youtube/flash.

 

Youtube for some reason with my Z has always been excessively loud

I have to watch videos at half volume

 

Just tried youtube, played some songs in Foobar first, then watched youtube and the volume levels were fine.