White limited edition model of the Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, May 28, 2020.

  1. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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  2. Retow

    Retow Active Member

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    "Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus" could easily be Elon Musk's 8th childs name.
     
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  3. Noisiv

    Noisiv Ancient Guru

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    is very nice :)
    would have looked even better w/o that teenage SB X logo

    btw what's up with 1980s 5.1?
     
  4. bobblunderton

    bobblunderton Master Guru

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    @Noisiv Well a lot of people just use stereo headphones, or a typical 5.1 setup - but anything more than stereo is uncommon except for home-theater PC's.
    I loved my X-fi Titanium HD Pro I had in 2011, great GREAT card. I still have it in-fact, it still works fine and has current driver support (I believe it's recently been moved to legacy support as has followed earlier departure of the cheaper/rest of the line-up of X-fi). Cheap X-fi cards were absolutely junk and a driver nightmare, as was trying to find the right driver for your card, as they wouldn't work interchangeably with one another with 'Hardware not detected' errors. The more expensive ones like the Fatality and Titanium / Titanium HD Pro (with replaceable op-amps!), were tops by comparison. I almost think Creative would be in a lot better position if it wasn't for the cheap-end soundcard disasters (mostly it was Windows Vista & newer taking away hardware acceleration due to HD movie content protection). Before Windows Vista, sound cards actually helped squeeze a few more FPS out of your PC by dumping sound chores to hardware other than the CPU.
    I have an Audigy Rx 5.1/7.1 card here & it sounds great. Much more consistent warm/smooth bass with a harder punch, and a night & day difference on recording performance (on-board sound peaks and distorts quickly and loses a lot of the dynamic sound and lesser heard notes). Putting a soundcard in with some GOOD speakers (if you don't just use digital-out to a fancy receiver already), will make you hear notes and backing tracks within music that you never heard before - even if the song is almost 40 years old.
    I've been sold on Creative sound boards since the SB16 non-PNP card multimedia kit I got new with my (used!) AM486 computer in late 1994 or so.

    Some people can't heard the difference. Even a 5 year old 100+ $ soundcard is better than current on-board with 'decent' speakers hooked to it, to me. So if you work and leave music on (not using headphones or digital outs), and have good speakers, give your ears a treat and celebrate some good sound. Of course anything's better than the Pentium 3 / 4 days where you could hear the mouse cursor move when using onboard sound on those cheap Dell motherboards with no shielding on the VRMs (or very little)!

    I like this card, it's nice, I have some white trimmings inside my case (drive trays, expansion slot covers, fan blades though nothing LED except the AMD CPU cooler), so it could look nice.
    Just wished they never dropped SOUNDFONT support after the x-fi series - something I used since 1997 or so. That said, a few popular digital audio workshops can suffice in other means to accomplish the same thing.
     
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  5. Slammy

    Slammy Member Guru

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    Yup onboard sound is trash in comparison and so is USB audio. Ive tried to ditch my SoundBlaster Z several times and i just cant go back to muffled audio. I have spent time tuning my EQ, its either clear with no bass or it has bass but then distorts or muffles the highs. Alot of people are missing out i have to say
     
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  6. Burgurne

    Burgurne Master Guru

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    Yes, we are still some people that prefer good graphic as well as good sound quality. No matter if it is music or a good game, my good old Logitech Z5400 5.1 speakersetup just love a real soundcard like this (my AE-5 is not white though!!). I have - 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC1220 Audio Codec) on my Asrock Z390 Phantom Gaming X, and it is way lower in quality than my AE-5, white or not.
     
  7. fry178

    fry178 Ancient Guru

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    @Slammy
    right.
    onboard sound from this years/last years nicer boards are better than most +5y old sub 100$ dedicated cards,
    and usb HAS NOTHING do with the sound quality, its the chips and converters (digital/analog).
    there are ppl running +100$ usb stuff with quality headphones (sound quality as well as cost) without problems.

    dont assume that every usb audio solution is crap, just because you used some 10$ usb-to-analog solution.
     
  8. sverek

    sverek Guest

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    Basically milking the overhyped product.
     
  9. bobblunderton

    bobblunderton Master Guru

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    A while back Linus Tech Tips did a 'Tech Quickie' or something like that saying sound cards were over-hyped. I wonder if these people are deaf sometimes - dumb kids!
    Even with a decent sub-100$ sound card from one of the major brands, hooked to a top-dollar amp or speakers, it's amazing how much you hear the backing tracks and various harmonies in the songs - even old songs like motown 60's, rock 70's or pop/synth stuff from the 80's - that you've never heard stand out before. Of course, spending around 200$ gets you an even better card sometimes with replaceable op-amps.
    Maybe for some folks motherboard audio is good enough - I gave my Z97 Maximus Hero board's 'Supreme FX Audio' a try... BLECH, that lasted <1 day until I went out and got a sound card. So for folks who think motherboard audio is plenty good - I salute you - enjoy the money you save, the rest of us will enjoy my high quality audio. Of-course it pays to mention I've been delving into audio production as a hobby since the early days of the first Pentiums, so there's that too.
    I am sure these folks would have a complete meltdown if they knew I ran Warcraft 2 midi OST over an opl3 fm synth emulator driver on a 700$ amp/speaker system, or that in the early 2000's I made a distortion guitar out of growling unhappy cat samples (plot twist: a cat's vocals are uniquely hard to tune manually).
     
  10. Maddness

    Maddness Ancient Guru

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    I still use my Xonar STX. It is still better than any on board sound that I have personally heard and the Xonar is pretty old by PC standards.
     

  11. Morax

    Morax Master Guru

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    I love my Soundblaster ZX, it's WAY better than the standard Realtek HD audio on my mainboard... Even the SBX positional audio (on headphones) is better than "Dolby Atmos for Headphones".
     
  12. pastor_marco

    pastor_marco Active Member

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    A pretty product from a shitty company.
     
  13. Loobyluggs

    Loobyluggs Ancient Guru

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    I already got the white one, just not the 'plus'.
     

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