Creative Launches Sound Blaster AE-X: A PCIe Sound Card for Those Who Know Their Onboard Audio is Lying To Them

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David_Schroth

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Onboard audio has gotten decent over the past decade. Motherboard manufacturers have been quietly dropping better Realtek codecs and op-amps onto their boards, and for casual listening or gaming with mainstream headphones, it largely does the job. But “largely does the job” is not the same thing as “actually good,” and Creative is betting there […]

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Doubt my wireless headset will benefit from this... lol
 
Sennheiser HD 800 are 300 Ω headphones. The article says they're 600!
Please change! People could damage their headphones!!!

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goatonastick said:
Sennheiser HD 800 are 300 Ω headphones. The article says they're 600!
Please change! People could damage their headphones!!!

ca.sennheiser-hearing.com

Sennheiser HD 800 S Open Back Wired Headphones

The HD 800 S high-resolution headphones from Sennheiser: Sleek look ✓ Lightweight design ✓ Absorber technology ✓ Discover unrivalled sound now!
ca.sennheiser-hearing.com ca.sennheiser-hearing.com
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And they're so efficient even at 300 Ohm, that you can run them off of any headphone output.

Impedance is only one variable :)
 
At this price point it really is putting it in competition with much better external options. I would have preferred seeing a half height option with just standard balanced and SE headphone outputs. As it sits, unless you just absolutely need internal, this price puts it in much stronger competition with external options.
 
Torm said:
At this price point it really is putting it in competition with much better external options. I would have preferred seeing a half height option with just standard balanced and SE headphone outputs. As it sits, unless you just absolutely need internal, this price puts it in much stronger competition with external options.
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This is definitely true - the AE-X is a 'traditional' sound card.

I think that limits its market somewhat, especially relative to most options having USB (and/or wireless) capability, and thus their own 'sound cards' built in.

What you're describing is really closer to an audio interface - I use audio interfaces personally, but they do come with some baggage that may not be desirable for many consumers. Balanced outputs being a big one, since they require some level of conversion (even just physically) for standard speakers.


Personally if Creative were to push more toward the audiophile side, I'd like to see multiple pairs of balanced outputs, so that speakers and headphones would share different paths that could be selected at the operating system (well, software) level. This would allow for things like a balanced headphone amplifier to have its own output alongside a set of studio monitors, as well as a solid set of EQ for each.

Being able to have custom Equalizer APO profiles per output and then being able to route live input monitoring (which would need to be implemented in hardware) would be the icing on the cake.
 
Creative needs to make decent drivers for their sound cards before releasing another one. When you need to use homemade drivers to make them work right, the manufacturer needs to pay attention. And it's been like that for about 20 years.
 
stinkie said:
Creative needs to make decent drivers for their sound cards before releasing another one. When you need to use homemade drivers to make them work right, the manufacturer needs to pay attention. And it's been like that for about 20 years.
Click to expand...

This card at least is based on a Realtek codec that backhauls over USB (over PCIe)- so it's just their software stack behind it and whatever other tweaks they did.

There's presumably not much to screw up here; should even work on Linux out of the box, though I'd like to see that tested first.


I will say that I had to use third-party drivers for my old X-Fi Titanium, and by old I mean like ~20 years almost? 15? But it's up and running on Windows 11 with the full software suite.
 
stinkie said:
Creative needs to make decent drivers for their sound cards before releasing another one. When you need to use homemade drivers to make them work right, the manufacturer needs to pay attention. And it's been like that for about 20 years.
Click to expand...
That is exactly when and why I stopped looking at anything from Creative Labs
 
stinkie said:
Creative needs to make decent drivers for their sound cards before releasing another one. When you need to use homemade drivers to make them work right, the manufacturer needs to pay attention. And it's been like that for about 20 years.
Click to expand...
Brian_B said:
That is exactly when and why I stopped looking at anything from Creative Labs
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In Linux many years ago they actually officially gave up and said to the community "you guys handle the drivers" and boy did they ever. The Linux drivers are so f*cking good (as least as far as the X-Fi is concerned). A few times I found myself saying "I wish these same community developers would make the Windows drivers too!"
 
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