TechPowerUp and Creative Hearing is Believing Giveaway: The Winners

[btarunr]

TechPowerUp partnered with Creative, the pioneers of PC gaming audio, to bring you the "Hearing is Believing" Giveaway. Under Creative's technological leadership, PC gaming audio evolved with the times, and is now squarely in the era of game streamers and content creators. With the company's Sound Blaster GC7, not only do you get the highest quality audio tuned by experts, but also DSPs optimized for various game genres, and audio controls for content creators. We're giving away three prizes from the Creative stable, and without further ado, here they are:

• @truehighroller1 from the US, wins the Creative Sound Blaster GC7
• Gabriele from Italy, wins the Creative Sound Blaster X4
• Jeff from the US, wins the Creative Sound BlasterX G6

A huge Congratulations to you three! TechPowerUp and Creative with more such interesting giveaways!



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Deleted member 24505]

GZ guys

 

[TheDeeGee]

Gratz, enjoy way better sound than onboard!

I tried onboard a while back for fun, and compared to my $250 Sound Blaster ZXR it sounded extremely shallow/flat with very poor headphone surround.

Whoever says a soundcard is overrated has never heard good sound coming out of their headphones.

 

[aciDev]

• Congrats guys!

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Congratz to the winners!

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

Gratz, enjoy way better sound than onboard!

I tried onboard a while back for fun, and compared to my $250 Sound Blaster ZXR it sounded extremely shallow/flat with very poor headphone surround.

Whoever says a soundcard is overrated has never heard good sound coming out of their headphones.

You don't even need that much money. I won't name drop other options as this was creative sponsord but you can get 30 - 50 dongle soundcards from creative that will slaughter onboard sound. Get into dedicated desktop units at 50 - 150 and the results get better. Then get into units that have to have their own dedicated power and go from 150 on up and your results are better. In ye old z77 and x79 days Gigabyte came out with a few Z1 Gaming Sniper boards that had creative rather than realtek as their dedicated onboard audio, with all the fancy caps, pcb seperation, amps, and shielding that ASUS throws at their ROG stuff. It still got clobbered by creatives dedicated stuff. Hell even the realtek nonsense that drives all this onboard stuff now gets clobbered by a standalone realtek powered chi-fi phone dac that's external.

One of the other less spoken about things about these devices is that if you buy carefully. It works with your desktop, your laptop, your mac, your consoles, and your phone.

 

[jesdals]

Congrats to all

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Bass:

 

[Pan]

Congrats!

 

[TheDeeGee]

You don't even need that much money. I won't name drop other options as this was creative sponsord but you can get 30 - 50 dongle soundcards from creative that will slaughter onboard sound. Get into dedicated desktop units at 50 - 150 and the results get better. Then get into units that have to have their own dedicated power and go from 150 on up and your results are better. In ye old z77 and x79 days Gigabyte came out with a few Z1 Gaming Sniper boards that had creative rather than realtek as their dedicated onboard audio, with all the fancy caps, pcb seperation, amps, and shielding that ASUS throws at their ROG stuff. It still got clobbered by creatives dedicated stuff. Hell even the realtek nonsense that drives all this onboard stuff now gets clobbered by a standalone realtek powered chi-fi phone dac that's external.

One of the other less spoken about things about these devices is that if you buy carefully. It works with your desktop, your laptop, your mac, your consoles, and your phone.

I got this Sound Blaster ZXR at the time cuz it was discounted to $170, so was quite a steal. I've had it since 2013 now, so well worth the investment. Before this i had the Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro, it served me well for a long time as well.

That said, a soundcard is no use without proper headphones. I still use my trusty AKG K601.

I know Creative get's trashed a lot, but their software never failed me.

 

[zo0lykas]

Someone done mistake in winners list, here is no my name¿

Fix this please.

Cheers

 

[c2DDragon]

That said, a soundcard is no use without proper headphones. I still use my trusty AKG K601.

I know Creative get's trashed a lot, but their software never failed me.

I prefer speakers and I can tell it's a night and day difference with a soundcard too compared to the shitty sound chips they put in any motherboard (with stupid names).
You don't need headphones to enjoy a soundcard. It changes everything with speakers too.
I'm happy and my neighbors too, I guess.

Oh and GZ to the winners !

 

[Blaeza]

Well done winners.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

I got this Sound Blaster ZXR at the time cuz it was discounted to $170, so was quite a steal. I've had it since 2013 now, so well worth the investment. Before this i had the Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro, it served me well for a long time as well.

That said, a soundcard is no use without proper headphones. I still use my trusty AKG K601.

I know Creative get's trashed a lot, but their software never failed me.

The software had/has a few issues.

For one the drivers generally had issues many of which were never fixed. This has gotten much better, however it's still headscratching as a lot of the best stuff out there (most of it really) is completely driverless so why bother with drivers? Then a lot of their game effects sucked and didn't improve anything. This was all turned on it's head with EAX which was really really good but then Windows Vista/7 went and killed it off with Windows own stuff and now it's deader than dead. You also don't really want or need effects now. If you do want to Windows Spatial is good as is Dobly Atoms (and the other Dolby Stuff) and all of this is native to a lot of headphones to start with.

Creative still has their own software stuff where they do it really well. But Windows Vista/7, built in Dolby Atoms to Windows 10, and headphones natively supporting stuff all monkey wrenched not only creative but other soundcards.

I prefer speakers and I can tell it's a night and day difference with a soundcard too compared to the shitty sound chips they put in any motherboard (with stupid names).
You don't need headphones to enjoy a soundcard. It changes everything with speakers too.
I'm happy and my neighbors too, I guess.

Oh and GZ to the winners !

A lot of people straight up placed home theater recievers on their desks and ran optical out and let the reciever do all the work for all sorts of crazy setups.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

A lot of people straight up placed home theater recievers on their desks and ran optical out and let the reciever do all the work for all sorts of crazy setups.

Im one of these people but i run HDMi for all that DD and DTS heavy lifting.

 

[truehighroller1]

OMG! I WON WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


LMAO OMGOODNESS!

Thank you!

 

[aQi]

Congrats to all the winners.
As most of the time its majority US, UK or europe that gets the win. When will other countries might may get the winning steak. "hopes high"

 

[truehighroller1]

I won sparkling water once here back in the day. Like probably 2008 lol. I was yelling when I saw that I won this time. Top prize none the less.

 

[HD64G]

Congrats! have fun listening to better audio!

 

[Poteba]

I still can't believe I've won the Sound Blaster X4.
Thanks so much to TechPowerUp and Creative for this great opportunity!
Can't wait to hear the difference, it will be a meaningful upgrade over my integrated audio and to be contacted by Creative.

 

[truehighroller1]

I still can't believe I've won the Sound Blaster X4.
Thanks so much to TechPowerUp and Creative for this great opportunity!
Can't wait to hear the difference, it will be a meaningful upgrade over my integrated audio and to be contacted by Creative.

I haven't heard anything back from anyone about it yet have you?

 

[Prima.Vera]

How do you connect those, or any Creative soundcards for that matter, to a Sounds System with HDMI inputs??

 

[Poteba]

I haven't heard anything back from anyone about it yet have you?

I contacted W1zzard 2 days ago. He promptly replied to me saying it will take some steps inside Creative and to contact him at the end of next week in case there is no contact.

I understand and share your impatience.

Congratulations on the victory of GC7! It will be my concern to inform you when I have news.

How do you connect those, or any Creative soundcards for that matter, to a Sounds System with HDMI inputs??

Through a dedicated HDMI to Optical Converter to be purchased separately
(this is only valid for DACs / sound cards / amplifiers with optical input mini or full, this is one of the differences between X4 and X3, where X3 has no optical input)

There are various possible links on the manuals provided by Creative

 

[truehighroller1]

They responded to me yesterday or a company advertising for them anyway. PR firm perhaps? I don't know how that works but, I asked him a question thinking he was the founder of Creative only after looking at his signature to realize he's with again guessing here, a PR firm doing this contest for creative to spread their influence / name.

I'll ask here instead because he has yet to respond to me with any answers.

I have a dedicated creative sound blaster z.

Should I connect the GC7 through optical through that dedicated sound card for better sound?

Also, will this new dac work with my Razer Black Shark Pro 2 Wireless headset?

 

[Poteba]

They responded to me yesterday or a company advertising for them anyway. PR firm perhaps? I don't know how that works but, I asked him a question thinking he was the founder of Creative only after looking at his signature to realize he's with again guessing here, a PR firm doing this contest for creative to spread their influence / name.

I'll ask here instead because he has yet to respond to me with any answers.

I have a dedicated creative sound blaster z.

Should I connect the GC7 through optical through that dedicated sound card for better sound?

Also, will this new dac work with my Razer Black Shark Pro 2 Wireless headset?

I'm happy for you.
EDIT:
I was contacted 2 days ago and two hours ago by Creative. Unfortunately, however, the email was in spam and I had not had access to the internet for a few days due to a strong storm.

WoW, Sound Blaster Z is fabulous. The two sound cards are very similar in technical characteristics, so unless you have SUPER X-FI (present in GC7) and headphone compatible there will be no audible differences. The main difference will be on the interface (knobs)
Using the optical allows you to have a much lower delay than any other interface, even if it is difficult to perceive the difference. However, I advise you to manage GC7 via USB (for PC) for lights / key customization, settings... and since you would have the same audio quality. For mobile, usb for power supply and line in for audio; and for console, usb for power supply and optical for audio.

Yes, if you connect them via 3.5 jack you can use them as wired headphones.
You cannot interface directly with the GC7 via WiFi.