Tuesday, December 11th 2018
Creative to Launch Audiophile-grade Sound Card: Sound BlasterX AE-9
Creative have been relatively dark in the soundcard front, a business for which they were mainly recognized not that many years ago. The company is looking to cater to the highest-end of music listeners with the impending introduction of their Sound BlasterX AE-9 sound card, though. At $300 a pop, these will pack serious hardware for audiophiles. While the audio processing chip remains the same 3D Sound Core as used in Creative's gaming-focussed AE-5 and AE-5 Pure, for the AE-9, Creative opted for an external DAC - thus removing any digital noises or interference from your system's electronics.
The replaceable operational amplifiers are a given, then, since we're talking about a crowd of users that wants to be able to experiment and tinker with sound processing on their audio sources. The operational amplifiers can be tinkered with as well, aiding in reaching that desired tuning. As for outputs, Optical in and out, standard 3.5mm jacks for rear, center, and sub, as well as RCA stereo out make out the card's rear connectors. And lo and behold - there's a dedicated 6-pin power connector for the card so as to power all of that sound wizardry.
Creative said the card is rated at a 129 dB signal-to-noise ratio and uses an ESS Sabre 32 digital analog converter - a known quantity in terms of quality. Creative's XAMP, which amplifies each stereo channel of headphones out separately, is also present. The breakout box, which houses the external DAC, supports both TRS and XLR connectors for microphones and 48-volt phantom power. There's a switch for what looks like dedicated profiles for high impedance headphones, and support for SBX in a physical button, which lets users control any 3D virtualization technology on the spot.
Source:
PC World
The replaceable operational amplifiers are a given, then, since we're talking about a crowd of users that wants to be able to experiment and tinker with sound processing on their audio sources. The operational amplifiers can be tinkered with as well, aiding in reaching that desired tuning. As for outputs, Optical in and out, standard 3.5mm jacks for rear, center, and sub, as well as RCA stereo out make out the card's rear connectors. And lo and behold - there's a dedicated 6-pin power connector for the card so as to power all of that sound wizardry.
37 Comments on Creative to Launch Audiophile-grade Sound Card: Sound BlasterX AE-9
Rise in headphone usage prompting the boom in external DACs/Amp purchase and usage. there is very little reason for someone to upgrade their soundcard these days if they have a good one.
If they are into audio recording/production there are better options available but Audigy 2 ZS Platinum with or the ZXR should cover those areas just fine.
Same thing more or less happened to Asus. They came out to compete with Creative but once DirectSound/Hardware acceleration died and Creative went into a coma. They stopped pushing the market.
At least Creative have tried to keep up with the way people set up their audio by releasing their own external amps and dacs though. Asus also tried with their Xonar Essence One but those fell out of production years ago.
hardware accelerated sound was such a big thing for gaming.
How Creative nearly brought back great PC audio, and then f**k*d it all up.
I do like that they opted for a 6-pin power instead of something goofy like a male molex (looking at you ASUS).
Although, to argue with my own statement: this could probably be offloaded to under used CPU/GPU cores.
I have checked it myself and quit talking nonsense.
You may talk anything, but Creative electronics design team know their stuff pretty well. Also summing all the parts on board that card, the BOM really nears 200$ to make something similar yourself.
The choice of the cable is actually pretty normal. The SATA molex usually combined with many connectors on the cable and would look like an arse. The 6pin connectors comes usually spare with any PC, as SLI/CFX users are not that much these days, and a user having 300$ Sound Card for sure will have a decent PSU too... so it is quite obvious.
Given that it's a PCI card with all sort of driver issues, i need an upgrade, not many 7.1 options in the market...
I bought myself a secondhand Yamaha AV and its made a huge difference over my old Logitech Z5500's
At $300 a pop true audiophiles will only laugh at the lunacy Creative put forth! Speaking of which: Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...cough...hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha... :rockout: