Creative Introduces the Sound Blaster Z-Series Sound Cards

[KissSh0t]

Travels forward through time a few years.. Windows 9 releases. Creative drop support for some of the features advertised with these cards in Windows 9, Creative release newerer cards with newerer features available only in Windows 9.

Am I doing this right giuyz?

 

[Ferrum Master]

Actually my only problem as of late is sound suddenly not working after a fresh boot. No issues is device manager either. Applications just play the audio as if sound comes out with no problem, but I don't hear anything. Reboot doesn't fix it. Only option is to reinstall drivers. Doesn't even require a clean install or a reboot. Sound comes out as soon as the driver gets reinstalled.

I have noticed this mostly with nVidia video driver updates. I didn't have this when I had the ATI cards. I have also checked if the default audio playback device has changed after the video driver update. Haven't been able to find anything out of the ordinary either. Hmmm

Mate it is a SSD issue, you don't need to reinstall the driver, try switching between audio modes.

BTW Robert solved the problem in his driver by putting a simple delay.

 

[INSTG8R]

Still rocking my PCI X-Fi Fatality I have had since it was released way back when. I'm sure I paid at least the $250 for it if not more(It has the front panel breakout box and remote which I long retired)
Daniel K. Has kept mine running great for years(Tho I never really had many issues with official drivers either)
I'm a bit skeptical of this new Sound Core 3D chip, I wonder how much actual processing it's doing itself and how much it's just offloading on the CPU.
Interested in seeing some reviews on this as I will eventually have to retire my PCI card because the slot is disappearing from Motherboards....

 

[Anusha]

Mate it is a SSD issue, you don't need to reinstall the driver, try switching between audio modes.

BTW Robert solved the problem in his driver by putting a simple delay.

I guess he did it after my post? I didn't install the Pax drivers on my brand new Windows 8 RTM install though. Just installed the ones from Windows Update.

 

[radrok]

Apart from all the driver issues I still love my ST with new OP-amps.

This. Best thing I've ever done to my Essence STX.

Also, I may have been lucky because I've never had an issue with the unified drivers.

 

[dogchainx]

Owning Creative SoundCards for years and never had Driver issues. Apart from that, they sound crystal clear to me.

Dunno what the fuzz is about with some people, anti creative?

I've had a sound blaster card ever since the first one was released waaaaay back when 25MHz 386's were the top of the line. I've enjoyed them all.

But I must admit....driver support has been very poor for my X-Fi card. Drivers on the CD had horrible problems installing, forcing me to remove the drivers, remove the card, install in another slot, reinstall drivers, uninstall, force uninstall, hunt and delete files, etc.

Then the whole Creative vs whatsHISbucket about his own "hacked drivers", where they shut him down. His drivers were the only ones that actually made my card WORK properly with my Z5500 setup.

I'm pretty timid with anything Creative now sells. In that sense, I'm anticreative...for good reasons.

 

[KainXS]

creative has been trying to get back on the boat since the x-fi disaster and various ripoffs they did and haven't been able to do it yet

will this do it for them? I'm betting not

still I'm suprised they abandoned the recon3d name so fast.

 

[Anusha]

I guess he did it after my post? I didn't install the Pax drivers on my brand new Windows 8 RTM install though. Just installed the ones from Windows Update.

It happened again when I was setting up Windows 8.. Actually when I tried to install drivers from Windows Update. Changing the mode didn't fix it. Had to reinstall drivers. Downloaded the Pax drivers and installed over the existing ones. I bet nothing will go wrong until I update the nVidia drivers.

 

[AsphyxiA]

this thread makes my brain hurt. I hate it when creative releases a new product.

 

[riffraffy]

Seem's to do lot's of tricks, but I thought PC digital sound reproduction is support to be an exact copy and a good card's job is to keep it that way.What I want from a sound card is to not have to fiddle with it and get the sound the way it was created.If it has all theis external connectors for add-on what do I need the card for just hook up your stereo system to the PC .But maybe I'm wrong after all Creative did have something with there X-FI ... customer support not withstanding. I was leaning on HT Omega for my new card but I'll have to keep my eye out for this I'm a sucker for stuff I don't need.Just hope Creative doesn't make a Fatality version I don't want to pay $100 extra for some dude's name on it.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Since Live! sound card, I don't see any point of buying a new card, specially since stupid and crappy M$ killed all 3D sound on PC. I mean there is no point. I don't have 10K$ Ultra HI-FI speakers home to be able to tell the difference between integrated sound and latest Creative crap. I own a X-Fi Titanium also (bought for cheap one since I have no PCI free slots), and I cannot say there is a really big difference on sound q from Live! to be honest...

 

[Supercrit]

I've read a bit about these cards, they are really pieces of turd covered in shiny a package, x-fi line outperforms these massively. Also they really are pretty bare on the components department and asking for outrageous prices.

Look and compare at their specs and testing results

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/video/pcw/docs/501/874/recon3dlo.pdf

http://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20051003/dal207_02.htm

Dynamic range, dB (A) 93.9 Very good
vs
Dynamic range, dB (A): 111.4 Excellent

Creative, please continue making x-fi and stop this bull

 

[XacTactX]

Great, guess I should sell my Titanium HD now before it's market value falls through the floor.

I've read a bit about these cards, they are really pieces of turd covered in shiny a package, x-fi line outperforms these massively. Also they really are pretty bare on the components department and asking for outrageous prices.

Look and compare at their specs and testing results

http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/video/pcw/docs/501/874/recon3dlo.pdf

http://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20051003/dal207_02.htm

Dynamic range, dB (A) 93.9 Very good
vs
Dynamic range, dB (A): 111.4 Excellent

Creative, please continue making x-fi and stop this bull

Great find, thanks for posting. The Recon3D literally has an order of magnitude more crosstalk, two orders of magnitude (100x) worse IMD distortion and THD + N (A-wtd) and even more atrocious is the frequency response. The X-Fi is basically neutral but the Recon3D has a serious bump at about 100 Hz.

When you consider that the "old" X-Fi line can be had for like $20 shipped (I got an XtremeMusic about one year ago for that much), the Recon3D series is a joke in comparison.

 

[AsRock]

I will just keep on using my v cards though HDMI.. No way in hell i am paying $250 for a sound card for games when ATI's are perfectly fine.

 

[jagd]

NO , new cards have still same dsp with recon3d i cant see how they can be better except SNR , i would not sell a titanium HD before im sure new cards are really better ,i mean real world good not on paper good

Btw i have problem with creative x-fi titanium console also , settings got frozen changing settings dont take effect uninstalled waiting to fresh OS install

Great, guess I should sell my Titanium HD now before it's market value falls through the floor.

 

[Apocalypsee]

Thing is, I don't like where Creative is going, they just making this SoundCore and integrates every single thing inside it (DAC, ADC, headamp and whatnot), call it some funky names and give it crazy pricetag. This is mental!

I want the old CA20K2 X-Fi chips back, where they could put decent DAC like CS4398 on Elite Pro and PCM1794 on Titanium HD. THD and SNR only give one sided of the story, and EAX is emulated on this as well. Emulated EAX is crap, I use Creative USB 5.1 that could done that, it doesn't saound as good as true blooded EAX in X-Fi chips. They say ZxR uses external DAC and swappable opamp, but I won't buy anything that is emulated, though not much games uses EAX anymore, I enjoyed old games that do, like Doom3, GTA San Andreas, and Max Payne 2.

 

[KainXS]

eax = dead pretty much now, leave it be and move on dude

 

[Prima.Vera]

eax = dead pretty much now, leave it be and move on dude

Well, dead in games, but you can still use its effects in desktop for music and movies.

 

[Scrizz]

looks like a mix between the TitaniumHD and the recon3d.
lol

 

[Kaleid]

Hopefully actual audiophile cards when compared to recon3d.

I'm one of those who has had very little trouble with the drivers (vista x64 was a mess long time though, but I used XP anyway)

 

[eidairaman1]

Well, dead in games, but you can still use its effects in desktop for music and movies.

main deal from cl for eax is games