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Sound BlasterX AE-5 Review: A Gaming Sound Card for Headphone Aficionados.

Creative Labs was instrumental in evolving PC audio with notable products, like the Sound Blaster 16, AWE 32, AWE64, Live, Audigy, X-Fi, and Extigy, and algorithms like EAX technology.

Most of its competitors through the last three decades, like Yamaha, ESS, Turtle Beach, Auzentech and M-Audio, evolved their product line-ups or faded into obscurity.

There were acquisitions of Aureal and Sensaura technologies that further boosted Creatives technology portfolio, too.

Sound cards seem pass nowadays, as motherboard manufacturers hop up high-definition audio codecs with higher quality op-amps, capacitors, shielding and SPDIF outputs, that make discrete sound cards a harder sell.

But despite all the optimizations and tweaks to on-board audio, theres only so much you can do with cost-conscious audio codecs.

Heck, the last time we reviewed a Sound Blaster card was in 2014 with the ZxR, and we havent seen any new sound card releases since the ASUS STRIX RAID DLX in 2015, until now.

Dubbed the Sound BlasterX AE-5, the latest PCIe sound card from Creative Labs comes with all the gamer necessities, including a high-quality DAC, dedicated headphone amp, sleek looks, and RGB lighting controls.

But the Sound Core3D implementation isnt the same as the previous generation cards despite being the same silicon.

Creative Labs claims the Sound Core3D was engineered with emphasis on future-proofing so its programmed differently in the AE-5.

The volume control on the AE-5 is directly mapped to the DAC volume too, so theres no fiddling with an audio mixer to ensure youre adjusting the correct volume slider.

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Pioneer employs the ES9016 series in its Elite LX701 and higher-end receivers that start at 1,600 MSRP.

The 32-bit DAC delivers sampling rates up to 384KHz in direct mode, which bypasses the Sound Core3D DSP and is intended for pure listening experiences with lossless audio formats.

Going through the DSP limits sampling rates to a max of 96KHz.

Creative Labs touts a signal-to-noise ratio of 122 dB with total harmonic distortion (THD) of 0.00032, which is 2 dB higher than the extremely optimized on-board audio of an enthusiast motherboard like the ASUS Crosshair VI Hero, but numbers arent everything.

This leads us to the Sound BlasterX AE-5s most desirable audiophile feature - the trick new Xamp headphone amplifier.

The Xamp separates the left and right channels and amplifies them discretely for pristine audio quality.

Creative Labs backs the dual amps with audiophile-grade transistors and WIMA capacitors to achieve a THD of 0.0009 and 116dB SNR on the dedicated headphone output.

The Xamps 1-ohm output impedance enables it to drive anything with an impedance sensitivity from 16 to 600 ohms so you can drive anything from your budget gaming headset to those Sennheiser HD 800s youve been yearning for.

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Pure Sound Canz3D And Software Crossfeed For Mac