The Sound BlasterX AE-5 Owners' Club

JHONO · 23 Aug 2018 at 21:47

Sounds good, thanks for the advice.

These are sounding better and better now. But i'm a little curious about the AKG 712's. What are they like in comparison, i've heard they have a more narrower sound stage with a little more bass response?

ToTheMax · 24 Aug 2018 at 10:54

JHONO said:
Sounds good, thanks for the advice.

These are sounding better and better now. But i'm a little curious about the AKG 712's. What are they like in comparison, i've heard they have a more narrower sound stage with a little more bass response?

I have AKG 712's and they sound full and rich and don't perceive any harshness with an amazingly wide sound stage. I can't compare to 702's as haven't listened to them for an A to B comparison though.

V F · 24 Aug 2018 at 11:51

Mick-1965 said:
There's lots of things you can do to tame the 702's. Underneath the earcups there is a foam ring. You can change the material used or make another out of different thicknesses of felt etc.
Even a layer of tissue paper underneath the original foam reduces the harshness a little.
With the little dot i+ tube amp adding some warmth I just settled on a 3mm thick peice of wool felt that fits inside the hole of the original foam ring.

CS:GO sometimes I would find tiring from all the gunfire cracks. Still, it's nice to have options to revert.

Midlife Crisis · 24 Aug 2018 at 16:56

Anyone know if the rgb strips that come with the card can be rigged up to an ASUS motherboard instead of the card itself?

Gee · 24 Aug 2018 at 17:01

Midlife Crisis said:
Anyone know if the rgb strips that come with the card can be rigged up to an ASUS motherboard instead of the card itself?

Pretty sure you can't mate, it has its own connector, not the standard 4/5 RGB pin layout on motherboards.

Midlife Crisis · 24 Aug 2018 at 17:19

never mind then I have one in the post coming direct from creative I didn't want to run any extra rgb software if I cold help it

Skynet5 · 26 Aug 2018 at 14:00

I've seemed to have developed an issue.

Sometime I come to my pc and I have no sound.

If I go into SB Connect and switch from Direct back to Virtual headphones the sound comes back.

Anyone else experience this...I need to log when it happens as I'm not sure. (straight from boot, or does it just stop working etc)

I've disabled the device uninstalled all drivers rebooted...let windows do it thing installing official but older drivers and reinstalled the laters drivers and SBC 2 package.

See it that stops it happening.

Only other thing I think I've changed is pluggin in a spare harddrive...annoyingly into the wrong sata connector so now I get the asmedia splash on startup.

Skynet5 · 26 Aug 2018 at 14:01

Ive also noticed a clicking noise on start up and shutdown..but I presume that is the amps...and that its always been there.

V F · 26 Aug 2018 at 16:56

lnoton said:
Ive also noticed a clicking noise on start up and shutdown..but I presume that is the amps...and that its always been there.

Yes, that is the AMP powering up and then down.

Rroff · 26 Aug 2018 at 17:06

lnoton said:
I've seemed to have developed an issue.

Sometime I come to my pc and I have no sound.

If I go into SB Connect and switch from Direct back to Virtual headphones the sound comes back.

Anyone else experience this...I need to log when it happens as I'm not sure. (straight from boot, or does it just stop working etc)

I've disabled the device uninstalled all drivers rebooted...let windows do it thing installing official but older drivers and reinstalled the laters drivers and SBC 2 package.

See it that stops it happening.

Only other thing I think I've changed is pluggin in a spare harddrive...annoyingly into the wrong sata connector so now I get the asmedia splash on startup.

It is a known issue with direct modes unfortunately - especially if you have a fast booting PC it sometimes starts the Creative drivers before the relays (the clicking noise you hear) have energised or whatever.

As above it is normal as the card uses relays for different output configurations.

Skynet5 · 27 Aug 2018 at 00:51

Rroff said:
It is a known issue with direct modes unfortunately - especially if you have a fast booting PC it sometimes starts the Creative drivers before the relays (the clicking noise you hear) have energised or whatever.

As above it is normal as the card uses relays for different output configurations.

Thanks both. Roff you say direct mode what do you mean? I'm always in virtual mode.

Is there a mode where the issue doesn't happen?

Edit : ah perhaps if I were using optical out and therefore not using the on board DAC.

Rroff · 27 Aug 2018 at 00:54

lnoton said:
Thanks both. Roff you say direct mode what do you mean? I'm always in virtual mode.

Is there a mode where the issue doesn't happen?

I've only had it happen personally with the direct headphone and direct speaker mode in 7.1 HP mode I've so far not had one occurrence of it.

Skynet5 · 27 Aug 2018 at 00:58

Rroff said:
I've only had it happen personally with the direct headphone and direct speaker mode in 7.1 HP mode I've so far not had one occurrence of it.

Hmm. Well for me it was in 7.1 HP. Maybe a different issue. Shall monitor now I've reinstalled.
Thanks.

Mick-1965 · 27 Aug 2018 at 10:03

It used to happen quite often on the earlier driver but since BXAE5_PCDRV_L13_3_2_28_0 I cant remember it doing it at all.

Rroff · 8 Sep 2018 at 18:39

Have to say this soundcard pairs up quite nicely with a couple of different sets of Sony MDR I have - especially brings out that "High Res" audio Sony like to bang about with a nice weight to the treble and detailed bass.

V F · 9 Sep 2018 at 17:11

I've decided to jump back to the Prelude/sApII AMP to see after cleaning the Prelude contacts. I don't know what it is but the Prelude sounds a little richer after comparing the AE-5 for 30 minutes... Not a great deal of difference but nice subtle things.

enivid · 14 Sep 2018 at 01:14

Is there really no way to switch between your headphones and desktop speakers with out going into the connect software? I just upgraded from the x-fi titanium and all the ports could work at the same time.

Rroff · 14 Sep 2018 at 01:20

I think it uses relays to swap between the different output electronics (as there are different ways to utilise each of the ports) so I don't expect you can have both enabled at the same time.

JasonM · 14 Sep 2018 at 01:39

enivid said:
Is there really no way to switch between your headphones and desktop speakers with out going into the connect software? I just upgraded from the x-fi titanium and all the ports could work at the same time.

Presume you upgraded from Titanium HD, if so how does the AE-5 compare?

EsaT · 14 Sep 2018 at 09:04

enivid said:
Is there really no way to switch between your headphones and desktop speakers with out going into the connect software? I just upgraded from the x-fi titanium and all the ports could work at the same time.

Well, old PCI X-Fi and it's PCI-e version X-Fi Titanium don't have separate headphone and line outs.
So neither card's hardware, nor software could have even told the difference regardless what was connected.
Z-serie and newer have headphone and line out physically separately.

For Z-serie there's SBZ Switcher, which can be used to automate switching between headphone and speaker behind hotkey.
I don't know yet similar third party application for AE-5.
You better contact Creative, so that they might add hotkey functionality for that into future drivers.

Though in Z-serie that output configuration setting is stored in Windows registry.
So if AE-5 does it similarly it would be possible to use registry monitoring tools to find key for that and corresponding values.
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/registry_changes_view.html
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon
After that it shouldn't take that much web search for how to make for example batch-files for changing that key and then add hotkeys for shortcuts of those bat files.

Myself don't have AE-5 so can't check that.
(and likely don't upgrade from ZxR until head and ear shape customizable HRTF "Super X-Fi" products come out)

JasonM said:
Presume you upgraded from Titanium HD, if so how does the AE-5 compare?

X-Fi Titanium HD has sense function in headphone jack which makes hardware route signal to it disabling RCA line out.
With software having nothing to do with it.