The Sound BlasterX AE-5 Owners' Club

[R3X]

As far as anything in this range of consumer audio goes it does as good as anything with the 600 series and the amp powers them better than most non-specialist equipment. That said having spent a lot of time building different amp designs for the 600 series it still doesn't drive them as well as I know they can go. To really bring out the detail with the 600 series you need better voltage "drive" capabilities than consumer soundcards can really do.

Thanks that was something I was just reading on an AE5 review, he too had the HD650s and said its a tad lacking in the high end detail side of details.

Do you feel its better to go for a dedicated headphone amp and which one do you feel is decent (budgets 200-300ish) ?

Never owned one before but was eyeing SMS M3 or Dac X6 but have also read they are similar and lack the full drive to make the HD650s shine sadly.

 

[T.Kay]

Thanks that was something I was just reading on an AE5 review, he too had the HD650s and said its a tad lacking in the high end detail side of details.

Do you feel its better to go for a dedicated headphone amp and which one do you feel is decent (budgets 200-300ish) ?

Never owned one before but was eyeing SMS M3 or Dac X6 but have also read they are similar and lack the full drive to make the HD650s shine sadly.

My 58X are arriving in a few days, I'll let you know.

 

[EsaT]

Never owned one before but was eyeing SMS M3 or Dac X6 but have also read they are similar and lack the full drive to make the HD650s shine sadly.

AE-5's headphone output runs circles around SMS(L) M3, which doesn't have that much of either voltage or current output capacity:
https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/amp/smsl-m3.php#rw11

DAC X6 is again one of those products no one ever measures, with only Audiosciencereview.com having anything of it.
Kinda like CPU and GPU reviews just had talk about how good it must be with nice looking graphics.
I don't think any PC hobbyist would buy anything based on such review...

 

[R3X]

My 58X are arriving in a few days, I'll let you know.

Thanks

AE-5's headphone output runs circles around SMS(L) M3, which doesn't have that much of either voltage or current output capacity:
https://reference-audio-analyzer.pro/en/report/amp/smsl-m3.php#rw11

DAC X6 is again one of those products no one ever measures, with only Audiosciencereview.com having anything of it.
Kinda like CPU and GPU reviews just had talk about how good it must be with nice looking graphics.
I don't think any PC hobbyist would buy anything based on such review...

Quite a few around the net suggest the DAC X6 is a clone of the m3 but has a few tweaks and improved ps, otherwise many suggest there powerful for the Sen HD650s but again its lacking in the 'high end' side of bringing out the truer details something the higher end headphone amps can do.

ill try and dig up the exact link and article

 

[R3X]

Ok here is that review on the AE5 soundcard from kitguru:

https://www.kitguru.net/components/soundcard/dominic-moass/creative-sound-blasterx-ae-5-review/3/

Guy reviewing it has AE5 soundcard, Sen HD650s and also Fiio E10K, Schiit Stack comprising the Magni 3 as test comparisons, here is his main bit about the comparisons of the AE5 headphone amp vs the rest of the equipment;

His thoughts

"So, with that out of the way, let’s begin to fully dissect the audio quality. I will start by saying the overall quality is very good for a £130 PCIe sound card. Compared to my Schiit Stack, I would say the overall audio presentation is slightly smoother and less forward – so the bass is slightly more prominent while the high-end has been tamed a little bit. I don’t think the overall differences in sound are huge, but if you are a keen music junkie then you should be able to spot the difference between the AE-5 and what you normally use.

Compared to the Fiio E10K, however, the differences are much more subtle. I already think the E10K is warmer than the Schiit Stack (which is ever-so-slightly bright in its presentation), so to my mind the AE-5’s sound is quite similar to the Fiio. With the HD 650s I was testing with, that means the overall sound is very fun and enjoyable, definitely not analytical or overly harsh.

I do like a bit more detail in the high-end, though, but the benefit of a PCIe sound card (with software) is that you can tune the sound to your liking using EQ. As such, I was able to just add in a slightly more forward sound to the AE-5, which just helped break through the HD 650s veil"



So he feels the AE5 is similar to the E10K (many around the net suggest SMS m3/X6 is similar to E10K) but he does say he prefers the bit more detail, I assume that's from his Schiit stack with Magni 3.

Am still tempted to grab an 2nd hand Soundblaster AE5 for 84 quid of rainforest but decisions....

 

[Rroff]

Funny I wouldn't say the AE-5 is particularly warm at all - though maybe a touch more so than usual with devices that use the LM4562. Overall I'd have said it was a touch towards bright and harsh but without being as bright in the highs as the Schiit stuff tends to be.

If you want to turn HD600 series into detail monsters then I can explain the circuit to do that but don't know of any amp in existence I'm happy with that accomplishes it hah (other than stupidly high end stuff).

 

[V F]

Funny I wouldn't say the AE-5 is particularly warm at all - though maybe a touch more so than usual with devices that use the LM4562. Overall I'd have said it was a touch towards bright and harsh but without being as bright in the highs as the Schiit stuff tends to be.

If you want to turn HD600 series into detail monsters then I can explain the circuit to do that but don't know of any amp in existence I'm happy with that accomplishes it hah (other than stupidly high end stuff).

I honestly didn't find that to be honest.

 

[Rroff]

I honestly didn't find that to be honest.

What headphones? I'm mostly using Sennheiser MX580 for casual use, HD600 for music and occasionally Momentums and Sony MDR-1 series for gaming.

 

[V F]

AKG K702.

 

[Rroff]

Very different to what I'm using then hmm.

 

[V F]

I'm amazed how well the Creative Sound Blaster 2 ZS holds up to the AE-5 and Prelude. Dug the card out last night that I've had from 2003 and using DanielK's drivers that has no bloatware. Driver dated 18/12/2015, 6.0.301.46.

Been jumping about them for the last 3 - 4 weeks.

As I posted on another forum...

The sound card seems pretty clean sounding compared to the Prelude on Windows 7 with the AKG K702 and SMSL sApii Pro AMP. It seems to have a lower noise floor compared to the Prelude... Or is that higher? Less noise when cranking the AMP.

There are subtle differences between the Audigy 2 ZS, Prelude and AE-5 but they all more or less sound identical.
I was even testing the Audigy 2 ZS in Quake Champions and CS:GO in stereo, no processing, the directional sound was great. The mid range seems a tiny bit lower on the Prelude.

I wish I had testing equipment to see what the cards + headphones are doing. As nobody seems to revisit the old cards with the present day cards and headphones.


Then I found an old thread on Tomshardware that I thought was interesting... Which made me dig it out to see.

Doubt a card that old will amount to anything. Onboard sound will prob be better. Though the newer sound cards seem to make sound more realistic.

No way will 7 year old card beat new technology.

Why not? Feature wise, the Audigy 2 wins. Quality wise, it will be a lot closer. Depends really where the Audigy focused its sound signature...

I disagree as well, 7 years in audio technology is not that long. I dont see any reason these cards should not still sound great, especially compared to onboard which is only slightly better than no sound.

The audigy series, especially the audigy 2 and better, dont seem that far behind the newer X-fi cards in terms of audio quality and signal to noise. Audigy 2 will do 24bit/96k. They are only missing support for "up to 128 positioned 3D voices" though this seems largely useless?

" The X-Fi uses EAX 5.0 which supports up to 128 3D-positioned voices with up to four effects applied to each. This release also included the 24-bit crystallizer, which is intended to pronounce percussion elements by placing some emphasis on low and high pitched parts of the sound. The X-Fi, at its release, offered some of the most powerful mixing capabilities available, making it a powerful entry-level card for home musicians." -from wikipedia

and talking about old audio equipment, I have got some old audio equipment, mainly amplifiers that are 25+ years old (harmon kardon and kenwood) and there isn't much top end equipment availiable on the market that can compair to them in terms of fidelity. So my point is the age of a product doesn't mean it's quality is crap by default.

Amen to that. I have some vintage stuff, as well, that's just amazing and can rival anything made today.

 

[T.Kay]

58X just arrived, they sound fine on the AE-5. Probably need few more days to get used to them, but first impressions are great!

 

[R3X]

58X just arrived, they sound fine on the AE-5. Probably need few more days to get used to them, but first impressions are great!

thanks good to know, I may just go for them

 

[Vassilis]

Which analogue cables would you recommend for this card on a 5.1 setup? Any decent 3.5mm male to male brand?

 

[Rroff]

I've tended to buy FosPower but pretty much any brand will do just avoid the ultra cheap stuff.

 

[JasonM]

Doubt a card that old will amount to anything. Onboard sound will prob be better. Though the newer sound cards seem to make sound more realistic.

No way will 7 year old card beat new technology.

Just picking up on the post above that originally came from Toms Hardware.

I have a Gigabyte Z370 HD3P and the on-board is garbage, washed out sound, mids are colored and terrible interference. You could pick up any 90's Pioneer or Technics CD player and it will be superior to the Gigabyte on-board.

 

[V F]

@JasonM Pretty cool that your board has 1 PCI slot though for old sound cards.

 

[JasonM]

@JasonM Pretty cool that your board has 1 PCI slot though for old sound cards.

Yes I have an Asus ST (original legacy PCI version), and it's totally superior to the on-board that's disabled. But then my Creative Titanium HD is superior, my 90's Technics & Pioneer CD players are superior and my Pioneer Amp/Dac's are superior.

And i'll go on stage more, and say I have metal compact cassette tapes (recorded from CD with higher end separates), costing hundreds in the 90's, and the metal compact cassettes sound better and with less background noise than the Gigabyte on-board.

I'm actually planning on making a YouTube video that's compares the Gigabyte on-board audio to high end compact cassette, i'm thinking of calling it 'On board audio sounds worse then compact cassette tape', I would use some licence free YouTube music and A/B between two sources into a high end external DAC receiver.

 

[Vassilis]

Is the sound quality better with the three analogue jack connections compared to spdif with a 5.1 kit such as the Z5500 or Z906?

 

[sgavan]

Is the sound quality better with the three analogue jack connections compared to spdif with a 5.1 kit such as the Z5500 or Z906?

The optical only outputs 2.1 so for 5.1 you need the analogue, I have the z5500 and it sound great