The Sound BlasterX AE-5 Owners' Club

Do you have speakers plugged in? If so, have you tried removing them and seeing if that fixes this apparent default on boot.

I've not got any externals plugged in at the mo. But I'll try to might.
 
My issue at the moment is the mic level is not fantastic. I've moved away from onboard and razer headphones. Moving first to the game one headphones with onboard, the volume was not much better.

Moving to the ae-5 the mic sound volume is much better but not great.

I have to enable either noise or echo enhancements to remove a noticable level of background hiss, and this is with the windows boost setting at 0%. Either of these setting hurt the voice quality.

Mic sound quality on my surface pro is better!
 
ToTheMax said:
I'm using a cheap XLR condenser mic on an arm and don't have this issue, sounds pretty darn good to me.
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Never the response you want to hear lol!

There are a few threads around with people having similar issues. So it might be environmental or variance in tolerances on the card.

It's by no means bad. But I expect better.

Ill just try another mic to compare perhaps. And double check the headset on my surface again. Mine is a gaming headset mic, I don't know what a cheap XLR mic costs...but likely better.

It's the volume I'm confused about. 50% is blow your ears off loud lol.

My mate has a hyper X cloud with onboard and his voice sounds amazingly clear. Maybe it's just the way I talk lol.
 
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Thanks. I've just check with my Game Ones plugged into the surface pro again and it sounds awesome. However....I checked the settings and Enhancements is "enabled" (doesn't say what the enhancements are). Disabling that and I get the same level of hiss that I hear on the AE-5.

So assuming those enhancements are doing the same thing I would put it down to the headphones itself. Shame, as although they are gaming focused, I would expect more from Sennheiser.

I've just enabled Echo cancellation on the AE-5 and that clears up the hiss and gives just a small loss on voice clarity. I would say enhancement on the SP3 does a better job then the AE-5 though.

So in summary...I think not the AE-5s fault more the headset is the issue. But I will perhaps borrow a high quality mic from someone (I know a professional DJ...so he some have something good!) and try it out.
 
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never have I repeated the same sentence so often testing all combinations of options.

connect: all voice clarity options off.
windows mic properties: mic level: 50 mic boost +10 dB.

That seems to give only the slightest of audible hiss/white noise which is more than acceptable for talking to my mates on discord and in-game.

Not ideal when you want perfection but don't know if you're asking too much for what you spent, but this works for me.
 
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There is definitely a benefit of playing with both mic volume and boost in windows. Made a marked improvement for my game one ae-5 combo by dropping vol down to 55ish and boost to 10%.

Yeah you can clearly hear some hiss in that review, but it's not much.
 
I found the limit of my game ones yesterday by turning up the bass.

Speakers started to distort/clip quite badly. Left ear was weaker than the right.

Still far bassier and louder than I would ever use, but just hope I've done no long term damage to the headphones.

I don't adjust the bass from the default anyway, but clearly did to experiment, and tge volume slide at 50 is my mental maximum. I keep it at 25-30 99% of the time.


Plugged my over ear M2s in and they handled the sound well!
 
RipGroove said:
Anyone else loose Audio from the AE-5 after the latest Windows 10 update (1803)? I have and I can't get it back!!!!!!!!

Anyone know how to fix it? I've had to revert back to onboard sound in order to use my PC :-( I want my AE-5 working again.
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I did. SBC seemed to set my card back to speakers from headphones.

I don't have speakers ..so stumped me for a while as I forgot about the option altogether.
 
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I've not managed to get ScoutRadar app on Android to connect to my computer. I didn't realise there was an update to SBC to allow ScoutRadar to be enabled when not on ethernet (why on earth was it ever restricted to WiFi?). I've manually updated and seen that I can now enable it, but my phone cannot see the service. SBC says all ok, firewall looks good. I can connect to the aPI too remotely (there is a WSDL - Christ what are the developer doing?!!?). But still no luck.

I've tried the only apple device we have (old iTouch) and the app doesnt even start on that.

I don't I use it, but it would be nice to try it.
 
Still loving this card.

But I'm thinking *again* of building a new machine. Kinda worried the ae-5 will be obsolete with all these new top tier mobos I'm looking at.
 
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.
 
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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.
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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.
 
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