Why does my Creative Sound Blaster Z sound so rubbish?

darael

darael

darael

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I thought that purchasing the PCIe Creative Sound Blaster Z would be an upgrade compared to my PCI Creative XtremeMusic - after trying to set it up for a few hours, it still sounds obsolutely cheap and nasty on my 5.1 stereo.

There is so many gimmicks in the drivers, it's just plain wrong. All I want to do is setup my surround sound and add a little bass and treble. But to do this, you need to adjust individual speaker levels.

With the old soundcad, I would adjust the surround sound to about 50% and add bass and treble to suit. Simple!

Does anybody have any suggstions before I return this thing for a refund?
 
What sort of controls do they give you for surround sound, bass and treble?

It's annoying. I can almost get the sound how I think is acceptable, open a game up and it sounds like I've got my head underwater!
 
Having used the Z for a fair while What features are you trying to use.

I disabled most of them as they are cack.
 
I'm not sure that I want to use any of the features, to be honest with you. As I had with my XtremeMusic, I just want good, consistent sound. It's almost like I should be grateful for having any sound with this Sound Blaster Z.

I've tried to use Google and find the page I want, but this is as close to the screen I can find. I'm going to install my XtremeMusic after removing this thing and I'll show you what I mean.
 
No there probably isn't a quick setting you probably do have to set each part separately.

Which games do you play do they have settings? have you adjusted them too (example CSGO has 5.1 2.1 2.0 and headphone profiles.)
 
The fact I have posted again so quickly, shows just how quicky it took me to get my audio set back up how I had it. Fair enough, I know the software - but I had to change about 4 things:
1 - Speaker configuration to 5.1 speakers
2 - Bass, treble and mater volume (first screenshot)
3 - CMSS 3D Surround to Stereo Surround
4 - Stereo Envelopement

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Arranging an RMA for this other excuse of a soundcard now.
 
The Z is a very good card, so either yours is faulty or you've messed up the settings. Not sure why you would be adjusting individual speakers, there is certainly no need to do that.

Surround: make sure the surround box is ticked and adjust via the slider.
Bass & treble: adjust to suit via the equaliser
Job done.
 
I wish I could agree with you, but it's such a mess on to get almost-acceptable results. Then you load a game and stuff sounds just...bad.
 
I have to disagree, I set mine up and it worked perfectly for games and music and I only moved up to the STX because the Z didn't have the grunt to drive my 250ohm DT990's hard enough.
 
In my last screenshot you can see almost every option I need on one screen except speaker setup (ie: 5.1, 7.1 etc). Why does the Sound Blaster Z seem to make this so difficult?

I might try this on Windows 8.1 using a spare harddrive and report back.
 
rids57 said:
The Z is a very good card, so either yours is faulty or you've messed up the settings. Not sure why you would be adjusting individual speakers, there is certainly no need to do that.

Surround: make sure the surround box is ticked and adjust via the slider.
Bass & treble: adjust to suit via the equaliser
Job done.
Click to expand...

Coming from the XtremeMusic (if its one of the early versions with the XRAM, etc. - the later ones after they took the XRAM off used cheaper components) I'm not sure the Z is actually better those early ones were a bit underrated - I've gone back to mine mostly due to its compatibility with BF4 but they really did have great audio quality. (Only downside is the XtremeMusic are known to degrade over time and the later ones with cheaper components even more so).
 
Rroff said:
Coming from the XtremeMusic (if its one of the early versions with the XRAM, etc. - the later ones after they took the XRAM off used cheaper components) I'm not sure the Z is actually better those early ones were a bit underrated - I've gone back to mine mostly due to its compatibility with BF4 but they really did have great audio quality. (Only downside is the XtremeMusic are known to degrade over time and the later ones with cheaper components even more so).
Click to expand...
Finally somebody who sees what I mean! :D:D

The only real reason I upgraded was so I could install Windows 8.1, as it doesn't like my soundcard. :(
 
TBH I didn't notice the Z as being bad, though I only used it briefly, found it had similar issues as other cards with BF4 and went back to my old XtremeMusic again but those older XMs are quite good.
 
Can't really help with that I'm afraid - only device I've got that I've used Windows 8 on much at all is a tablet.
 
Older XtremeMusics were Creatives Flagship cards, the Sound Blaster Z is one of Creatives mid-range cards. DAC technology progress has been extremely slow, if not non-existent in recently so its perfectly plausible that the XM DAC/encoding is better than the Zs. Its not hard to see or even explain as to why the Z sounds inferior ;)
 
Having tried Windows 8.1 on a spare harddrive, it's still sounding rubbish. I give up, I'm just waiting to RMA it.

Does anybody have suggestions for a more suitable card, ideally which has support for one or two older games?
 
Whats wrong with the XM?

Its probably going to have to be the STX to get anything similar in performance.
 
The latest beta drivers worked ok for me for the brief time I used the XM on Windows 8, only had 8 on briefly for benchmarking though.
 
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