Why does my Creative Sound Blaster Z sound so rubbish?

darael · 3 Jul 2014 at 14:34

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?

darael · 3 Jul 2014 at 15:00

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!

darael · 3 Jul 2014 at 15:16

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.

darael · 3 Jul 2014 at 15:37

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

Arranging an RMA for this other excuse of a soundcard now.

darael · 3 Jul 2014 at 16:21

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.

darael · 3 Jul 2014 at 16:25

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.

darael · 3 Jul 2014 at 16:29

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).

Finally somebody who sees what I mean!

The only real reason I upgraded was so I could install Windows 8.1, as it doesn't like my soundcard.

darael · 3 Jul 2014 at 16:33

What you recommend as a soundcard which Windows 8.1 plays nicely with and has support for one or two older games?

darael · 3 Jul 2014 at 17:51

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?

darael · 3 Jul 2014 at 18:00

I kept getting messages in Device Manager about not being to allocate enough resources. Also sometimes when the drivers were being initialised, Windows would either crash, blue screen or restart. An analysis of the dump files with WhoCrashed pointed to Creative's drivers.

darael · 3 Jul 2014 at 18:02

I use PAX drivers on W7, but I did try them on W8 with the same results as Creative's drivers.

darael · 5 Jul 2014 at 19:12

No idea why, but I thought I'd install a fresh copy of Windows 8, but couldn't get the Sound Blaster Z how I wanted. I put the XtremeMusic back in to see if I could get it purring away and now it's working fine with the PAX drivers!

After some reading online, reinserting the card can help issues like I had with resources - must have been a dodgy connection, I don't know.

So it's safe to say that W8 is more tempremental with drivers and hardware, albeit a little quicker overall.

darael · 9 Jul 2014 at 00:15

I can't help but feel the software was a major let down for the soundcard. Yes of course the new software alienated me for a short time. But it wasn't too hard to see what did what.

I changed oodles of settings for a quite a while, before giving up. I even used a fresh install of Windows with the latest Creative drivers. But nothing made the Sound Blaster Z sound anything as good as my XtremeMusic - it was like comparing AM radio to FM radio!

darael · 9 Jul 2014 at 13:13

rids57 said:
Guess you're stuck with Windows 7 then

No, thankfully!

darael said:
No idea why, but I thought I'd install a fresh copy of Windows 8, but couldn't get the Sound Blaster Z how I wanted. I put the XtremeMusic back in to see if I could get it purring away and now it's working fine with the PAX drivers!

After some reading online, reinserting the card can help issues like I had with resources - must have been a dodgy connection, I don't know.

darael · 13 Sep 2015 at 17:15

I am still using my PCI XtremeMusic soundcard.