Why does my Creative Sound Blaster Z sound so rubbish?

Cookeh said:
Thats from a review page I was looking at earlier, link is here. It states they have differing chips in the paragraph prior to the one you quote.

I cannot for the life of me find the review I was referencing earlier, however, so Ive really no idea if there was a short run of matching DACs or Wolfson DACs or what... :D:o
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Rroff said:
There is/were definitely reviews of the xtrememusic claiming it uses a Wolfson DAC but I would guess they got confused with the ADC. I remembered about them when the topic came up about the audio hardware in the galaxy note as it was the only previous time I'd heard of them.
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Just in case, I did a search myself this morning. I couldn't find any review or details of an xtreme music with anything other then the 4382 DAC and the Wolfson ADC.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/x-fi-xtreme-music-sound-blaster-review,3.html

http://techreport.com/review/8884/creative-sound-blaster-x-fi-audio-processor/2

It was the budget card in the line up at the time, there is no way it had a DAC as good as the Elite Pro.

Which leads me back to my original point, there is no way the xtreme music sounds better than the Creative Z. :)
 
melmac said:
Just in case, I did a search myself this morning. I couldn't find any review or details of an xtreme music with anything other then the 4382 DAC and the Wolfson ADC.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/x-fi-xtreme-music-sound-blaster-review,3.html

http://techreport.com/review/8884/creative-sound-blaster-x-fi-audio-processor/2

It was the budget card in the line up at the time, there is no way it had a DAC as good as the Elite Pro.

Which leads me back to my original point, there is no way the xtreme music sounds better than the Creative Z. :)
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It seems was getting confused with A/D, apologies!
 
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 said:
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!
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The Z was faulty if that's the case. The control panel in the Z is much simpler than before. I mean it's just slidy bars with toggles for on and off, how much simpler can you get?

I have windows 8.1 and it works fine.

To get what you wanted all you had to do was go to the SBX Pro studio. Tick the boxes for Surround, Crystalizer and bass and then change the levels to suit yourself.

Just curious what headphones and speakers do you have?
 
rids57 said:
Guess you're stuck with Windows 7 then
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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.
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Got the ZXR to change with my 8 year old x-f Fatality due to no PCI slot availabale on my new board and base just sounds **** no matter what i do. Muddy and distorted especially for heavy metal and rock music: overall a bad experience on winamp/Youtube music.
I have a set of Logitech z5500 5.1
I'm Seriously thinking to ditch this card..
 
loque2g4 said:
Got the ZXR to change with my 8 year old x-f Fatality due to no PCI slot availabale on my new board and base just sounds **** no matter what i do. Muddy and distorted especially for heavy metal and rock music: overall a bad experience on winamp/Youtube music.
I have a set of Logitech z5500 5.1
I'm Seriously thinking to ditch this card..
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And are you connected to the Logitech Z5500 using digital(optical or coax)?
 
I have to agree with the OP here.

I originally had a XtremeMusic which did me well for many years until it finally gave up the ghost and started giving me issues in regards to the good old "Snap-crackles & pops" and kept going missing in device manager for no apparent reason. So i bought a SBZ from my place of work and took it back the next day. Oh and the main factor that it squealed it's backside off in my system. No matter what i did with the settings it seemed to try to hard with the bass and trebles/mids just didn't sound right.

Probably down to staying with the same soundcard for many years before hand. But to be honest i didn't like all the gimmicky bit's they have added. Well more so what they call their settings these days.

So now i'm on a Asus Xonor D2/PM and for my personal preference it's spot on. I listen/create more music than play games these days so it suits my needs :)
 
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I was under the impression the Creative Sound Blaster Z was just a gaming card and not much use for surround sound systems.
 
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