Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus SABRE32-class Hi-res 32-bit/384 kHz PCIe Gaming Sound Card and DAC with Dolby Digital and DTS, Xamp Discrete Headphone Bi-amp, Up to 122dB SNR, RGB Lighting System

My Experience with Fixing Popping Sounds and Poor Audio Playback Hey everyone, here’s the deal: I’ve been battling nonstop audio issues on my system since I built it. My setup includes: Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX Z790-E Gaming WiFi Audio: Onboard Realtek sound Speakers: Dell Altec Lansing ADA995 THX 5.1 The Problem: From day one, I’ve had relentless popping sounds. It wasn’t terrible for music or movies, but every new audio event caused a pop at the start. To make matters worse, only the left and right speakers worked properly. During a Windows speaker test, I could hear sound from all speakers (center, left, right, and rear), but in actual playback, I couldn’t get all speakers to work together, no matter what I did. I’ve spent 20+ years in IT, so I tried everything: Disabled power-saving modes for the Realtek card using a registry hack (worked temporarily on another system). Tried installing the latest drivers through ASUS Armory Crate. Disabled the virtual driver, installed Realtek's app from the Microsoft Store, and downloaded every piece of software from ASUS and Realtek. Reinstalled drivers at least 10 times (as of January 2025). Nothing worked. The sound quality remained poor, the popping persisted, and my speakers refused to cooperate in harmony. The Solution: This week, I hit my breaking point and decided to try a dedicated sound card. I ordered the Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus SABRE32-class Hi-res Gaming Sound Card off Amazon for around $130. Holy. Crap. What a difference. All my speakers now work beautifully. The card includes an amazing built-in EQ, which lets me adjust individual speaker volumes. I cranked up the rears, boosted bass, treble, and mids, and tweaked everything to perfection. No more popping sounds. My system now sounds 3X better. I also downloaded Sound Blaster Command (Creative’s software), which is surprisingly excellent. I typically avoid letting extra software run on my system, but this one stays. It’s my digital EQ and totally worth it. Pros: Crystal-clear audio, no more popping. Full control over individual speaker volumes and EQ settings. My 5.1 system finally delivers the sound quality I’ve been chasing for years. Music sounds incredible, and my system cranks like never before. Cons: There’s a bit of reverb from Sound Blaster Command that I’d love to reduce by about 25%, but I haven’t found the setting yet. Final Thoughts: If you’ve been suffering through Realtek’s onboard audio issues like I have, do yourself a favor and invest in this sound card. This upgrade has been a total game-changer for me. Thanks, Sound Blaster, for bringing joy back to my audio setup. Realtek, on the other hand... well, you know where I stand. I hope this helps someone out there! Cheers, A happy human (soon to be deaf).

Easy to install, good sound quality, great functionality.

Great sale card for any PC enthusiast. Audio has been perfect and the quality build of this card is phenomenal and highly recommended easy install and set up was a breeze. It was a great bargain when I purchased it and wasn't sure if it was gonna be the right one for me but definitely was amazing. The RGB function works great that matches the interior of our PC so if you can get this at a great deal go for it. You won't be disappointed.

The software on this, is a little strange but nothing an afternoon playing around with the varying settings can't fix. That said, this is an incredibly solid little unit. My other sound card was an Asus Essence STX. Putting this card in, solved a lot of strange quirks the other card had, straight away that I thought was a receiver problem, as I run the pc to my Yamaha receiver. I could never get the surround sound to work right with the receiver, nor get the Dolby or DTS to truly work. Somehow the encoder on it, wasn't compatible with the receiver. That said, I had zero issues with that on the Creative here. It immediately received the signal, went right into surround and I've been off to the races since. There's a lot more sound settings you can adjust on this card than the asus unit I had, and it's incredible how much difference every sound setting can make. I started with the equalizer, much like I did with the asus. But unlike the asus, I could tell it exactly what kind of speakers I have, in addition to their placement. The sound itself, is dramatically fuller and warm. The RGB is a nice touch and addition to the pc of course, and the leds themselves seem to be of a pretty good color range compared to some other products out there. There is also decidedly less coil whine coming from my pc now, and a lot of strange foibles I had with sound sources, are gone. Having had the Essence for seven or eight years, and coming to this one I've got a pretty good comparison. Both are great, this one's better. Both blow away the motherboard mounted stuff, by a long ways. Of the two, I'd recommend this, every time. It sounds better than the Essence II, as well (which a friend has).

A great sound card, just make sure that it fits below the graphics card, as it can block the air flow if there are fans on the bottom of the case.

Audiophile ZTUNE, COMMENTS. Microsoft sound controls is a mixed bag of issues, drivers, surround sound issues, stereo verses surround sound sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, etc. After battling with WIN 10 and 11 to get that rich sound and to keep the preferred sound settings each time I boot up, I came to realize, it was not going to happen especially listening to UTUBE where using a PC is awful, since UTUBE presents a low quality Sterio output. Haven't used a sound card since the late eighty's when it was common to use the sound blaster 16. So, if you want to return to that original, rich, sound you used to get with a classic stereo system and a record player I highly recommend you abandon the windows system 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound junk and get a sound card to independently have control of the sound to get the sound you expect. This card gets you that, installed the card, connected it to the output to my classic stereo system with A & B speakers and, yep there it was, a return to sound of the good old days! The digital to analog conversion is Awesome with this card and the software was easy to use and gives you total control of the ear candy!

This is the singular worst sound card I've ever had, which mostly comes down to the terrible software and drivers needed for the device to function. - Sound randomly cuts out for seemingly no reason. Sometime it'll happen once in a day, sometimes it'll happen 10 times in 20 minutes. - Audio will randomly include static while streaming or watching videos for seemingly no reason. - Sound Blaster Command is the singular worst piece of software I've ever had the displeasure of using and is required to use the majority of functions on the device. I've had to completely reinstall the software and driver multiple times because they just randomly stop working, the program would just crash when starting and would never run again. Uninstalling the software and then reinstalling it in the same file location would cause the new installation to crash immediately. I would have to choose a new file location when reinstalling every time to get the program to run again. The program is slow and unresponsive even when running and would constantly cause issues, such as swapping my left and right channels and taking forever to swap settings when functioning normally. The driver and software would also cause significant negative impact on my computer, causing the system to slow down and games to run poorly while the software was running. The only solution I've found is to completely uninstall all related software, making this sound card a fancy paper weight. The software also has not had an update in 4 years and it seems unlikely the manufacturer has any interest in improving the software needed to run this device. After encountering these problems and doing further research online, these issues seem to be common and unsolvable even when working with the manufacture, as most people have just purchased a different device. This was in a brand new rebuild of my computer using Windows 10. Avoid this sound card at all costs.

Mejora mucho la calidad de sonido en la pc . Tengo placa madre gamer con salida digital de sonido pero con esta placa se escucha mucho mejor sonido y se puede ecualizar

Runs like water, performs like a cake. Not perfect but still very good. Count me impressed. Definitely better than motherboard sound card.

Card sounds fantastic and was fairly easy to set up, however like many others, it was undetected by the Sound Blaster Command software at first in Windows 11. Updated app and drivers, still not detected. For me, the solution was going into the BIOS and disabling my onboard audio. Card was detected immediately after that. Another solution is to mount the card into a full length PCI slot instead of the shorter PCIe variety as it'll work in both. Afterwards, setup was a breeze. Enabled DTS encoding so I can run audio through SPDIF into my receiver, while keeping the main 5.1 speaker setup at my PC. I run a fiber optic HDMI cable to my TV but it doesn't support more than stereo PCM so the DTS encoding allows me to get 5.1 to the receiver through a separate SPDIF optical audio cable from the sound card. I do this because my TV is in the living room about 50ft away from the PC desk setup. The sound is obviously better via analog 5.1 instead of through compressed DTS, but miles above being stuck with only stereo until I can upgrade to a receiver that supports HDMI 2.1.

Surprised to see the output from a Sound card delivering DTS / Dolby enhancements. I purchased Mayflower ARC MK2 and this product is way far superior. Only challenge I faced is, RGB thing which in my gaming CPU, there are no more power supplies for RGB which became a drawback. Otherwise for my Denon AVR 7.1 this sound card is proving worthy sibling in Audio Journey.

Las opciones de post procesamiento de audio del dsp de la Creative Sound Blaster AE5 Plus son excelentes. La compre porque la AE7 me dio problemas en linux, y la AE5 y AE5 Plus son perfectamente compatibles. Con esta tarjeta la salida analogica es perfecta. Sin tuidos, interferencias y los audifonos tienen un excelente volumen y defininicion que no se tienen en una tarjeta de audio integrada a la mobo. Ojala creative algun dia opte por dar soporte oficial a Linux, seria una maravilla.

presa per sentire come suona l'audio a 32 bit..avendo avuto sempre la audigy 2 a 24bit questa fa sentire bene anche i click e tutta la gamma molto alta di frequenze per il resto gran prodotto la migliore per me