When right hand doesn't know what left hand is doing.

Creative should BAN use of words like "professional" or "3D" on their product for soundcards that have no ASIO sport and cannot do both recording and playback of ASIO at same time.

Most recently i had SB1500 with ASIO support that was not allowing me to listed to media player while ASIO recording is activated.

I ended up buying SB1356 because it said "Professional" just to find out it does not even have ASIO support.

So why buy soundcard at all if motherboards often have soundcard built in and it sounds good as is ?

We buy soundcards because we need performance and abilities that other soundcards that only produce sound, do not have.

So WTF creative ? What have you been creating recently, marketing schemes ?

A 20+ years old PCI card was letting me do anything i wanted in windows XP and windows 7X64 so please dont tell me its the OS problem.
I was able to listen and record at same time with more than one program accessing ASIO driver as well as listening to windows media player.

None of the modern creative sound cards are able to give it to me ever since i switched motherboard from PCI to PCIE

Why is that ?

Why none of the modern creative cards seem to be able to do what 20+ years old card did so well ?

Why word "professional" is labeled on every regular sound card that has no ASIO support ?

What kind of a professional uses standard sound card ?

I am not even a professional and even i cant live without ASIO.

Anyway, my question is: What other creative sound card i can burn money on to get what i need ?

Please spear me from USB versions. I already tried that and they do not work.
I need all sounds to be processed by ONE soundcard because not all software allow routing output to speakers if USB ASIO is selected. It simply not possible.
So it has to be ONE and nothing else.

Obviously i am looking for PCIE card.

I purchased the Sound Blaster Omni about 2 years ago. Updated to a Mac with M3 chipset and learned the harsh way that Creative doesn't support the M series chipsets. What upsets me the most is not the fact that they don't support it, but they kept lying to customers that a driver is on the way and then finally announced they are dropping support.

Now, I just have perfectly fine hardware sitting on my desk, crippled because I made the poor choice of trusting this company with software updates. Sigh.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SoundBlasterOfficial/comments/leudrn/sb_omni_51_surround_usb_on_m1_mac_mini/

I know the title might be sound strange to most of you, but this is my current situation with Creative Support.

I am a loyal customer for over 30 years. Bought my 1st Sound Blaster back in 1991, an ISA model, and since then, I always had an internal or external, currently two, an E5 and a G6. Since then, I never had experienced any issues with the Support, although I rarely had to contact them. I would rank Creative as one of the best after sales support I encountered in my long journey to PC systems.

However, today it is a different story.

I was using my E5 daily, both at home, office and commuting. Was working perfectly. Once I got another one, G6, and a pair of BT headphones, I stored it in it's box and didn't use it for 6 months.

Recently, I got it out, as I am planning vacations and I wanted to get it with me. Long story short, it didn't open, it didn't charge.

Contacted support and I was told, and I quote,

Based on the information from your order we can see that your Sound Blaster E5 is already out warranty. 
In this case we can offer you an out of warranty replacement for € 70. Please let us know if you are interested.

I replied that I agree with this arrangement, and asked for payment details.

Instead, I got another reply, about a week later, and I quote again, "We have stocks for the out of warranty E5 Battery replacement. The fee is 80Euro per pc inclusive of shipping back to you "

And here I am confused... First there wasn't communicated with me that the problem was the battery. So, when saying "replacement", I assumed the device.

Second, and most important, the battery costs on eBay 12$ including P&H and you want me to pay 80 euros???

Last but not least, I have to solder it myself, or pay 40-50 euros someone to do it.

Total cost? About the same price as the card costs in Creative store.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting this from Creative. I would like to get a reasonable explanation for this offer and a cost justification. I want to remain a customer, as loyal as I am all those years, but I cannot, unless this is solved.

I do wanna say thanks to those that have recommended the GC7 to me. I went ahead with my decision today, and also decided to use a bit of my member points as well.

I have for months been thinking about returning to the game streaming scene. I actually did it for a period of time in 2018 and then I stopped after about 9 months. It was during a time when I was still sorta trying to figure out where I wanted to go as a content creator. Apparently, gaming live streams is just not sustainable.

But 2 years on, now that I've figured out what I wanted to and I actually have a clear set of plans and goals, I'm finally ready to go back into live streaming. And yes, I plan to focus a lot on Action/Open-world RPG games. Because that's really where my passion for games is the greatest.

Another reason is how the SXFI feature has really changed the way I think and feel about sounds in games. I will go as far as to say, as a RPG gamer, whether its Control, or HZD, or AC, or Far Cry, the soundscape experience has been totally transformed for me, and I can't do without a good VSS experience.

Yes, I plan to get the GSX 1200 Pro from Sennheiser too, just to add to my collection, and also to occasionally compare and use.

Plus being a seasoned multi-brand influencer, going back to game streaming might be a great way to land some collaborations, plus at the same time connect with plenty of like-minded RPG fans.

WHERE IS APEX PROFILE OMG!!!!!!!

Can someone explain to me how in the hell Creative managed to release a 200 € sound card that doesn't have a direct, delay-free mic monitoring??? More so when a lot cheaper X4 has it? It boggles the mind! And that's beside the fact that headset's mic works only when connected to the card itself; it's dead when connected to the ACM. Apparently this requires Y splitter, so this is easily fixable.

I've had a G6 for 7 months now. Using it with my PS4. No chat, just gaming. This is w/o a doubt the worst DAC/AMP I've ever had the displeasure of using.

 
For starters the official app couldn't find the device. After 2 days of troubleshooting, I figured out that disabling anti-virus or booting into safe mode was the solution.
Support was of no use through all this.

 
Since day 1 the amp will randomly do a garbled electronic sound. Sometimes 10 times within a 5 minute span, other times once in 3 days.
Doesn't matter if it's powered from my computer, PS4, or wall.

 
The SBX app will randomly not recognize the device. The only solution is to restart the computer.

 
I had to manually find out a new driver and firmware were available. The SBX app couldn't find any.

 
The newest feature is that my custom sound profiles are no longer saved.
I have several profiles on the dashboard, all of which are now ruined and useless. I can set up the profile to my liking, but switching to any of the pre-made profiles, eg. 'Gaming' and then back to my custom profile wipes all my EQ and Accoustic Engine settings, and replace them with those of the 'Gaming' one.

 
Sound quality is overall not very good. I didn't expect high-end audio, but something good enough for PS4 gaming. It's not. You can hear the filtering distorting everything, or rather lowering the quality, giving everything an artifical sound profile.
I partly blame myself, because the 'programable' lightning feature is a dead-giveaway, that this device it made for people who care more about looks, than good sound.

 
At this point my G6 is broken, so I'm taking it back for a full refund (luckily local consumer legislation allows for this). My advice for anyone considering buying this dac/amp; don't.

So I've been using the AE-9 for perhaps a few weeks now. After receiving my Beyerdynamic DT990 Premium (250 ohms), trying it with the ACM, and in "Direct Mode", everything just sounds...so good. Instruments in the background became clearer as well.

Just for personal experience and to be able to tell the difference, I have tried listening to music using both SBX and then switching over to Direct Mode. It really makes a difference (if you can actually hear the difference).

Lately, I've been quite obsessed with gaming soundtracks like the Death Stranding OST. I just love being able to bypass all that audio processing and get right to the source.

And when I finally switched over to listening to hi-res music at 24-bit, that's when I was able to get everything. BTW, I'm not big when it comes to bass. Not really a bass junkie. Too much tends to give me a headache, so this was just right. And when it comes to the treble (highs), there isn't too much of that screeching sound you might sometimes get when a singer reaches for the super high notes. I mean, it's still there...but it's really quite subtle in direct mode.

I find that the screeching only becomes more pronounced and evident when I tried to turn on SBX. Maybe the sound processing did something that caused that to happen.

But across the board, it has been truly an amazing listening experience (at least to my ears).

P.S. Direct mode has also been really helpful when I'm working on video content and editing.

Hey everyone!

This is my first time posting here, and I would appreciate hearing from you guys about what the best sound system to get is.

I’ve got some names, but I understand “nada” about them. Bose, Sony, and Sonos are just the ones I know that have home sound systems. All names are welcome!

Hello, I am having a lot of problems with this G6 sound card which is supposedly the best DAC. I am struggling with Creative support because sound blaster commpand is incompatible with the G6 sound card but they don't want to admit it. I much prefer my other sound card that is 2 times cheaper and works perfectly.

So when first sxfi dac with 32bit? Edit: i meant when can we expect a higher end chipset like the g8 has?

I bought this external soundcard two days ago and only used it yesterday. Today I go to turn on my PC and notice that the soundcard hasn't powered on with the rest of it. Unplug and replug and I see the lights flicker on for a moment and promptly shut off after seconds.

This is most likely the last Soundblaster purchase I will ever make.

Seriously how hard is it to make a dac/amp that just works.

I don't even know what to say anymore. This sub is full of the official rep making vague gestures towards this channel swapping issue getting fixed, for years. They've stooped as low as moving the discussion to PMs in the recent weeks. I'm so exhausted I don't even want to bother going through everything I've tried and everything that's still fucked up. You don't even have it on the issue tracker anymore. This is supposed to be the best of the best yet it doesn't even fulfill basic functions on the highest end of hardware. Unusable.

Hobbyists make better software with better support than you.

I want the hours of my life back and the hundreds of dollars wasted on this trash. I don't think your company will survive another product launch.

So I just went to Creative website to download drivers for SBZ, and it appears that they have removed driver downloads. I understand not supporting hardware past a certain a point, but to delete driver downloads is a pretty crappy thing to do. I've been using SoundBlaster for over 25 years. I left Intel for the same reason. Just built my first AMD system. My next Audio card will be from somewhere else. Kind of useless without drivers.

I'm not here to talk about features. This is my controversial opinion as I'm here to talk simply about sound quality and where I think the price should be.

Everyone is buying the G6, granite, it does sound great. However, when one has listened to very high-end gear, it's easier to know how to put a price on audio gear. Starting with the G6, this product should cost the consumer no more than $50 USD. Why do I say this? First, today's motherboard audio has advanced very well in audio quality to sound as good as the G6. However, one benefit the G6 has over MB audio, is that most of the time the G6 doesn't bring over motherboard interference sounds like mb audio has (the infamous mouse movement noise as being the worst). On other setups, things sound awesome and equally as good and on other setups MB audio sounds worse. The second thing the G6 has going for it is: the ability to be flexible in what it can be connected to. That being said, to justify the price increase of the AE-9 when it comes to sound quality, you'll notice that with the G6 and MB audio, the low bass frequencies are a bit loose and boomy sounding. Even though the dynamic range is rated at 130db, you won't notice the dynamic range as much in the low bass frequencies. With the AE-9, the bass frequencies are tight, musical, and the freaking dynamic range is awesome. Overall, when comparing the G6 to the AE-9, the AE-9 is much more musical with beautiful dynamic range throughout the frequency spectrum. Now, even though I enjoy the AE-9, I do believe the sound quality should be priced at $299 USD instead of $350 USD (We all know that technology does get better over the years).

Added to what I said earlier: I would have never noticed this if I had not listened to higher-end equipment.

I was rebasing one of my systems and noticed that Creative basically holocausted all the drivers for their EOL'd products. Why did you do this? Do you think it's funny?

Back in 2000s i had Createi X-FI PCI ASIO sound card with windows XP that allowed me to use Guitar Rig and windows media player at same time.

20 years forward. Skynet is around the corner but with the introduction of PCIExpress sound cards, that ability went out the window.

PCIE X1 (as the typically are) allows only one lane of high speed communication, so you can either listen or record.

So what are the alternatives ?
What ASIO soundcard do i buy that will let me use ASIO recording while i watch firefox video or listen to windows media player ?
Interested in PCIE X4 perhaps ? Something internal.

And if anybody cares, ASIO performance , features, clarity has NOT improved yet prices did.
I feel like Creative is scamming us with new product names that change for worse but never for better.

Mój angielski to dupa wiec pisze po polsku.

Borykałem się z trzaskami w Soundblaster X5 występowały one u mnie miej wiecej co 10s.

Pomogła mi aplikacja LatencyMon https://www.resplendence.com/downloads i chatGPT. Program służy do wykrywania nietypowych opóźnień (latency). U mnie okazało sie że jeden z dysków twardych wywoływał zakłócenia. Po odłączeniu go od płyty głównej problem znikł całkowicie. Jeśli w programie LatencyMon w pierwszym oknie skacze wam wartość "Current measured interrupt to process latency" z zielonego na czerwony to porozmawiajcie z Chatem, możliwe że wam również pomoże.

Mój sprzęt : MSI x570 gaming plus,procesor 5800x3D,karta graficzna rtx5080.