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

A must buy for serious audio lovers..!

I bought AE-9 and have been using it with my Sony HT-RT3 home theatre system which is connected to this card via an optical cable. I must tell you that I have never experienced sound like this in my life and I have used other sound blaster and Asus cards as well in the past. If you are planning to buy AE-7, please don't. Save some more money and go for AE-9 with your eyes closed. Pros: 1. Crystal clear sound that would impress even the biggest audiophiles on this earth. You will hear each and every beat if you are using Dolby/DTS connect mode along with an optical cable. 2. Sound card is made of top notch gold plated components which makes it durable for life. 3. Best part is the Audio Control Module (ACM) which has plenty of I/O options and modes. It has an XLR mic input with 48v phantom power. I am a YouTube creator and checked the recording, it was awesome. 4. If you are creator then you don't need to buy separate interface like Scarlett for recordings, just plug in XLR and record. Cons: 1. DTS connect mode stops working sometimes but that seems to be the issue with almost all sound blaster cards. This is an issue Creative is long due to look at seriously. 2. It's a power hungry card. It needs a separate 6 pin power cable (one used for GPUs). It eats a total of 150W power, 75 from pcie slot and 75 from your PSU. So need to check your power supply esp if you already have a hungry GPU. All in all its the best choice for professionals and rival cards don't even come close in sound quality.

This sound card you must have..it is superb and outstanding.

Great sound card . My primary use it to hook to AV receiver and watch movies over spdif. The sound is far more improved from mother board sound card . The headphone sound is also great . The LED lightings are great. Only disappointment is 32bit/96hz sound is sent through only stereo output. 24bit/96hz is the maximum sent over spdif output. That's why -1 star.

AE -5 plus replaced my 15 year old Xfi Xtreme music card. So let me tell you i am not new to Headphone AMP cards. I also happen to own HyperX Cloud S headphone which pretty good for music and gaming. Coming back to AE-5 plus is like 3 or 4 level above Xfi Xtreme music. So if you are using Motherboard on board audio chip, you basically don't know how much you are missing out on quality of improved sound reproduction this cards offer. Even Xfi blows motherboard on board audio chips out of the water and AE-5 is couple of level above that. Conclusion: If you want audio card - this is gold option. (PS: Creative audio driver and command center are easy to install, no issues faced here)

Worked fine for 1 month after that driver conflicts. Also ae5 plus won’t get detected in device manager. Already replaced once. No customer support. Please don’t buy. My honest review.

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.

Awesome sound!!! I have asus xonar se too but this creative Soundblaster X AE5 plus is really very good Crystal clear sound on games and movies and music. Using my Sony ht s500rf with spdif cable and the sound is just unbelievable. Virtual dolby digital is too good even on YouTube music videos. Looks are very beautiful too