At first we would like to thank Creative for offering us a sample of their Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition Hi-Resolution PCIe Gaming Sound Card for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About Creative:

 

“Creative is the worldwide leader in digital entertainment products. Founded in Singapore in 1981, Creative started with the vision that multimedia would revolutionize the way people interact with their PCs.

 

Famous for its Sound Blaster sound cards and for launching the multimedia revolution, Creative is now driving digital entertainment with cutting-edge audio solutions, premium wireless speakers, high performance earphone products and portable media devices. The company's innovative hardware, proprietary technology, applications and services enable consumers to experience high-quality digital entertainment - anytime, anywhere.

 

Since launching the phenomenally successful Sound Blaster sound cards and setting the de-facto standard for PC audio in 1989, Creative has been able to leverage on its leading-edge audio technology, a huge user base of 400 million, and strong brand name to expand into the exciting lifestyle Personal Digital Entertainment (PDE) market.

 

Creative is now well recognized as a global leader for product innovation in the audio and PDE segments, offering consumers a complete, high quality digital entertainment experience through Creative's hardware, software applications and services. Finding the perfect balance between form and function, Creative strives for every product to be a sensory feast for the eyes and ears.

 

Today, Creative is spearheading new product categories with its groundbreaking Sound BlasterAxx audio enhancement devices and solutions, highly-acclaimed Creative D5xm Signature Series of modular Bluetooth wireless speakers, Aurvana premium headsets, Sound Blaster wireless gaming headsets, and cross-platform Sound Blaster Recon3D for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC or Mac.

 

These products and solutions are marketed to consumers and system integrators through a worldwide distribution network that includes traditional marketing channels, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and the Internet.

 

Moving forward, Creative's mission is to expand its leadership role in the lifestyle Personal Digital Entertainment market, using groundbreaking technology and leading-edge designs for not just the technically-savvy consumers, but for everyone who enjoys entertainment. With strong focus on user-friendly interface, multiple features and cool industrial designs, the Creative brand is synonymous with lifestyle Personal Digital Entertainment.

 

Creative's global corporate headquarters is located in Singapore, in the heart of the Asia-Pacific region. It has regional business units in the US (Milpitas, California), Europe (Dublin, Ireland) and Asia (Singapore).

 

Creative is a public listed company on the main board of the Singapore Exchange (SGX) since June 1994.”

 

Product Features:

 

Xamp Discrete Headphone Amplification

 

The Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition is the first sound card to feature Xamp, our custom-designed discrete headphone amplifier. Each audio channel is individually amplified, allowing the AE-5 Pure Edition to deliver a whole new level of pristine audio fidelity in an unaltered lossless model to each earcup regardless of demand.

 

SABRE32 Ultra Class DAC

 

The Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition is a SABRE32 Ultra Class PCIe DAC which is perfect for high resolution audio for games, music and movies. It delivers up to 32bit 384kHz playback with a 122dB SnR, ultra-low distortion and jitter.

 

Aurora Reactive Lighting System

 

Enjoy a symphony of lights and sound with the Aurora Reactive Lighting System! The AE-5 Pure Edition has customizable RGB LEDs on its body, and also features four included RGB LED strips. Program up to 16.8 million colours in different patterns with the free downloadable Sound Blaster Connect software for PC and Mac.

 

BlasterX Acoustic Engine

 

The Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition rides on Sound Blaster's long legacy of audio processing and enhancements. The BlasterX Acoustic Engine Pro is a suite of fully customizable audio processing technologies that deliver new levels of audio immersion and precision for the ultimate competitive advantage. These sound technologies create unprecedented levels of audio realism, including stunning 3D surround effects for your speakers and headsets.

 

Scout 2.0

 

Expand your horizon with the world's first smart gaming companion that enables you to visualize and see where enemies are on the radar on your mobile device for any First Person Shooter game. Scout mode has been given an updated feature that is sure to bring the pain to whomever you meet on the battlefield!

 

 

Product Specifications:

 

 

 

New internal sound card launches are quite rare nowadays, mostly because of the lack of tech advancements in this particular segment but also because of the appearance of the USB-driven gaming headsets, which have integrated dedicated cards within them. In this article we will concentrate our attention upon the latest card launch from Creative: the Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition, which is a SABRE-Class Hi-Resolution product and DAC with Xamp. Xamp is basically a custom-designed discrete headphone amplifier (left-right channels are individually amplified), for delivering unaltered, lossless model to each earcup. The product is shipped inside a medium-sized cardboard enclosure, with a photo of the actual card on the top cover, along with its main highlights, represented as icons:

 

 

 

The product manufacturing date and serial numbers can be seen listed on the side:

 

 

 

On one of the other sides, we can see a photo of the cards’ interfaces, along with the device types we should connect to it:

 

 

 

Moving on, we will spot some drawings that do represent the package contents, but also the link to the software resource (Sound Blaster Connect 2):

 

 

 

In-depth technical specifications can be seen in multiple languages, on the back:

 

 

 

The inside contents are carefully protected with foam material, in order to avoid damages during transit:

 

 

 

As a bundle, we will receive a transparent envelope with documentation, but also four RGB LED strips:

 

 

 

To be more exact, we will receive a Sound BlasterX leaflet, an User Manual, one Worldwide Warranty document but also a RGB LED cable adapter:

 

 

 

The adapter provides the necessary interface in order to use the extra RGB LED strips:

 

 

 

With the Sound BlasterX leaflet, Creative introduces us to the BlasterX Team, along with some more Internet resources:

 

 

 

Inside the User Manual, we will find instructions on how to perform the card installation, a description of its interfaces in detail, pin-outs, but also some words on the software GUI, in multiple languages:

 

 

 

The provided RGB LED strips come in white colors, with black wiring, in order to complement the cards’ theme:

 

 

 

On the back of each strip we will find 3M adhesive tape:

 

 

 

Each strip does have 10 LEDs on its PCB, while the top cover is made of silicone:

 

 

 

Four small magnets are present here too, which do simplify the installation procedure if the computer case is made of steel (or comes with a steel frame):

 

 

 

In the middle of each strip, we will get to see a Sound BlasterX Pro Gaming logo:

 

 

 

Now we will move on to the card itself! The AE-5 Pure Edition is also wrapped inside an anti-static bag, in order to prevent accidental discharges:

 

 

 

AE-5 features an aluminum shielding that is accompanied by a plastic cover in the top right corner (in order to display the Aurora RGB LEDs):

 

 

From left to right, Sound BlasterX AE-5 does come with the following interfaces:

 

-Line-In / Mic-In

-Headphone

-Front (L/R)

-Rear (L/R)

-Center / Subwoofer

-Optical Out

 

 

On the side, the sound card presents itself with the RGB LED strip extension cable connector, but also a nice RGB-lighted logo:

 

 

On the bottom PCB area, we will also find a nice black/white design:

 

 

Another LED RGB logo can be spotted here:

 

 

 

The back of the card does feature a MOLEX connector for powering the RGB setup, but also a HD Audio Header for connecting the frontal panel jacks:

 

 

 

After removing the top shroud, we can see how the aluminum and plastic components are fit together:

 

 

 

Here is how the board does look; unlike some previously tested sound cards in the past, the AE-5 Pure Edition does not feature replaceable Op-amps:

 

 

 

The card does us a Takamisawa A5W-K relay for easily switching between headphone and speakers outputs:

 

 

 

Near the RGB connector, we will also find the card code name, which this time is SB1740:

 

 

 

The audio processor found on the card is the CA0132-4AN Creative Sound Core3D:

 

 

 

Nearby, we do have the ESS ES9016K2M 32-bit 8-channel DAC, a proven component which is used in many other audiophile applications; the DAC is surrounded by four TI L4562 chips:

 

 

 

The secondary Creative chip is the CA0113-4AG, which is a HDA bus controller and was also found with the Sound Blaster ZxR, reviewed back in 2013:

 

 

 

The WIMA capacitors are a available for the Xamp implementation:

 

 

 

The RGB LEDS located on the top right corner of the PCB do help with the lighting; the PCB is also built in this area in order to allow light to shine through:

 

 

 

The Sound Blaster Connect 2 interface is intuitive and can be used for enabling many of the cards’ features; its main dashboard area does allow the user to select one of the preset profiles that contains different listening scenarios, but also configure the BlasterX Acoustic Engine on-the-fly. Here we can turn the Lighting on/off, EQ, enable Scout Mode, Voice Clarity or Voice Morph:

 

 

 

The 10-band EQ can be manually configured and is accompanied by separate configurations sliders for Bass and Treble:

 

 

 

Many presets are available as well:

 

 

 

The Acoustic Engine does feature a separate section, where we can work with the Surround, Crystalizer, Bass, Smart Vol and Dialog+ functions. These were present with many Creative products we have tested in the past:

 

 

 

Scout Mode helps the player to hear with ease distinctive sounds such as footsteps, weaponry and so on, in order to enhance the game experience:

 

 

 

We do have three separate operation modes to our disposal for the DAC’s interpolation filter:

 

-Fast Roll Off

-Slow Roll Off

-Minimum Phase

 

 

 

 

In order to help with the voice Clarity, we can choose to enable/disable Noise Reduction, Acoustic Echo Cancellation or enable Smart Volume:

 

 

 

Some very funny Voice Morph presets are available from the next Voice tab:

 

 

 

The Lighting panel does allow the user to configure the Aurora RGB setup from the cards’ PCB, but also separately for the connected strips:

 

 

 

Depending on the selected mode, we do have different options of configuration:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Connect 2 application does also allow the user to create an account for receiving some benefits:

 

 

 

From the Speaker Setup menu, we can choose different configurations depending on the connected hardware; we can select from different speaker types as well:

 

 

 

Creative has also made available a Calibration feature:

 

 

 

The Mixer area allows us to enable Stereo Mix playback to Digital Output, but also choose the function for the multi-purpose inputs:

 

 

 

The General tab from the Settings menu gives the user the option to change the language of the interface, but also choose the distance units. The GUI can be allowed to run at Windows startup and from the same screen, we can search for new application updates:

 

 

 

Lastly, we can reset the application settings to default:

 

 

 

Test Setup

 

CPU: Intel I5 8600K Retail

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14

Motherboard: BIOSTAR Racing Z370GT6

RAM: GEIL PC4 25600 3200MHz CL16 8GBx2 Samsung B-die @ 2133MHz

Video: KFA2 GeForce GTX 1060 6GB OC

Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W

SSD: OCZ Vector 150

Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840

 

In order to test the card performances, we have used RightMark Audio Analyzer and setup loopback between the front output of the card and the back input of the Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition.

 

Remember! These results are not to be taken as reference because each computer system configuration can produce different noise levels, so you may obtain lower or higher performance results than the ones listed here.

 

16-bit, 44kHz

X-Fi Titanium HD

Creative Sound Blaster ZxR

Creative Sound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1

Creative Sound BlasterX G5 7.1

Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition

 

16-bit, 48kHz

X-Fi Titanium

Creative Sound Blaster ZxR

Creative Sound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1

Creative Sound BlasterX G5 7.1

Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition

 

24-bit, 48kHz

X-Fi Titanium HD

Creative Sound Blaster ZxR

Creative Sound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1

Creative Sound BlasterX G5 7.1

Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition

 

24-bit, 96kHz

X-Fi Titanium HD

Creative Sound Blaster ZxR

Creative Sound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1

Creative Sound BlasterX G5 7.1

Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition

 

After finalizing the hardware installation of the the AE-5 Pure Edition card to our test system, we did proceed further with the Sound Blaster Connect 2 installer, which did also contain the necessary drivers; in order to have the Aurora RGB setup functional, we also have to supply extra power via Molex., After adjusting the EQ with our preferences, together with the BlasterX Acoustic Engine settings, we did start the listening experience by connecting the SteelSeries Arctis Pro headset and watched various movies and TV shows. The audio output was clear, with plenty of bass and clear highs and loud enough as well after modifying the amplification, thanks to the Xamp build. We also ran multiple rounds of Quake Champions and the sound of the weapons was a joy to listen to and at the same time we were able to easily pinpoint where the enemy was coming from.

 

The microphone testing went really well in long Skype conferences, with the ability to reduce noise, acoustic echo or enable Smart Volume. We did also work with different Voice Morph presents, in order to have fun with our friends: dwarf, demon, kid, chipmunk and many more.

 

The ESS SABRE32 DAC takes it one step further by allowing 32-bit 384kHz playback, which is quite overkill for many applications nowadays. Versus the previous products, Creative does also introduce the new Scout (v2) with Scout Radar so you can see where your enemies sit at on your tablet/smartphone, while playing FPS titles.

 

While we did really enjoy the sound signature of the AE-5, we could mention that the current hardware implementation does not allow the ability to switch Op-amps as you could do with the older Sound Blaster ZxR.

 

The only negative point regarding the AE-5 Pure Edition is the fact the Aura Reactive RGB lighting does require extra power from a Molex connector, an aspect which could mess up a bit cable management on some builds. For people that do not intend on using the supplied RGB strips right away, it would have been interesting to see the on-board LEDs being powered by the PCI-Express slot alone.

Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Pure Edition Hi-Resolution PCIe Gaming Sound Card is Recommended for:

 

 

 

We would like to thank again to Creative for making this review possible!