Sound Blaster Z PCIe Gaming Sound Card with High Performance Headphone Amp and Beam Forming Microphone

I don't review a lot of things that I purchase, but I felt that I had to give this item a shout out. I've been using on-board sound for the last 10 years or so (sad, right), but it seemed to be "OK" for my purposes. I play some games, I listen to some music, and I watch movies and such on my computer. For the most part, I couldn't complain about on-board sound because it did what I wanted it to do and satisfied my purposes. I remember when I was a child my dad had a gaming rig (this was back in the mid 90's, so we're talking a quote on quote "gaming rig") which came with an old school creative labs sound blaster card. Back then, the cards weren't near the technology level we are at now, but I clearly remember my dad saying sometimes how much he loved his sound card (which didn't make much sense to me at the time), so I decided to give it a shot.The original reason that I purchased this card was because I got a couple amazon gift cards for my birthday and decided that I would give it a shot, and partly because it seemed to me like my on-board sound was giving out, and I didn't want to pony up the cash for another motherboard and have to take everything out of the old one and put it into the new one. By giving out, I mean that it seemed like it was playing sounds quieter than it used to and there seemed to be some anomalies being introduced into the sound, such as some crackling and such. Not enough to cause worry, but a little annoying. For a bit of background info on my sound setup: using an Asus motherboard, although I got it probably 6 or 7 years ago, and I have a pair of decent quality turtle beach headphones.The first thing I noticed after getting it set up: massive increase in simple volume. You don't quite realize how important this is until you have all your volume sliders set to 100% and you're still wishing you could turn it up another 10%. Then, all of a sudden, you have to turn them down to 20% just so your ear drums aren't bursting in your headphones. A lot of people think volume is everything, but this is not so, especially with this card. Once I got the volume down to a tolerable level, I then noticed the depth of the sound that was now being pumped out by this card. Bass was much more bassy, and the highs were much more toned. Listening to some of the music I listen to and drawing comparisons from memory, I started to notice certain things that I never noticed before: some particular highs I probably had never heard before and the bass was so much more solid all the way around. Not to mention that the crackling and other assorted anomalies that seemed to be creeping into the on-board sound were no longer present.The only negative things that I can come up with is the fact that it doesn't work immediately with Windows 8.1 (which is what I have). This new feature in Win 8.1 that involves quick shut down prevents the system from recognizing that the card is in the PCIe slot, unless you turn off the quick shut down feature. The reason I'm still giving this card 5 stars is because it only took one simple google search to find out the reason and change that - the speed of shut down / start up has not changed one iota since doing that and now the card is recognized every time the computer turns on. Besides that, the packaging was slightly difficult to open up (it had twisty ties at 4 different places that were holding the card into the foam), but it was a simple thing to grab a pair of scissors to snip them. The other negative thing (and this isn't truly a negative) is that I don't use the attached microphone since the turtle beach headphones I have include a built-in microphone which is easier to use.On to pros and cons:PROS:- Giant increase in overall volume- Bass is much rounder, much more depth- Highs are beautiful and not toneless- Everything in between is great as well- For the price ($100 or so) the difference in quality is overwhelming- Simple to insert into the PCIe slot- Comes with its own software you can install on your system that lets you tweak the settings and modify the different levels. I use the "flat" default setting, and it's fantastic. I may tweak it a bit in the future, but for now, I enjoy the default setting.CONS:- Doesn't immediately work with Windows 8.1 until you change the quick shut down function- A tiny bit difficult to get out of the packagingI don't have a 5.1 setup at home to test how well it works with a surround speaker setup, but with a pair of decent headphones and stepping up from on-board sound, this is definitely a worthwhile purchase if sound quality is important to you. Just remember to turn your volume down low and move up from the bottom once you get it into your system!

I upgraded from a Creative X-Fi Platinum card because of driver issues with Windows 10 Technical Preview (builds 10041, 10049, 10060, 10074). My I used my X-Fi for about 10 years and loved it, but the drivers didn't seem to work right with Windows 10, even the modded "future proof" drivers designed for it. The card worked, but it had an annoying repetitive clicking noise while Windows was loading, and it was stuck in Gamer mode - every time I would change modes, the sound drivers would crash any time it tried to play digital audio, and then I'd get no sound until I reinstalled the drivers. I am pretty sure Creative is done trying to make drivers for the card. It seems to have outlived its support which is a shame, considering how awesome it still is. I was even more disappointed that they don't even make a card with the Audio Drive anymore. So I decided it was time to get something more current and future-proof that had a SPDIF In - Sound Blaster Z, Zx, and ZxR seemed like the only affordable cards with that feature.I just installed Sound Blaster Z, and so far I had absolutely no problems installing it and making it work in Windows 10. I am not a gamer, and haven't really gotten to check out everything this sound card can do, but so far it has beautiful, reliable, crystal clear sound. I loved the X-Fi Platinum (especially all the I/O ports), but I will be so happy to leave the cumbersome mode switching in the past. I use this card mostly for listening to music and sequencing synth tracks on a Korg M3. Hoping for at least a small system performance boost with the upgrade, but not expecting much.UPDATE:Equipment connected to SPDIF-In seems to have small but noticeable delay. I have a Korg M3 Keyboard connected to it, just as I did my X-Fi, which seemed to work great. With the Sound Blaster Z, there is a fraction-of-a-second delay that is just long enough to throw a musician off while trying to play keys! In most other cases, this should not cause any problems for anyone... in the case of hooking up a musical instrument to Digital Input, it's unacceptable, and I'll have to find another solution. This is a bummer because I bought this card over ASUS Xonar because it had an optical SPDIF port. I have not contacted Creative support about this, but their forum members only told me to "update the drivers" which was a lame and ineffective response. Otherwise, this card still sounds wonderful, and survived the build 10122 update.UPDATE #2"I did find a work-around to the above problem. Search for and download the PAX drivers. You will have to disable driver signing, and then use device manager to "update" the Sound Blaster Z driver. I've read that PAX drivers are poorly coded, but in this instance, it completely solved my problem.Build 10130 presented a new problem....suddenly no sound. To fix this, you can change the playback frequency. For mine, I set it at 24-bit @ 96,000 Hz and I had no problem. SPDIF only works at 48,000 Hz also. Hopefully this will be addressed in the next build.____________________________My System:Dell XPS 410 (It's old, but it runs beautifully with some newer parts!)Intel Core 2 Quad QX-6800 2.93 Processor8GB RAMWindows 10 Pro Technical Preview (current build 10074)NVidia GTX 750 tiSpeakers - x2 Alesis M1Active 520 via Analog Out