Crystal clear clean warm sound. A Pleasure!

I've always been convinced soundcards users. Although the onboard sounds have increased at least by the technical data forth more and more, they do not reach until now the quality of a solid sound card with good converters and better capacitors.

Although the onboard sound with HD and 7.1 channels will be promoted, especially in the Realtek solutions I've always found the same shortcomings at various boards:

- Sound is flat and cool
- Noise from the speakers when no sound is output
- In playing the sound was spent in wrong directions or accompanied by noise.
- Details in the sound go partially

Sufficiently convincing for the Standard User with insensitive ears, and no possibility of comparison certain insufficient for the connoisseur.

Now for the Creative Sound Blaster Z:

I had to separate myself for a graphics card upgrade unfortunately after many years of my Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music, as my new Palit GeForce GTX 970 brazenly has too thick radiator and thus blocked the single free PCI slot. Unplanned and annoying graphics card upgrade draws consequential costs. But it's also a chance to once again auszuprobiern something new;)

Now I switched with the Sound Blaster Z to PCIe. My choice is therefore like on this card because they for the reviews to be something even better than the X-Fi, no additional power supply needs an additional headphone output offers and pricewise was interesting. In addition, I entschieben me for the bulk version, because I do not need a microphone and colorful box.

Upon receipt I put the board clean-crafted in the bottom PCIe slot, which is actually intended for a 3rd graphics card on my Asus P8Z68V Pro. The card was detected only after installing the driver (Win 7 x64 Prof SP1). The driver CD but I have the same unopened placed in the closet and I downloaded the latest from Creative. Unfortunately, the server is so slow that it took almost an hour to load the 150 MB. Despite fast DSL.

For sound:
After I had the plug finally plugged in properly, the sound came from the right boxes. The label on the slot bracket is so hard to read that I had to look in the manual, what where needs to clean. Contrasting sockets, as with the older cards were standard, unfortunately rationalized.

I use here as a sound system, the Creative Inspire 5300 5.1. So card and speakers from the same home.

After installing the driver, I first tested the speaker allocation and made some adjustments. After a few minutes then turned on music. And I'm thrilled. Super crystal clear sound without interference without noise. Just a pleasant warm and powerful sound. And I find it even more beautiful than my 9 year old X-Fi, for which I had to pay at the time 115.

Conclusion:
Compact and easy card with beautiful sound that will accompany me hope for many more years.