Sound Blaster Z: Catastrophe under Win 8.1

[flexy]

Let me just mention the one, good thing about the Sound Blaster Z: The actual sound. If you mess around with the EQ you can actually get "good quality" sound. I won't deny that.

But here the negatives:

* It starts already when you boot the PC and it plays the startup sound. This gets "hacked off" for some reason and doesn't play through entirely. Not that this is an issue, but it's an indication that something is "off" since I never seen such with any other sound card.

* Drivers, epecially that Control Panel are an absolute catastrophe! I got the latest drivers right from the SB site. That control panel takes AGES just to load. Then it is very unresponsive and you have to wait like a minute or so just if you want to select a tab like for the EQ.

* Settings not consistent. (An issue I know already from the old Audigy times under Win7. You select, say, "stereo"...and the next time you check its reset to 5.1 surround. NOW AGAIN, my headphones are set to "5.1 surround". Why? ANNOYING.

* Other settings like mic gain etc. are also entirely inconsistent and seem to change randomly.

* No treble/bass adjustment at the volume sliders. You need to make an EQ profile and don't have treble/bass which for my purposes would be entirely sufficient and MUCH more convenient than loading that slowa$$ SB control panel and set an EQ.

* No 7.1 sound.

* For me very important (main reason I got the Sound Blaster Z) since I work with voice recognition, microphone input:

In my case, catastrophe. I need to boost mic with +30db so Dragon Naturally Speaking can even "hear" me. Extremely noisy Mic input/amp.

I am very disappointed since I didn't have those issues with an old Audigy 2 and Daniel K drivers. I suspected the Z Creative's current mid-end card at least "better" than Audigy 2 or X-Fi, but it certainly is not. Now I am pissed, should've gotten a x-fi Titanium instead...

Edit: Sound output, music, games etc. is really excellent tho.

 

[waxbytes]

Have you made sure the onboard sound is disabled in BIOS?

Creative drivers have always been like a spin on the wheel of fortune, you never know what you're going to get.

 

[flexy]

Yes sure, Realtek drivers deinstalled and onboard disabled. I actually spent some time yesterday comparing the sound output of the both - and now I have to say there is really no objective difference.

Just for gaming and music etc. I'd say the builtin Realtek 1150 is more than sufficient. (Mind you I dont have my gaming PC connected to high-end speakers or anything like that).

And all the extra "enhancement" stuff the Z has is disabled anyway because I don't need it.

Result: I put the Sound Blaster Z on ebay, waste of money.

 

[mfenn]

Result: I put the Sound Blaster Z on ebay, waste of money.

:thumbsup: Solid decision there. Kudos to you for doing A/B testing and determining that onboard is indeed, not bad at all when connected to a typical speaker setup.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Tried the Z and did not like it as well.
Sticking with my modified X-Fis

 

[crashtech]

It used to be that sound cards with onboard DSPs enhanced performance by offloading work from overtaxed CPUs. But most newer systems have CPU cycles to burn.

 

[escrow4]

Sound cards are a waste of money. I had an STX ($150 local currency), fancy pair of Swan M50W speakers ($350 ish) and I set it up with Mafia 2 which I reinstalled and it was great. Then one speaker died in less than a year and I realized that onboard audio is just as good so sold the STX. ALC 1150 (and 898) is more than enough for standard music and gaming. All that said, the sound card did get louder at the same volume level (I did have 892 at the time though) and there was more "richness" but $500 for that meh.