Creative Sound Blaster AE-7 Hi-Res Internal PCIe Sound Card, Quad-Core Processor, 127dB DNR ESS SABRE-class 9018 DAC, Xamp Discrete Custom Bi-amp, Discrete 5.1/Virtual 7.1, Dolby, DTS Encoding (Black) Option 3: 127dB SNR with Audio Control Module

I love a good sound card, I upgraded to this one from the zx series and initially loved the sound, however I was quickly introduced to the channel swap bug that plagues some hardware setups. Mostly amd but I was on Intel and from what I can tell there is no fix. So I get channel swapping all day and it sucks. It is apparently creative issue and I would have dropped it down to a 1 star but the sound of the card is amazing and I know once my old mobo is updated the issue will be gone.

Fantastic Sound! SO much better than the Realtek that came with the motherboard. The interface is friendly and has tons of options. Where it really shines for me is when I plug in my headphones. I never even knew what I was missing. Now I am totally immersed in the game. I did have a problem of not hearing YouTube sound as it was muffled. Contacted the chat line (provided in setup) and discovered it was simply a bad driver download. They picked up in less than 1 minute and very helpful. Yea, it costs a little more but you will never need or want another :)

Item arrived promptly, in perfect sealed condition.

In the IT industry we have a saying... "garbage in, garbage out" meaning if you give a computer system bad data you will get bad data. this holds true with any type of electronics including speakers. if the source is outputting bad audio, the speakers will reproduce that. good speakers are only half the equation, this is the other half. for the most part you will not find a sound card like this integrated on a budget to mid line motherboard... there is a reason this cost more than the average motherboard just for a sound card. first of all, if you don't have Studio monitors or headphones you can skip over this. you won't hear a difference because your speakers or headphone cannot reproduce the output. I have a set of Klipsch pro media THX certified speakers and a set of AKG studio headphones which are budget for sure but still studio quality and I'm in love with the sound this card provides. the sound stage is very detailed and instruments you didn't know where used in the music come through. it's a whole new level of detail. My previous sound card was a Sound Blaster Audigy FX V2 with DBPRO daughter board... that card was nice, but this is next level. the only thing I don't like is the lack of an internal front panel audio header. the included external volume controller is a bit odd... it doesn't actually control the volume on the computer just the volume of the actual output so it's just another separate volume control adding complexity... if it accidentally gets turned down you can adjust the computer volume till your blue in the face, it won't fix the issue. also, it only adjusts the headphone volume. I think for the price they could have put a bit more thought into that accessory even if it had to take up a USB port to control the volume on the computer. that's a minor complaint. I will just eliminate the volume control if it becomes an issue. I do also kind of wish the LEDs on the card were RGB and addressable but that's not a problem. this is getting out of gaming sound cards and into professional studio equipment... That croud doesn't really care about RGB effects. the non-adjustable white and amber lights on the card are a classy look. the Sound Blaster logo on the top glows white and the AE-7 on the back on the card glows amber. if you want decent sound and RGB go with the AE-5. The AE-5 isn't going to give you the sound that this card does however.

Was hesitant to invest money on a sound card, but I wanted to use my DTS system to the fullest. After long research decided to pickup AE-7 Pacakge was cool Build Quality with LED is awesome Configuration is easy, but need to spend time in understanding the terminologies Register self and product in the SBC app to save the configurations, if not you will have to configure every time you restart. Not using the external controller for now, but an usefull one for content creators Mounted on a MSI B560 MB this is working like a charm. Splits the channels beautifully. Slightly over priced , but a GOOD one for what we pay.