Gadgetory

welcome back to tech s City and today I'm going to be reviewing the Sound Blaster Z from creative now there's two models of this there's a creative Z well there's also the ZX which just includes some controller module and then there's the zxr so the zxr has a different DAC onboard however this the creative Z which is the $80.00 model includes a really good DAC onboard I think it's a cirrus logic so it's got a really good DAC on it anyway let's look at what you get in the package first basically this comes packaged pretty damn well you know when you first unbox it you know it's packaged to a piece of plastic that sort of strapped in and I don't see it really getting damaged in shipping there was a little bit of shake though in the package so be mindful of that maybe if the postman is overzealous and it maybe it could get damaged in shipping but I see it as highly unlikely now I'm boxing this thing first of all you comes with a CD drive for driver installation you also pick up the unit straightaway and you notice that it is pretty damn impressive it also comes with a beam foaming microphone which honestly I haven't used because today I'm not really going to be recommending this product there's actually in my opinion some design flaws and we're going to talk about that soon but let's talk about what you get I mean the actual product itself it feels really good it's a well-built product it comes with a nice create Sound Blaster Z shield it looks good it lights up red there's a fancy red LED that lights up and you know overall it's got a black PCB so it looks pretty good on the back as well it's pretty snuggly it's a nice slim fit and the rear has all gold plated connectors on it so the build quality of this sound card is really good I'd say the LED would get a little bit annoying which would leave me to give it about a 9 out of 10 for build quality I mean it does feel really solid it feels like a good product however that's where the good points kind of end for this because when I'm going to get onto the negatives first because if you're buying this product it's important that you know what is wrong with it essentially basically it comes with a nice headphone amp that's really powerful basically when I was surprised I could only turn this thing down I could only have this at 20 when I was listening to my headphones it was that damn loud any would be like deafening listening levels for me so you know the headphone amp is really powerful but it has a major flaw and that is that when I when I was listening through this headphone amp the soundstage was severely not nullified like it was just a is this like the soundstage was missing you know I tested this on games I did some music and just that the soundstage really just got bricked you know this was on my Fidelio ex ones which have really good soundstage even the onboard audio sounded a hell of a lot better for soundstage then the creative Z did now if you're buying a flagship product this shouldn't be happening I mean I did correct it when I turn the volume up to a hundred and I used my I'll show you here I used the inline volume control on the v-moda Pro boom Pro to control the volume but not everyone will have a volume control so a lot of people have to use the windows volume control when you do that it's really you know no I don't know what's going on with the sound card but you know doesn't do it on the real take if I turn the realtek down to 20 and put it on through an amp the sound stage is still okay so it's not Windows as Foulke I believe it's the creative Z's fault so that's the first negative of this sound card if you're going to buy it the second negative is that the microphone in the amp like man it's a flagship product you shouldn't be putting a crap amp on the ADC it's just like you know when I put it on I you know did a mic test it sounded worse than the onboard audio I mean what the hell this is a flagship product put a good freakin amp on the mic and I'm not even going to do a test for you guys because it was terrible just like hissing and those noise coming through you know the onboard audio sounded better no an MSI onboard audio solution had a better amp on the mic in that a flagship creative Z product pretty pathetic I mean a $30 DG acts from a Zeus has a really good amp on the mic in so I was just a little bit disappointed with that I mean it doesn't now another point is that doesn't share I mean it they make the mic in and the line inch the same port I mean I don't like that but it was you know I knew that before I bought the product if that was the only flaw with this product I could live with it the fact that that you know the headphone out is is not that good like it's got it's got a floor the mic in you know the amp on it sounds crap you know and then there's also another problem with it so and that is that you know there's also people who are getting audio control modules and saying that that reduces the sound quality as well so if you're getting the ZX model just be careful of that so I don't know if this problem plagues the zxr I mean I hope it doesn't but the creative Z just has those two in my opinion flaws fundamental flaws that just make them don't make them that good I'm gonna say a good thing about this though when i hook this up to the objective - it sounded phenomenal this sound card really came to life the stereo direct out it's got an option in the menu to put stereo direct out and when I did that through the objective to this sound card sounded phenomenal it really did sound crystal-clear it sounded better than the onboard audio sounded better than my M audio fast track it was really good so if you want a couple this with an amplifier even a Pheo X six then I could recommend doing that but you shouldn't have to do that on a flagship product so I'm going to be saying that again okay so let's move on now to a point that I didn't like so when i hook this up to the o2 amplifier even when i hook this up to the amplify and using the software suite the SPX surround which was a reason why i bought this it just didn't sound that good like i was playing my games and it really didn't sound that good you know when i watched youtube videos of the cmss 3d which just creative zone technology that sounded better than the SPX surround I mean why did they get rid of cmss 3d I thought it sounded really good when I was watching the YouTube videos and people showing demos of it and then I hear SPI studio and even watching the demos of the SBS studio just to check if it was just my unit or maybe settings it sounded bad I didn't like it so I don't know why creatives done that with the software but anyway let's just get get onto the good points about this card a it's built well be the software suite is really good it's lightweight will go through it now with you guys I mean the software is really good I like it we'll go through here so here's the first screen you got SPX pro shooter now in here you've got a lot of options I mean this program is lightweight it won't affect your FPS at all so that's something I like about crap that have made a really good software package this time around now the first option you go into the menu have sbx Pro studio you can select from surround crystallizer and bass you can turn these settings on personally I just left them all off because they weren't that good I mean the crystallizer was good I thought it was like a fun setting the crystallizer was a fun setting I did if it was one setting out of the three that I really liked and enjoyed it was the crystallizer did sort of give it a nice live sort of echoey echoey effect that didn't distort the sound really the bass did it distorted the bass a lot I didn't really like that setting I was like an echo a bass that sounded crap and then you got smart volume as well which is a good feature if you're listening to a lot of music or a lot of things that have you know very huge variances in the volume so they've got some good good things in there and the crystal voice this is something I really like about the software side I mean the mic the amp sucked but the software was really good you've got a voice enhancer where you can change your voice into a munchkin all this other kind of stuff so it's got some cool features there so if you play video games and you hear people sounding like girls high-pitched girls it's because they're probably using this software and changing their voice into a high pitch girl now the monitoring type here you can switch from the microphone you can change it to the line in as well here as well you can change it to the line in and a microphone if you wish to you've got the mic volume there which you can set in the mic boost so just just standard settings there you've also got your standard settings which come in the windows as well noise reduction that stuff the scalp mode that's another setting that I have mixed opinions about I think in some games it did work well like when I play Call of Duty ghosts it kind of did emphasize the footsteps which I thought was pretty cool but in sort of games like here is a newer that just sounded terrible so I mean I think it's a hit or miss for the game you're playing so scout mode can work it just depends on the game this is the speaker and headphone section now this is pretty cool I mean you got some good settings here you want to select full range speakers that it'll give you I mean it doesn't really make a difference I couldn't really hear a difference but I mean hey you want the most you know frequencies come in these speakers as possible but you know you've got options here a stereo direct you've got here headphones and you've got stereo just standard stereo so if you use stereo direct you cannot use the SPX settings on the output however you change it to stereo you can use the settings you know the core 3d processing and you can get the fancy effects like crystallizer you know DTS surround and stuff like that let's move on now to the cinematic so this is a cool part as well I mean the software is really good on this I'm not going to like the software features on this card are really good they are indicative of a flagship product and you've got here the option to encode to Dolby Digital got here to code DDS surround and you can do it in cinema mode or music mode and both those both the cinema mode music mode actually sounded pretty good for gaming they didn't really make a difference I just preferred the normal stereo direct so but you know they do offer a different sort of feeling for movies it did sound pretty good I watched a movie and it sounded really good so the cinema mode actually does work pretty well I like it the mixer we move on to the mixer you just get your standard settings on your speakers here and you've got your what you hear I'm sorry this is the bit where you can change from rear into the rear line in now if you like well I want to plug to it at the same time which is what I do you can just go up a front panel audio and use that for your microphone in and then use the rear as your lining you can switch between them so it's not really that big of a problem the equalizer this is actually another cool feature of this software software package and you know you can select they've got different EQ s here I made my own EQ for gaming and that was just a slight bump in the mids you know and that was that that really worked well I mean I think EQ is just for that little enhancement I don't really like echoing too much I think it starts if you go way overboard with EQ it distorts the sound way too much but this EQ software works really well you can save your own profiles in there and I really like it let's look at the advanced features of this card you know it's just got here place dairy mix the digital out so that was really all that was there nothing to talk about much there you've got the profiles as well so another good thing about this sound card is you can select from different profiles and you can save one profile for audio file maybe stereo direct out another profile you know and the good thing is you can say that stereo direct profile and have it at 24-bit forty four point one kilohertz which is most most likely all your flax going to be ripped in and then you can set the gaming profile on just stereo and have it at 24-bit 16 48 kilohertz okay so in conclusion this sound card I mean it has a lot of things that could have made it a flagship product I mean if it wasn't for those two crucial flaws this thing would have been a really good product I mean three if you count the SPX studio not sounding as good as cmss 3d so I mean those three floors in my opinion just make this a non not recommended by me I mean creative I think they need to fix the soundstage on the headphone out I think they need to put a better mic amp on the mic in and I think they I mean if though they should also put a line in as a separate port I mean I've got these other freaking ports that I never use you know if we're going to use surround sound I'm going to use a freakin coax or you know it's a digital out so I mean come on creative get on your game this is if you're labeling this is a flagship product you should have it you know it shouldn't have these flaws it should have a good and on the mic and it should have a really good headphone out that works properly however I will say whiff you want to get this as an audiophile grade card to coupled with a headphone app then it is a recommended by even if you want to get something like an e6 from Pheo that'll make a big difference so overall I'm going to recommend this card if you know its weaknesses I mean I just think that you know they could have done these things and this card would have been a 10 out of 10 it would have been just so amazing because the DAC on this does sound better than the realtek LC 1150 I'll be doing a review comparing a few different Dax for you guys giving you my thoughts but yeah this sound a little bit better the sub-base is a lot better it's got a nice little bit of warmth in there that makes it sound really cool you know yes that's the sound signature of the DAC I guess if you want to know how compares to the realtek 1150 but all yeah I just you know I'm not going to test the microphone the beamforming microphone I'm just going to be selling this because you know just keep that microphone you and I'll just sell this because I just wasn't impressed with the product I mean I think if you're buying an $80.00 sound card it shouldn't have those floors as I hope you enjoyed this review and if you have any comments about the Sound Blaster Z please leave a comment in the comment section below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can and peace out for now I'll catch you guys in a tech video soon bye