New Sound Blaster AE-9 and AE-7 audiophile sound cards coming soon

[shuri]

2 hours ago, trag1c said:

The entire point is emi isolation. You get very prominent noise out of both onboard and discrete sound cards.

But the noise floor is still completely unaudiable on both my Realtek and Creative card.

[mr moose]

Audio Snake oil always sells and you can't convince those who buy it otherwise.      Doesn't matter how many repeatable studies come out, some gullible fool will find a way to convince themselves it's not true.

 

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Audio Snake oil always sells and you can't convince those who buy it otherwise.      Doesn't matter how many repeatable studies come out, some gullible fool will find a way to convince themselves it's not true.

 

If sound is flat and dull on some (mostly low end) devices no matter how hard you play with settings and EQ and is warm and full on higher end devices you can call it snake oil all you want, I know what I'm hearing. And everyone preaching about interference and how external is so much better. And then listen MP3's on it. Like, come on, who are you ppl kidding here? At least I'm not pretending about things here, I just like high end sound cards because they sound better. Even with crappy MP3's.

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

If sound is flat and dull on some (mostly low end) devices no matter how hard you play with settings and EQ and is warm and full on higher end devices you can call it snake oil all you want, I know what I'm hearing. And everyone preaching about interference and how external is so much better. And then listen MP3's on it. Like, come on, who are you ppl kidding here? At least I'm not pretending about things here, I just like high end sound cards because they sound better. Even with crappy MP3's.

 Snake oil has nothing to do with comparing to low quality shit.    If you spend more than A$130 you are not getting better SQ.  This is why all the professional audio devices start at that price for the 2 in 2 out model.  Sure you might pay a smidgen more for 5 channels and the dolby license butt hey are extra features not sound quality.  Interchangeable op amps are a joke, I guarantee double blind testing would have everyone guessing which op amp was installed.

 

 most of that sound cards marketing is just that, marketing.   A $20 sound card is shit, absolutely, but to claim a $300 sound card sounds better than $70 External dac when they both have the same quality of parts and design is snake oil.

 

 

[RejZoR]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 Snake oil has nothing to do with comparing to low quality shit.    If you spend more than A$130 you are not getting better SQ.  This is why all the professional audio devices start at that price for the 2 in 2 out model.  Sure you might pay a smidgen more for 5 channels and the dolby license butt hey are extra features not sound quality.  Interchangeable op amps are a joke, I guarantee double blind testing would have everyone guessing which op amp was installed.

 

 most of that sound cards marketing is just that, marketing.   A $20 sound card is shit, absolutely, but to claim a $300 sound card sounds better than $70 External dac when they both have the same quality of parts and design is snake oil.

 

 

I'm well aware large portion of AE-9 price is the desktop unit, but saying 70€ desktop DAC is the same is just a lie. Maybe on paper looking at raw numbers. Despite games not directly communicating with soundcard anymore, the Surround feature does affect 3D sound positioning, particularly on stereo output which is limited to only 2 channels and cannot expand the positioning otherwise and works pretty well on top of how games output the sound. Crystalizer, no matter how much people criticize it, it makes a quite big difference for majority of content. It used to be oversaturated in the past, but now it's tuned perfectly and makes sound really neat for MP3's and games. And don't get me started with EQ that was shit on pretty much everything I tried except Creative (and Auzentech coz it was running the X-Fi chip anyway). Is there even EQ on your external DAC?

 

I'm well aware that we've reached theoretical and physical limit of sound quality, but assuming something sounds good just because it has high raw numbers is silly. Which is where OPAMPs and design of circuitry comes in. The point of swappable OPAMP's is not to make amazing sound quality, it's there to change the characteristics of sound through them. Different OPAMPs make sound different to a degree and some want that.

 

Then again I know the sorts of people who say all this. It's the same kind of people who instantly jumped to A/B testing and SNR and whatnot numbers and totally missed the ENTIRE point of gaming soundcards. Granted, that means less now since Microsoft screwed it all up by killing the HW audio API, but the point remains. Audio purists don't understand game audio and what actually matters to most of us gamers. And it ain't 500€ DAC's and 300€ WIMA capacitors and shit like that. It's cool that they are there, but isn't the main point.

 

If you're happy with that 70€ DAC, great for you. I have different priorities and requirements.

[mr moose]

15 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I'm well aware large portion of AE-9 price is the desktop unit, but saying 70€ desktop DAC is the same is just a lie. Maybe on paper looking at raw numbers. Despite games not directly communicating with soundcard anymore, the Surround feature does affect 3D sound positioning, particularly on stereo output which is limited to only 2 channels and cannot expand the positioning otherwise and works pretty well on top of how games output the sound. Crystalizer, no matter how much people criticize it, it makes a quite big difference for majority of content. It used to be oversaturated in the past, but now it's tuned perfectly and makes sound really neat for MP3's and games. And don't get me started with EQ that was shit on pretty much everything I tried except Creative (and Auzentech coz it was running the X-Fi chip anyway). Is there even EQ on your external DAC?

 

I'm well aware that we've reached theoretical and physical limit of sound quality, but assuming something sounds good just because it has high raw numbers is silly. Which is where OPAMPs and design of circuitry comes in. The point of swappable OPAMP's is not to make amazing sound quality, it's there to change the characteristics of sound through them. Different OPAMPs make sound different to a degree and some want that.

 

Then again I know the sorts of people who say all this. It's the same kind of people who instantly jumped to A/B testing and SNR and whatnot numbers and totally missed the ENTIRE point of gaming soundcards. Granted, that means less now since Microsoft screwed it all up by killing the HW audio API, but the point remains. Audio purists don't understand game audio and what actually matters to most of us gamers. And it ain't 500€ DAC's and 300€ WIMA capacitors and shit like that. It's cool that they are there, but isn't the main point.

 

If you're happy with that 70€ DAC, great for you. I have different priorities and requirements.

 

No we are not assuming anything,  double blind tests have put that notion to bed.  We have reached the limits of the human ears and auditory system.  Barring personal preference for frequency response spending more or a dac of adequate quality is just snake oil. 

 

 

[leadeater]

11 minutes ago, mr moose said:

No we are not assuming anything,  double blind tests have put that notion to bed.  We have reached the limits of the human ears and auditory system.  Barring personal preference for frequency response spending more or a dac of adequate quality is just snake oil. 

It's always personal preference/taste now between similar quality, not similar priced, audio equipment. I've listened to a $250k+ system setup using B&W 800D1 and 802's and still vastly prefer much, much cheaper Martin Logan Aeon i's which are take a zero off the price then half it again, then take a little bit more off.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

It's always personal preference/taste now between similar quality, not similar priced, audio equipment. I've listened to a $250k+ system setup using B&W 800D1 and 802's and still vastly prefer much, much cheaper Martin Logan Aeon i's which are take a zero off the price then half it again, then take a little bit more off.

Speakers are a different beast again as they all have a different response signature.   Some people like the muddy woof of 80's cerwin vegas. Each to their own on that.

[RejZoR]

So do soundcards or external DAC's. Just because they have 129dB SNR it doesn't mean they sound the same. And that's the whole point.

[mr moose]

15 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

So do soundcards or external DAC's. Just because they have 129dB SNR it doesn't mean they sound the same. And that's the whole point.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Audio_woo#cite_note-2

 

 

Do you know what an op amp is supposed to do?  A properly designed circuit utilizing an op amp as either a buffer or amplifier will not change the audio signal at all.  Once an op amp and it's circuit achieves this it doesn't matter how much it costs, that's it's limit,  it can't get better sound quality.  If the signal is the same or any difference is beyond audible observation then one can be $20 and the other can be $2000 and they will both sound the same.

 

 

[Blademaster91]

46 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

So do soundcards or external DAC's. Just because they have 129dB SNR it doesn't mean they sound the same. And that's the whole point.

There is more to sound quality than SNR, and these are gaming sound cards you put in your PC with other components causing interference, so that SNR is mostly marketing nonsense. For gaming I doubt most people would hear the difference over a DAC or even onboard sound.

I'm not an audiophile but I can't hear the noise floor with an onboard Realtek ALC1150 or ALC1220, although I can understand the use of a soundcard if your mobo has defective onboard audio, but spending $300 on a card for gaming is too expensive IMO as there are many cheaper external DAC's that sound the same.

[RejZoR]

It seems like I'm speaking Chinese without even knowing... You people are doing the EXACT same basic mistake all those crazy audiophiles do when you mention them gaming soundcard and they go all crazy with their shtick. We're talking about sound color and you lot talk about interference, SNR and shit. It's like you don't understand basic principles of describing sound characteristics. When I say something sounds flat and dull, what does that tell you? Imagine listening to music by having speakers in thick plastic bags. That's how flat and dull would sound like. That it has anything to do with SNR or interference? No. It seems we aren't even on the same page at all when I'm talking about high end audio. Which is why I don't give a flying fart about how interference free external DAC is and how it's glorious. It doesn't even matter to me. I don't care about "noise floor" of ALC1150 or ALC1220 that has bunch of gold and red WIMA capacitors and stuff and are "good" in terms of output SNR numbers or whatever. They just sound flat and dull every single time no matter what I did with settings or tweaks which is why I just don't use them at all.

[shuri]

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

They just sound flat and dull every single time no matter what I did with settings or tweaks which is why I just don't use them at all.

You should try audio rocks, they really make the bass bassier, mids midder and highs higher

[RejZoR]

Yup, we're done here. If you're gonna act stupid I'm gonna treat you like you're stupid.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

It seems like I'm speaking Chinese without even knowing... You people are doing the EXACT same basic mistake all those crazy audiophiles do when you mention them gaming soundcard and they go all crazy with their shtick. We're talking about sound color and you lot talk about interference, SNR and shit. It's like you don't understand basic principles of describing sound characteristics. When I say something sounds flat and dull, what does that tell you? Imagine listening to music by having speakers in thick plastic bags. That's how flat and dull would sound like. That it has anything to do with SNR or interference? No. It seems we aren't even on the same page at all when I'm talking about high end audio. Which is why I don't give a flying fart about how interference free external DAC is and how it's glorious. It doesn't even matter to me. I don't care about "noise floor" of ALC1150 or ALC1220 that has bunch of gold and red WIMA capacitors and stuff and are "good" in terms of output SNR numbers or whatever. They just sound flat and dull every single time no matter what I did with settings or tweaks which is why I just don't use them at all.

Your the one who brought SNR into this.  Go back over the post history, only you mention it and only you uses it to defend your position.   if you plug the exact same headphones into two different DAC/amplifiers of equal quality , then the only difference you should here is what you want to hear.   They should measure the same and sound the same. if they don't it is because one is broken.

 

This, while looking pretty amateur, is actually a good test and shows just how easy it is to be fooled by seeing a brand name on something or just expecting it to be better. http://matrixhifi.com/contenedor_ppec_eng.htm

 

I have conducted many tests my self in live audio throwing behringer gear in the mix with dbx and sennheiser along side wharfdale speakers and people well experienced in the industry were blown away with the sound (it all comes down to how you use it most of the time). 

 

You see the placebo is huge in audio, our auditory system is very weak and designed to keep us alive not interpret minute details like a machine.

 

 

[RejZoR]

I literally mentioned the numbers because it's kinda expected in a news piece, don't you think? Not once I said something sounds better because it has SNR of 129dB. Not once. Hell, this entire time I was talking about sound characteristics the way we perceive them (ie dull, flat etc), not how they look on paper in numbers. Heh.

[leadeater]

35 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

We're talking about sound color and you lot talk about interference

Sound colour is either distortion/interference or a difference in frequency response/reproduction, and/or both of these. Purely swapping out op-amps for different ones without changing anything else about the circuitry isn't really going to do much at all, you'd have to put in really bad ones to notice a change. As a past owner, I still have it but do not use it, of a ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe changing op-amps doesn't do anything. There's just far too many contributing factors and interacting components for a simple op-amp change to even change the sound colouring.

 

There definitely is differences in audio characteristics between sound cards but that is highly subjective and sometimes can be minor enough it's a physiological effect more than an auditory effect. I do not dispute however that low quality garbage onboard audio implementations are anything other than just that.

 

The other problem is different headphones respond and sound slightly different depending on the sound card due to impedance and resistance characteristics of them. You can prefer a sound card for the way it sounds but if you were to try different headphones it may no longer have that same 'warmth'/'colour' and that may be attributed to the headphones alone where you could actually try them on a different sound card/amp and it'll sound different again.

 

Personally I have designed and made my own speakers, crossovers, digital and analogue audio processors and amplifiers so I absolutely know that there are differences and how and where the apply, it's no easy task to make a well balanced product (many failures under my belt). Some things just make more difference than others, other things have limitations due to the implementation choice like a PCIe sound card (you can only do so much).

 

I am a self confessed audiophile but I am extremely aware of the BS there is in the industry and marketing.

[RejZoR]

The fact is, different soundcard circuitry results in different audio characteristics on the output side. Same goes for speakers hooked to that.

[mr moose]

17 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Personally I have designed and made my own speakers, crossovers, digital and analogue audio processors and amplifiers so I absolutely know that there are differences and how and where the apply, it's no easy task to make a well balanced product. Some things just make more difference than others, other things have limitations due to the implementation choice like a PCIe sound card (you can only do so much).

 

I am a self confessed audiophile but I am extremely aware of the BS there is in the industry and marketing.

I spent ages looking for speakers for my studio, in the end I made them myself because I just didn't like anything in my price range.

I got so excited I even wound the chokes for the crossovers.   (it was the only component I could make).

 

 

 

[leadeater]

Just now, mr moose said:

I even would the chokes for the crossovers

LOL, why.... I'd hate to actually do that myself. You can make a much better speaker yourself though, the actual components aren't actually that expensive. I'm using the same Morel tweeters used in up to $5k products but they actually only cost ~$70 each, though mathematical sum of all parts is highly misleading to look at.

[mr moose]

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

LOL, why.... I'd hate to actually do that myself. You can make a much better speaker yourself though, the actual components aren't actually that expensive. I'm using the same Morel tweeters used in up to $5k products but they actually only cost ~$70 each, though mathematical sum of all parts is highly misleading to look at.

Shits and giggles, I was playing around with guitar coils (I made some for an electric ukulele I built for a friend).  and decided it was fairly easy. 

 

These speakers are easy to push around with the 1/3 oct eq (seen in background), using my measurement mic and room processor I can get them really flat,  which is awesome for mixing and mastering.  

[jasonvp]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

No we are not assuming anything,  double blind tests have put that notion to bed.  We have reached the limits of the human ears and auditory system.  Barring personal preference for frequency response spending more or a dac of adequate quality is just snake oil. 

The mistake you and a bunch of others are making is that you're focused purely on the DAC.  There are, obviously, far more to the entire sound card than just the DAC itself.  There's the driver interaction, the external connectivity, the DSP, as well as how the DAC "colors" the sound.  All of these things can make a difference in gaming; perhaps less so with music consumption.  I've used a bunch of sound output devices on my various rigs: on-board, discrete PCI(E), and external USB.  For gaming, I always come back to the Creative line because I like the configuration options they provide, I like how their DACs color the sound output, and: the damned games just sound good through them.

 

I'm not consuming music with them; nor am I watching movies.  My PC is a gaming rig, and that's all it does.  And for that, I find Creative's sound cards far more enjoyable (there's that subjective thing) to use.  I like that I can connect my mixer up to actual line ins and line outs.  I like that I can run a true surround sound output through said mixer and use the 5.1 studio monitor setup for single-player campaigns.

 

In the end, I'd recommend easing back on the "snake oil" references and calling those out that buy these cards.  Some of us have actual reasons for it and can appreciate the differences they bring.  Even if you can't.

 

[sof006]

I bought my Topping D50 for less and the specs are better.

[jasonvp]

I'm kind of digging the fact that the AE9's external box has an XLR input.  That implies an electrically balanced in, which is definitely a rare thing for PC audio.  I'm still not keen on the mini-HDMI line that runs from the box to the card though; according to their support it's about 4.5ft long, give or take.  And it's fixed on the external module; not something that can be removed or swapped.

[Firewrath9]

20 hours ago, UnrelatedNDA said:

Sound has been my biggest hang up with upgrading. I have been using my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum with the front panel for every single PC I have purchased or built since 2003 and I want to continue to use the thing or find something better.

On board sound just isn't good enough for me and newer Sound Cards don't have the front panel that I am so very used to. Hopefully this new card has all, or at least most of, the same front panel inputs.

The nu audio has front panel coneectors, but rear is still better quality unless it has an amp for front audio