CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER X7 USB 127dB SNR SES KARTI

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Perfect... once you fix the noise problems
By Conner Boehmer on March 1, 2015
Verified Purchase
The audio quality is better than my ZxR soundcard. I can't really tell the difference, but the ZxR has 124 SNR, and this has 127. What does that really mean in practice? I have no idea, probably not a whole lot, but knowing it's technically better makes me feel good. The audio does seem to have more "oomph" to it, but I'm not sure if it's my imagination or not. This cost $500 so I'm going to convince myself it's not my imagination. Yeah, what am I saying, this is definitely better!

The real reason I bought it though was for the Dolby decoding. I was formerly using another device from Creative (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005FKT70O/) in order to listen to input from my PS3 with virtual surround sound (since I use headphones), so this device does the job of that and my soundcard all in one, letting me free up a PCIe slot in the process.

I did have a bit of a noise problem with it at first. Turns out there's like three different things that are causing noise. One is the bluetooth receiver. By going to mixer in the control panel and muting the bluetooth, one source of noise disappears. (UPDATE: The bluetooth no longer makes noise in the latest firmware update).

Another thing you should definitely mute is the line in/mic-in. Otherwise whenever you touch the device or move the cord of your headphones, you'll sometimes be able to hear it through your headphones as some kind of feedback. Try tapping on the device with your fingernail, you'll hear it. This happens even if you don't have "Listen to device" checked in control panel. It's very subtle, and you might not even notice it's happening, but it is, so be sure to mute that mic-in.

One more source of noise happens only when it's set to 16-bit shared mode (which it is by default)