Creative Z Soundblaster PCIE Soundcard - Full Review and Feature Debrief
**A Review of the Creative Sound Blaster Z**
I recently had the opportunity to try out the Creative Sound Blaster Z, a flagship sound card that promises to deliver exceptional audio quality. While it has its strengths, I was unfortunately disappointed by some crucial flaws that prevent it from reaching its full potential.
One of my favorite features of the Sound Blaster Z is its Normal Stereo Direct output. This setting provides a clean and uncolored signal that is perfect for everyday use. I preferred this setting over the Cinema mode, which attempts to simulate a cinematic experience with a wider soundstage. While it did sound good, I found the Cinema mode to be a bit too bright and lacking in bass.
The mixer on the Sound Blaster Z is straightforward and easy to use. The standard settings are available, as well as the option to switch between rear and front line inputs. This feature allows for flexibility when using multiple microphones or headphones. However, I did find that the mixer could be more intuitive at times, particularly when trying to balance levels between different channels.
The Equalizer (EQ) is another notable feature of the Sound Blaster Z. The software package offers a variety of pre-set EQ curves, including one specifically designed for gaming. I was impressed by how well this EQ worked, and the fact that it can be saved and applied to specific profiles. This level of customization is particularly useful when working with audio files.
The Advanced Features section of the Sound Blaster Z includes options such as the "placed area mix" and digital out. While these features are useful for those who require more advanced audio control, I found them to be somewhat lacking in their implementation. The profiles feature, however, is a welcome addition, allowing users to save and recall different settings with ease.
**Conclusion**
Despite its many strengths, the Creative Sound Blaster Z falls short of being a truly exceptional sound card due to three major flaws. Firstly, the sound stage on the headphone out is not impressive, lacking the depth and width that I have come to expect from high-end audio equipment. Secondly, the microphone amp is inadequate, resulting in a relatively weak signal. Finally, the inclusion of a separate port for surround sound would be a significant improvement, as it would allow users to easily switch between different audio configurations.
That being said, if you're looking to use this sound card primarily for audio file playback, I would still recommend it. Its DAC is slightly better than that of the Realtek ALC 1150, and it produces a warm, pleasant sound with good bass response. Additionally, its customization options are among the best I've seen in a sound card.
In contrast to the flagship sound card that could have been, but wasn't, this product falls short due to those three significant flaws, which prevent it from reaching true greatness. Nonetheless, if you're looking for a solid audio solution at an affordable price, the Creative Sound Blaster Z is still worth considering.
**Additional Thoughts**
I will be doing a follow-up review comparing several different DACs in the near future, so keep an eye out for that. In this article, I've focused on the Sound Blaster Z's performance and features, but it would have been helpful to include some comparison data with other sound cards in its class.
If you're planning to purchase the Sound Blaster Z, I recommend keeping your expectations in check. While it has many strengths, it is not without its flaws. By understanding these limitations, you can make a more informed decision about whether or not this sound card is right for your needs.
In conclusion, while the Creative Sound Blaster Z falls short of being an exceptional product due to some significant flaws, it still offers many useful features and solid performance. If you're looking for a reliable audio solution at a reasonable price, the Sound Blaster Z is worth considering – just be aware of its limitations.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back to tech ass 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 on board however this the creative z which is the 80 model uh includes a really good dac on board i think it's the 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 it's packaged to a piece of plastic that's 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 maybe it could get damaged in shipping but i'd see it it's highly unlikely now i'm boxing this thing first of all it comes with a cd drive for driver installation you also pick up the unit straight away 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 uh it's pretty snugly 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 louder would be like deafening listening levels for me uh 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 sound stage was severely um nullified like it was just they it was just like the sound stage was missing you know i tested this on games i did some music and it just the sound stage really just got bricked you know this was on my fidelio x1 which have really good sound stage even the on-board audio sounded a hell of a lot better for soundstage than 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 turned the volume up to 100 and i used my i'll show you here i use 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 and when you do that it's really you know i don't know what's going on with the sound card but you know it doesn't do it on the real tech if i turn the real tech down to 20 and put it on through an amp the sound stage is still okay so it's not windows fault i believe it's the creative z's fault so that's the first negative of this sound card if you're gonna buy it the second negative is that the microphone in the amp like man it's a flagship product you shouldn't be uh putting a crap amp on the adc it 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 freaking amp on the mic in i'm not even going to do a test for you guys because it was terrible it was just like hissing and there was noise coming through you know the on-board audio sounded better you know an msi onboard audio solution had a better amp on the mic in than a flagship creative z product pretty pathetic i mean a 30 dgx 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 it doesn't share i mean they they make the mic in and the line in share the same port um 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 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 amb on it sounds crap uh 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 uh 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 going to say a good thing about this though when i hook this up to the objective 2. 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 2 this sound card sounded phenomenal it really did sound crystal clear it sounded better than the on-board audio sounded better than my m-audio fast track it was really good so if you want to couple this with an amplifier or even a fio e6 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 hooked this up to the o2 amplifier even when i hooked this up to the amplifier and using the software suite the sbx 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 created creative's own technology that sounded better than the sbx 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 sbx studio and even watching the demos of the sbx studio just to check if it wasn't just my unit or maybe settings it sounded bad i didn't like it so i don't know why creative's done that with the software but anyway let's just get we'll get on to the good points about this card hey it's built well uh b the software suite is really good it's lightweight we'll go through it now with you guys i mean the software is really good i like it uh we'll go through here so here's the first screen you've got sbx pro shooter now in here you've got a lot of options it's i mean this program is lightweight it won't affect your fps at all so that's something i like about creative they have made a really good software package this time around now the first option you go into the menu you have sbx pro studio you can select from surround crystallizer and base 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 it did sort of give it a nice live sort of echoey echoey effect that didn't distort the sound really the bass did just it distorted the bass a lot i didn't really like that setting was like an echoey 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 just have you know very huge variances in the volume so they've got some good uh 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 um enhancer where you can change your voice into a munchkin or 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-pitched 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 standard settings there you've also got your standard settings which come in the windows as well noise reduction that stuff but scout mode that's another setting that i have mixed opinions about i think in some games it did work well like when i played call of duty ghosts it kind of did emphasize the footsteps which i thought was pretty cool but in sort of games like heroes of new earth it 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 uh this is the speaker and headphone section now this is pretty cool i mean you've got some good settings here you want to select full range speakers 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 coming to your speakers as possible but you know you've got options here 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 sbx settings on the output however if 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 um you know dds 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 lie 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 the dolby digital you 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 when we move on to the mixer you just got your standard settings on your speakers here and you've got your what you're here um oh sorry this is the bit where you can change from rear into the rear line in now if you're like well i want to plug two in at the same time which is what i do you can just cut up a front panel audio and use that for your microphone in and then use the rear as you're 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 uh eqs here i made my own eq for gaming and that was just a slight bump in the mids um you know and that was that that really worked well i mean i think eq'ing is just for that little enhancement i don't really like eq'ing too much as i think it starts if you go way overboard with eq it just starts to 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 uh you know you it's just got here placed area 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 44.1 kilohertz which is most most likely all your flack's going to be ripped in and then you can set the gaming profile on just stereo and have it at 24 bit 16 uh 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 sbx studio not sounding as good as cmss 3d so i mean those three flaws in my opinion just make this a non not recommended by me i mean creative i think they need to fix the sound stage 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 they should also put a line in as a separate port i mean i've got these other freaking ports that i never use um you know if i'm going to use surround sound i'm going to use a freaking coax or you know a digital out so i mean come on creative get on your game this is if you're labeling this as a flagship product you should have it you know you shouldn't have these flaws it should have a good amp on the mic and it should have a really good headphone out that works properly however i will say if you want to get this as an audio file great card to couple with a headphone app then it is a recommended buy even if you want to get something like an e6 from fio that'll make a big difference so um overall i'm going to recommend this card if you know its weaknesses i mean i just think 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 real tech alc 1150. i'll be doing a review comparing a few different dacs for you guys and giving you my thoughts but yeah this does sound a little bit better the sub bass is a lot better it's got a nice little bit of warmth in there that makes it sound really cool um you know yeah so that's the sound signature of the the dac i guess if you want to know how it compares to the realtek 1150 but all in 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 new 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 sound card it shouldn't have those flaws anyways 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 byewelcome back to tech ass 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 on board however this the creative z which is the 80 model uh includes a really good dac on board i think it's the 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 it's packaged to a piece of plastic that's 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 maybe it could get damaged in shipping but i'd see it it's highly unlikely now i'm boxing this thing first of all it comes with a cd drive for driver installation you also pick up the unit straight away 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 uh it's pretty snugly 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 louder would be like deafening listening levels for me uh 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 sound stage was severely um nullified like it was just they it was just like the sound stage was missing you know i tested this on games i did some music and it just the sound stage really just got bricked you know this was on my fidelio x1 which have really good sound stage even the on-board audio sounded a hell of a lot better for soundstage than 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 turned the volume up to 100 and i used my i'll show you here i use 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 and when you do that it's really you know i don't know what's going on with the sound card but you know it doesn't do it on the real tech if i turn the real tech down to 20 and put it on through an amp the sound stage is still okay so it's not windows fault i believe it's the creative z's fault so that's the first negative of this sound card if you're gonna buy it the second negative is that the microphone in the amp like man it's a flagship product you shouldn't be uh putting a crap amp on the adc it 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 freaking amp on the mic in i'm not even going to do a test for you guys because it was terrible it was just like hissing and there was noise coming through you know the on-board audio sounded better you know an msi onboard audio solution had a better amp on the mic in than a flagship creative z product pretty pathetic i mean a 30 dgx 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 it doesn't share i mean they they make the mic in and the line in share the same port um 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 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 amb on it sounds crap uh 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 uh 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 going to say a good thing about this though when i hook this up to the objective 2. 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 2 this sound card sounded phenomenal it really did sound crystal clear it sounded better than the on-board audio sounded better than my m-audio fast track it was really good so if you want to couple this with an amplifier or even a fio e6 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 hooked this up to the o2 amplifier even when i hooked this up to the amplifier and using the software suite the sbx 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 created creative's own technology that sounded better than the sbx 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 sbx studio and even watching the demos of the sbx studio just to check if it wasn't just my unit or maybe settings it sounded bad i didn't like it so i don't know why creative's done that with the software but anyway let's just get we'll get on to the good points about this card hey it's built well uh b the software suite is really good it's lightweight we'll go through it now with you guys i mean the software is really good i like it uh we'll go through here so here's the first screen you've got sbx pro shooter now in here you've got a lot of options it's i mean this program is lightweight it won't affect your fps at all so that's something i like about creative they have made a really good software package this time around now the first option you go into the menu you have sbx pro studio you can select from surround crystallizer and base 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 it did sort of give it a nice live sort of echoey echoey effect that didn't distort the sound really the bass did just it distorted the bass a lot i didn't really like that setting was like an echoey 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 just have you know very huge variances in the volume so they've got some good uh 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 um enhancer where you can change your voice into a munchkin or 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-pitched 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 standard settings there you've also got your standard settings which come in the windows as well noise reduction that stuff but scout mode that's another setting that i have mixed opinions about i think in some games it did work well like when i played call of duty ghosts it kind of did emphasize the footsteps which i thought was pretty cool but in sort of games like heroes of new earth it 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 uh this is the speaker and headphone section now this is pretty cool i mean you've got some good settings here you want to select full range speakers 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 coming to your speakers as possible but you know you've got options here 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 sbx settings on the output however if 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 um you know dds 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 lie 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 the dolby digital you 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 when we move on to the mixer you just got your standard settings on your speakers here and you've got your what you're here um oh sorry this is the bit where you can change from rear into the rear line in now if you're like well i want to plug two in at the same time which is what i do you can just cut up a front panel audio and use that for your microphone in and then use the rear as you're 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 uh eqs here i made my own eq for gaming and that was just a slight bump in the mids um you know and that was that that really worked well i mean i think eq'ing is just for that little enhancement i don't really like eq'ing too much as i think it starts if you go way overboard with eq it just starts to 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 uh you know you it's just got here placed area 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 44.1 kilohertz which is most most likely all your flack's going to be ripped in and then you can set the gaming profile on just stereo and have it at 24 bit 16 uh 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 sbx studio not sounding as good as cmss 3d so i mean those three flaws in my opinion just make this a non not recommended by me i mean creative i think they need to fix the sound stage 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 they should also put a line in as a separate port i mean i've got these other freaking ports that i never use um you know if i'm going to use surround sound i'm going to use a freaking coax or you know a digital out so i mean come on creative get on your game this is if you're labeling this as a flagship product you should have it you know you shouldn't have these flaws it should have a good amp on the mic and it should have a really good headphone out that works properly however i will say if you want to get this as an audio file great card to couple with a headphone app then it is a recommended buy even if you want to get something like an e6 from fio that'll make a big difference so um overall i'm going to recommend this card if you know its weaknesses i mean i just think 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 real tech alc 1150. i'll be doing a review comparing a few different dacs for you guys and giving you my thoughts but yeah this does sound a little bit better the sub bass is a lot better it's got a nice little bit of warmth in there that makes it sound really cool um you know yeah so that's the sound signature of the the dac i guess if you want to know how it compares to the realtek 1150 but all in 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 new 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 sound card it shouldn't have those flaws anyways 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\n"