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Overall, in all the environments tested we found the sound quality of the Creative Sound Blaster Z Sound Card to be excellent.
It is certainly an improvement on previous generation X-Fi cards and the software seemed fairly robust during testing. However, we do feel that the Asus Xonar range may have the slight advantage in a few areas, but you do have to pay for the extra quality.
We found the software to be a solid partner for the sound card with many settings to improve the gaming experience, however it could be improved further. For instance; it could load quicker, it could look better and it could be more logical to use.
As Creative themselves put it, the Sound Blaster Z Sound card is an ideal all-round audio and gaming solution and at a price of only £79.99 from OCUK. This is at a slightly lower price point to the ASUS Xonar D2x Sound Card and therefore will target a wider audience. It is certainly ‘worth buying' however and comes highly recommended.
Pros
- Good build quality.
- Value for money.
- Powerful headphone amplifier.
- Easy to use software.
Cons
- Unattractive and slow loading software.
- Stiff competition.
Kitguru says: Good value for money combined with excellent performance. Recommended.
My biggest problem with creative has always been their drivers and software. it is so unoptimised and clunky and often there will be huge bugs which take a long time to fix. I try to avoid them when possible if I was being honest.
How dare you speak the truth Joe!