News Creative Technologies announces Sound BlasterX AE-5

RGB in a SOUND card? Oh for f*&%s sake...

And the really galling thing about it? The one thing, ONE thing a sound card RGB light controller might be able to do over the RGB controller built into every bloody other device nowadays, the ability to control the lighting based on the current audio output? IT DOSN'T EVEN BLOODY DO THAT! FIXED PRE-SET PATTERNS ONLY!

 

RGB all the things.

 

PRO GAMING !

£45 sound card £55 LEDs £50 gaming name tax.

 

If you like case lighting this kinda makes sense from a neatness and convenience pov. It is mad that despite using the word "reactive" it sounds like they didn't include a proper reactive lighting option. I could see a lot of people buying it if it had that.

 

It's a good idea actually, I have a Soundblaster Z which has a red LED, which is fine at the minute because I have a red & black themed case, but I may well be switching to a Gunmetal grey & white theme soon, which really wouldn't go with the all too visible red LED.

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

These fancy components with fancy lights must be selling or they wouldn't bother. Maybe the rest of us are just getting to be boring old farts?

 

You could always solder something else on, or just cover it with tape.

 

If it could do individual addressable LEDs based on audio etc, then I'd be in love with that.. But it doesn't..

 

It's odd that creative still is in the business, or at least soundcard business.
With MS ruining AEX and Asus making better sound cards for quite a while now, coupled with the economic system currently, you'd think they would have toppled.
Oh and add to all that the quality of on-board sound being good enough and systems not needing much assistance anyway for sound.

Mind you they did make some deals with motherboard manufacturers to use their soundchips on them, so that helps keeping afloat I guess.

 

I SLI'd my SoundBlaster Z cards to get 14.2 surround ... theoretically, of course ... scaling isn't perfect, so it's more like 11.3 ...

But in all seriousness, i also have an SB/z card in my rig. The specs are better, and i feel like the sound from my Sennheiser cans is superior when driving from my card vs my z270 board. Can I really tell the difference? Dudes, i'm pushing 50, so probably not ... but it makes me feel better. How many of us have invested in tech that didn't really improve anything, but it did makes us think something worked better? I'm betting most of us here have done it. We're techies, it's what we do, and it's why companies keep making 'new, improved' versions of their products.