- Back to homepage
- Related articles
  Related articles

Creative Sound BlasterX G5 7.1 HD Audio Portable Sound Card Review

Audio/Others by stefan @ 2016-04-20

In order to check out the card performances, we have used the Rightmark Audio Analyzer utility (with all effects disabled, in order to get accurate results) which tells an interesting story! The included Cirrus Logic CS4398 DAC along with the Texas Instruments TPA6120A2 headphone amplifier are a very good combination since this new model passes over the Omni 5.1 with flying colors and we can say that it positions itself safely near the internal variants: Titanium HD and Sound Blaster ZxR. This is quite a great deal considering that it is not taking any more extra space inside our computer (some ITX builds do not allow installation of a dedicated sound card) and can be also switched back and forth between consoles, PCs/Laptops but also Macs.

The Software GUI Part I

Right after the installation of the driver plus utility from the Creative website, we will be welcomed by the Sound BlasterX GUI, which is quite handy in order to have all the card features at our disposal. The Profile tab will allow us to customize each of the three slots with pre-defined settings or we can set custom values ourselves; the chosen settings can be seen in the top right corner:

From the Acoustic Engine area, we can enable or disable BlasterX Acoustic Engine which comprises of:

-Surround Effect

-Crystalizer

-Bass boost along with selection of the Crossover frequency

-Smart Volume along with additional presets

-Dialog Plus

If we need to disable one of the effects completely, we can surely do so by moving the switch for each feature:

The EQ can be configured on 11 bands and as we have seen with various gaming headsets, we can also select some of the pre-defined profiles:

Profiles

Scout Mode can be enabled in the next tab and gives us a tactical advantage in some games:

All information and graphics contained in Madshrimps are sole property of the Madshrimps crew and may not be reproduced or copied in any manner without written permission from us.