Creative Labs Sound Blaster AE-X soundcard review – A budget-friendly audio upgrade

I can still remember getting (and clumsily installing) my very first Creative Labs Sound Blaster soundcard. My brain has atrophied to the extent I can’t recall if it was a Sound Blaster Pro or Sound Blaster 16 but, firing up DOOM, the difference was like night and day. Now, Creative Labs has a new card out, the Sound Blaster AE-X, and it’s an excellent, pocket-friendly way to take your gaming audio to the next level.

That’s not to say Creative Labs only recently returned to the sound card market; far from it. There’s a whole range available, but priced at around £160, the Creative Labs Sound Blaster AE-X is the model that’s most within reach of your average gamer. It’s aimed at players who prefer to use headphones or a dual-speaker setup (preferably the former).

Unboxing the Sound Blaster AE-X, I was struck by just how cool it looks. All the components are contained in a metallic case, with just a few pins visible on the top. Installing it was a breeze; it connects to a PCIe x1 slot and while there are ports at the back (mic/Line-in, headphone out, RCA out, Coaxial SPDIF out and TOSLINK SPDIF in) I opted to connect my PC’s front panel to the socket on the side of the card. That allowed me to stick with my existing headphone setup.

The biggest difference you’ll notice, once you’ve installed the Creative Nexus app that manages the card, is just how much additional audio power the AE-X brings. It lacks a dedicated audio-processor (handling some of the work via software) so I wouldn’t recommend it for hardcore musicians. But it gave my headphones so much extra ‘oomph’ that I could max them out and hear my music from the other room.

On the quality front, the difference isn’t quite as dramatic as hearing DOOM’s Cacodemons hiss for the first time, but it’s still a major step-up. Music and sound effects aren’t just louder, they’re much richer. Diving into the DOOM remake, the demon-slaughtering action felt twice as metal and, thanks to the AE-X’s Acoustic Engine virtual surround sound, I found it far easier to locate that last annoying imp.

Even in Direct Mode, with all the bells and whistles deactivated, sound separations is on point. The catch with its features is that since the AE-X is essentially listening to a game’s audio and acting on it, results vary between titles. The same is true of the AE-X’s Scout Mode, which amplifies quieter noises such as footsteps; it’s down to you to decide which settings enhance your experience the most.

For example, I expected stealth classic Thief 2: The Metal Age to make the most of Scout Mode, but it was actually harder to pinpoint enemies’ locations since, with their amplified tread, they sounded closer than they actually were. Diving into Creative Nexus and switching to Surround, on the other hand, made for a superior experience, the pseudo-positional audio making it easier to track guards and, later, those mechanical horrors.

Conversely, Scout Mode dialled Resident Evil 2’s fear factor up to 11. All those little background effects, such as the ping of the first-floor ceiling light, were more pronounced than ever before, and I dread how Mr X’s heavy, stomping steps will sound when I reach his debut.

There’s much to be gained from experimenting with the Creative Nexus app’s many, many sliders, although while you can create multiple equalizer profiles, you can’t do the same for the other settings. Hopefully Creative can fix that oversight in the app.

While you probably shouldn’t buy the Creative Labs Sound Blaster AE-X just with music and movies in mind, it offers a raft of improvements there too, from enhancing audio detail through to bringing dialogue forward. There’s also an option to filter your microphone input, making you sound (sort of) like an orc, demon, robot and so on but that’s more of a gimmick than anything else.

The AE-X has no support for 5.1 surround sound speaker systems, so if you have such a set-up you’re best off investigating one of Creative’s other models. But if you game through headphones (the higher quality the better) you really can’t go wrong with this budget-friendly audio upgrade.

At £159.99/$179.99 the Creative Labs Sound Blaster AE-X offers plenty of bang for your buck (or sound for your pound) and it’s an excellent, effective way to take your gaming sonics to the next level. Pick up the AE-X and you’ll kick yourself for ever settling for motherboard audio.

Thanks to Creative for providing a unit for the purposes of this review.