Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1

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Editorial reviews

Product Description
CREATIVE SB X-FI 5.1 SURROUND SYSTEM

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-10-24 rating:
Recommended sound card for laptops!
I bought this sound card from Amazon to use with my Logitech Z5500 5.1 surround speakers and my HP laptop. I am using the system mostly for high-quality (lossless) music and movies, but never tried with games. At the moment, the sound card simply works with all functions it is advertised for.

The only lie on the advert of this product is the EASE to set it up. Yes, I agree that it is pretty easy to get analog sound from this sound card (taking about 10 minutes or so). But it took me a week to pass "true" digital 5.1 DTS/Dolby sound through TOSLINK optical port of this card from the laptop to the speakers. (For those who care about tackling this SPDIF issue, the trick I figured out is so simple: go to Creative support site, download and install ALL updates available.)

I see some users complain about the CMSS 5.1 sound simulation of the card. Yes, most of the time it works quite okay, but sometime it provides distorted and unbalanced sound when used to upmix stereo to 5.1. But I really don't care much about this CMSS function, as I don't need "fake" 5.1 sound coming from low-quality stereo MP3s but always use high bitrate .dts files or DVDs.

So, if you have a good 5.1 sound system and a laptop, just buy this sound card. It is really cheap though, for the price of about £35.

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review by: date: 2008-10-05 rating:
Excellent
Bought this last week, arrived 4 days after by royal mail. I am running Vista on my laptop with this kit. Initially I had a little problem how to set it up, but I followed the install CD, updated all the software online and then disabled my on board speaker output. The sounds is good from all of my speakers. Definitely worth the money!!

One thing is that the remote only works with the Creative Entertainment centre (which is like the Windows Vista one), (functions like play pause next etc) except volume up and down, mute, crystalliser and the 3d setting which i dont know really how its works.

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review by: date: 2008-09-18 rating:
WARNING this does not work with Vista
There is a lag with the sound in Vista when using 5.1. Creative are aware of this, but have not responded or given any indication when it will be resolved. Check the Creative user forum before buying this product.

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review by: date: 2008-09-08 rating:
hmmm
Right im using this on my Sony Vaio VGN-FZ21M laptop.
This laptop had 2 ports on the soundcard one being microphone and one being headphones. So i bought this external soundcard. My Dolby 5.1 surround sound speaker system has 3 x 3.5mm jacks subwoofer, front and rear. This external soundcard yeh it has ports for them but im not sure if this is hardware of software related but the subwoofer sounds absolutley rubbish for music games and movies using this thing...
Its only now that ive swapped rear speakers and subwoofer ports it sounds relativly good. But then thats surround sound screwed up.

If you use the subwoofer in all the correct labelled ports all your sub would do is grumble or will stay totally silent. Theres only so much of fidderling with the EQ and volume and frequencies with the software. Its taken me about 2 hours to try and set this up and it still sounds awful. I may as well just buy a damn amplifier and plug that up.

Well after finding out i cant use my 360 through it either im just going to send it back if i can. Its not worth £40.01 it should be free. Probably the worst thing ive ever purchased thats made by creative.



review by: Topher date: 2008-08-17 rating:
Awful for listening to music.
I bought this for £39.99 from our local Argos store (as it was £20 cheaper than on Amazon), as I wanted an external sound card to play back music from my computer
Listening to MP3s through reasonable powered stereo monitors, it's sound really is offensive. You can really hear the poorly implemented psycho-acoustic treatments, ('X-Fi audio enhancements') in operation - boosting/compressing/expanding all sorts of frequencies - which totally screws the equalisation and balance of the original recordings to create a complete mess!
I now think these must be aimed at gamers who want everything to fizz, whizz and bang in their game of choice on cheap computer speakers, while they concentrate on the visuals. However, for any kind of music fan who wants a realistic reproduction of their music, listening on reasonable stereo monitors (as I was), the sound would be laughable if you had not paid for the privilege.

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