Review on Enhance Your Audio Experience with the Creative 70SB181000000 Sound Blaster X3 Digital Audio Converter - Black by Carlos Barete

I have a full Sonos sound system with two Sonos 5 surround speakers, 1 playbar and 1 Sonos subwoofer. The sound and surround sound did not sound right with my built-in sound card. I often lost surround sound and for acoustics of this class it just wasn't enough. I tried using modified Realtek discs to enable Dolby, but then the normal audio sounded terrible. Today I received the X3 and connected it to my computer. I used the SPDIF interface to connect the playbar to the X3 output. If you want Dolby Digital Live encoded output on your SPDIF, you can. Make sure your source is in Dolby Digital to hear the surround speakers come alive. For Windows apps (YouTube, browsers, etc.), you can still get amazing surround sound. I must stress that I hear a difference in sound quality between Sound Blaster X3 and MSI Meg z390 Ace onboard Realtek Audio. The Sound Blaster X3 has a superior DAC and simply better output quality. DAC modes such as roll-off are also supported and God sent if you work with HI-FI systems and know your speaker characteristics very well. If you're looking for a quality audio upgrade for your desktop, laptop, or console, I highly recommend checking out the X3. So far I've never seen a software sound effect really help or sound good. An exception, however, are the SBX effects, which run on the Creative X3 Sound Engine. "Crystalization and Smart Volume" definitely helps to increase the clarity of low-resolution audio like MP3 from standard Windows game audio. I forgot a long time ago that a special sound card is needed, but it looks like I'm back in the game. Update: I tried sxfi with Campfire Andromeda Gold Special Editions. If I disable sxfi the sound is ok. For some reason there is no sound stage. However, once I enabled sxfi, damn it. I mean, it's a $100 DAC, but the sxfi has such immersion and sounds so clean that MP3 tracks sound like my lossless tracks on an $800 Ibasso DX200. Find out. I didn't buy this DAC for that reason, but sxfi is totally worth it for lossy audio and most likely game noise. To be honest I thought this was all a gimmick but no it's wow.