🔊 Enhanced Audio Experience with Creative SB1040 Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI-E Sound Card Review

I'm not a techie, but I can read and follow instructions. I've read most of the previous reviews, both good and bad, and can only imagine the horrible things bad reviewers did to their computers to be dissatisfied with this card! My old computer (2002 and up to date for the time) had a very good Sound Blaster card. My new one (2011 and cheaper) had "built in sound". The "quality" of the sound was terrible and the noise level seemed as loud as the music. After a few hours of reading…

A long time ago I would have settled for a little PCI sound, although for my best rigs I would have bought a Soundblaster like the AWE64. That was long ago). They gave a richer sound. I then settled on Soundblaster in their entire PCI range and Live! and Audigy 2 and X-Fi, the best they've ever made. I stumbled across their new X-Fi Xtreme Audio (this is the one that takes any PCI-E or "pci express" slot, remember that the PCI slot is NOT the same as the PCI E slot). It wasn't much more…

This is the second card I have installed. My PC Core 2 Duo with WIN 7 uses this as an upgrade. Well my latest build - i5-3550 and WIN 7 requires a little more than integrated. I first install the digital sound card and then use the Windows[tm]Update service to get the latest sound driver. I then use the included Creative MediaSource Applications CD and Auto-Update tool. Start auto update. Creative Labs SB1040 PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Sound Card ======================== Good -

If you've paid over $50 or $100 for good speakers or headphones and are using an onboard sound card. the difference is obvious. For $54, this is a great mid-range audio upgrade. I recommend listening without sound enhancement software first. Wrong settings or levels can make a sound worse, just as right settings can make it sound better. Now there are MBs with great built-in sound cards, some even from Creative. But most use Realtek which sounds great until you hear that sound card or best…

I used the previous version for about 10 years. I recently bought the latest version (X-Fi Xtreme) for my new office computer. The seller who made my computer said I didn't need to buy a sound card because the built in one is very good. Well it wasn't my experience. The onboard version, like most, sounded dull and unattractive. So I installed the Soundblaster card along with its software. It's really the combination that makes the sound so good. The software allows you to customize the sound to

I've had this card for about 4 months now and overall I'm happy with my purchase. The card itself works great for what I use it for (7.1 Razer Tiamat), but the software running this thing is rubbish. Setup is a nightmare, menus almost impossible to navigate. I also find this stupid thing out of place. a lot of. Sometimes it works and sometimes it just refuses. It worked for me on three Windows installs (Win 7 and Win 8 because I had new drives) each time I ran into the same issues. If you want…