Sound BlasterX G1

Perfect for RPi4 and use with FPP Player. Literally plug and play!

Very powerful USB soundcard. It drives over-ear headphones with no problem considering it has an amazing 300ohm output. With a pair of 32ohm over-ear headphones I use it at volume 10-15-20/100. Sound is clear, like Creative have used me. I've owned the old Creative Soundblaster Z 5.1 PCI sound card, the old Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatality Champion PCI sound card (used it for 10 years), the Creative X-FI HD USB SoundCard and I'm used to Creative's sound and enhancements. You have to download the latest drivers from the Creative support pages in order to benefit from the full range of enhancements, the link enclosed in the package is old and it's a limited version of the SoundBlaster X software. The Crystalizer is great for standard mp3/Youtube/Music Streaming, bass boost is a little too overwhelming (it does depend on headphones you use), I use the EQ for upping the bass. I think it's the best product in this range of portable external DAC with software enhancements like EQ and emulated surround sound gaming for using with over-ear headphones. Though I've never used it for gaming, I'm sure it performs brilliantly as I already mentioned I owned several Creative products and used them for gaming purposes in the past.

This accepts 4 pole jacks with inline mic, which is precisely what I wanted it for. Sadly, the consequences of that are that the sound seems to have a low background hissing -- this isn't actually noticeable if you're listening to something, but if it is silent then you can pick it out. Otherwise output sound is good

This DAC is absolutely terrible, there have been mentions of the slight hiss sound that come from it but when you have a high end set of earphones the hiss is extremely noticeable, and ADDS hiss to quiet music! The ironic thing is this sound card is only silent when there is no audio playing, as soon as any audio source starts the hiss comes back! There was also a very odd rumble sound produced when I tried to watch a film, this was not apparent when I used the normal front panel audio coming from my motherboard, which by the way is almost dead silent and it is a mid range 2012 motherboard with average audio quality, absolutely appalling for this product to be a dedicated unit for better sound and have worse audio quality than on board audio. There are a few downloads you have to do to get the full experience with this device but even this is ridiculously complicated for no reason, you have to download a program for the X G5 which also works with the X G1 but it does not tell you this in the instructions and this same program cannot be found on the download page for the X G1, they just gives you the site for the downloads in the instructions. After installing and uninstalling many programs for about an hour I finally got it working to a point where I could get the virtual 7.1 surround feature and the audio adjustments, well almost, the equalizer would constantly bring up a message with something along the lines of 'Cannot open read only files, this may be a sign of corrupted files' the program would then auto close and I had to reopen it every time. This got me worried so I checked over everything on my system and it was all fine, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the program at least five times and the problem persisted. The virtual surround is also terrible if you have it set to headphone mode, the center channels are heavily distorted and the only way to fix this is to switch it to the no headphone virtual 7.1 which did help but introduced yet another oddity which meant that the audio played louder in the right channel than the left. Overall this product is disappointing, of course I may have had a dodgy one but with similar problems reported by others it's obvious that there are some factory flaws with these units.

I will review this item for its out of box sound quality. I have installed the software, but that is not my primary focus. I'm by no means an audiophile. In fact, I'm just starting to get into headphones. I have a pair of Koss KTXPRO1 headphones (amongst others) and for the price, they are astonishing headphones in their own right. However, to me they have a warm tone and I feel the bass is so strong that it tends to obscure some of the other sounds. So I decided to get a cheap DAC/amp to see what effect it had on audio in general and these headphones in particular. The test I did was simple. Play some flac files in VLC on my laptop, listening on the G1 and Koss headphones and then unplug the G1 and plug the headphones into the laptop while the music was still playing. The difference was like night and day. The most obvious difference was the volume. Without moving the volume slider on the headphones, after switching from the G1 to the laptop headphone socket, the audio was ridiculously loud and it was murky and bass-heavy. Going back to the G1 gives it so much more clarity. I can barely imagine what a set of high-end headphones and a high-end DAC must sound like. So, the Sound BlasterX G1 at £30 completely transforms a set of headphones I got for £22 and I have no doubt that they will improve my other, more expensive headphones in a similar way. Cannot recommend this soundcard enough.

I bought this for my Surface Book as the headphone socket gives off a lot of background noise when plugged in to my sound bar. This device does fix that problem and the sound quality is unquestionably better - the low-end is noticeably improved and having the ability to tinker with the sound quality does make a difference. However, the volume level is maybe half that of the Surface Book's headphone socket. Wondering if it was the Surface, I tried it on my Desktop PC and it was the same. In-game volume is worse - in fact the built-in speakers of the Surface Book are louder, even with the sound bar at full volume. So, good audio quality, but poor volume levels on two devices.

Excellente carte son avec amplificateur de casque et logiciel Surround pour "visualiser" le son en 3D. (Avant de lire l'avis - Le surround audio: Pour les curieux, tapez dans votre barre de recherche sur Youtube: Virtual Barber Shop. A écouter, au casque et les yeux fermés, vous comprendrez!) J'ai longtemps attendu, avant d'écrire ce commentaire, car je voulais être certaine de la qualité du produit. Points positifs: - Marque spécialisée dans l'audio (contrairement à d'autres concurrents) - amplificateur casque - design avec fil souple solide qui permet une orientation plus aisée du set-up (carte son + casque) - USB 3.0 - prise en charge type casque, type 2.0, 2.1, type 5.1, 7.1 et ça, ça va en ravir certains! - LE LOGICIEL !! Je tiens à préciser que si vous êtes sur MAC, vous ne pourrez pas profitez du logiciel audio, fourni avec la carte, qui est exclusivement, dédié à la gamme Creative Blaster. Et dans ce cas, je vous déconseille vivement d'investir dans cette carte. Vous serez bien plus ravis avec une carte qui vous fournira des performances semblables et aux environs de 15 euros.... Cela fait une différence de prix assez conséquente. Si vous souhaitez rester chez ce constructeur et êtes possesseur d'un Mac, ou possédez un budget moindre, alors je vous renvoie vers la Creative Play 2 ou 3 qui doit tourner vers les 25euros et possède une très belle qualité de son (qualité studio 24bits 192 000Hz). A savoir, la Creative Play possède également, sur Windows, un logiciel Surround. Alors, l'effet surround, ça va faire quoi? Ça va vous permettre de simuler l'audio en 3D. Je le dis, grossièrement, mais cela vous permettra, de savoir d'où provient le son, en jeu, en film, en musique. Pour les jeux, c'est une découverte extraordinaire! On sait exactement où est l'ennemi. Si il est derrière à gauche, à 300m devant... Cela redonne vie à vos sessions et vous ne verrez plus jamais vos sessions de jeux, de la même façon. Ou plutôt, vous ne l'entendrez, plus jamais de la même façon! :) Le logiciel BlasterX Engine est particulièrement accessible, car il a plusieurs presets déjà installés, très efficaces, pour pas se prendre le chou et profitez de la carte immédiatement. Je conseille vivement le mode Musique et de ne pas mettre trop de Surround 12/30max. Pour les plus pointilleux, le logiciel permet de configurer ses propres configurations et de les partager en fichiers xml. Les autres fonctions: - Crystalizer - Réglages des basses (possibilité de réglages extrêmes, avec réglage de fréquence de crossover) - Smart Volume (augmenter le volume sonore, entre autres, pratique pour les fichiers audio à volume très faible comme le streaming, Youtube, etc) - Dialog plus (permet de mieux distinguer les dialogues, utile, surtout en film ou en communication) - Un equalizer précis avec la possibilité de configurer et d'enregistrer ses préférences (de les exporter/importer) - Le mode Scout (il paraît que cela permet d'entendre les tirs ennemis à des centaines de mètres en FPS) qui est imcompatible, il me semble avec le mode Surround. Pour ce qui est de la musique: cela ne convient pas à tout type de musique et il faut bien penser à ajuster un bon preset pour en profiter pleinement. Mais, j'ai écouté la Passion selon Saint-Matthieu de Bach, et la spatialisation des chœurs étaient extraordinaire, j'ai été bluffée! Je me suis pris de plein fouet la musique et tous les détails que je n'avais pas entendus avant. En m'imaginant par exemple, le chœur des femmes à gauche et celui des hommes à droite, comme dans une salle de concert. Mais, tout cela avec un rendu parfaitement équilibré et "naturel", crédible. Attention, le surround ne convient pas pour tous les types de musique et s'écoute en fonction des goûts! Pour la musique electro, que dire... sur Mon Sennheiser HD25, qui avait déjà des basses bien percutantes. Cette fois, elle sont profondes et graves. Génial pour la Techno, la Dub, la House... Et ça, gronde pendant les films, sessions épiques garanties! Dans un des commentaires, il est dit qu'il donnera peau neuve à tout casque premier prix (ou meilleur). C'est dit à juste titre! Si vous voulez en savoir plus avant achat, n'hésitez pas à fouiller sur internet, y a quelques astuces sur BlasterX Engine et quelques tests Youtube (qui sont très mal référencés). Ah! et autre chose, n'espérez pas avoir le logiciel (achat ou cracké) sans la Carte son ou sans un produit de la gamme Blaster. Le logiciel n'est possible à installer que lorsqu'on a installé un périphérique de la gamme Blaster! A bon entendeur!

Soundblaster has been in the audio gang for a while. And they still hold up for making good audio systems. And for the price I've paid for the soundcard I am impressed. It has 96khz audio sample rate WITH 7.1 surround sound channels. Sound quality is something out of the world! I'm satisfied!

Totalmente insoddisfatto della resa audio collegando le cuffie direttamente al controller (il volume era troppo basso pur avendolo regolato al massimo) ero costretto a collegarmi all'uscita della tv per avere un volume un pò più alto e soddisfacente.... Poi, dopo varie ricerche ho trovato finalmente la soluzione: questa magnifica scheda audio esterna, comprata dopo aver letto diverse recensioni inerenti il problema.... La chiavetta non richiede installazione. La si introduce nella porta usb della ps4 ed il gioco e' fatto! La console riconosce immediatamente la scheda ed in automatico si amplifica il tutto con una qualità ed un volume strabiliante.... Io la uso con un paio di cuffie da gaming (le KINGTOP KG2000 pagate 26 euro) e ora suonano una bomba (nei giochi di guerra nelle esplosioni arrivano addirittura tremare). Figuriamoci con della cuffie più alte di gamma. Per farla breve ho risolto il mio problema e cosi' facendo posso anche giocare in chat senza rinunciare alla qualità del suono.... Consiglio l'acquisto per chi vuol amplificare senza perdere di qualità, anzi acquistandone addirittura!

Sonido muy amplificado y de calidad. Ideal para sacar más partido a auriculares o headsets buenos, especialmente si son de alta impedancia. Probado en PS4 y funciona muy bien, muchísimo más volumen y pegada que con el mando Dual Shock 4. En PS4 funciona en estéreo y sólo permite regular el volumen, las demás funciones no son compatibles, digamos que es un amplificador. Es importante instalar “X-Plus Configurator (G1)” (para cambiar el perfil) ya que cuando la compras trae el perfil “Generic (Playstation 4)” y Windows sólo deja usar “16 bit, 44100 Hz”. Si activamos el perfil “Generic” nos dejará hasta “24 bit, 96000 Hz” (y en Playstation funciona igual). Con los earpods de Apple suena un zumbido, bajo pero molesto. Con los Sennheiser Game One y otros tres buenos headsets que probé perfecto, sin ruidos.

Het volume is iets harder en de geluidskwaliteit mogelijk wat beter vergeleken met de onboard geluidschip, maar de geluidskaart valt vaak uit en moet dan opnieuw ingeplugd worden. Instellingen aanpassen in Windows en drivers updaten hebben geen effect. Zowel op Windows 10 als Windows 11 zijn de problemen.