THE SOUND BLASTER AE-9

The Sound Blaster AE-9 is a medium sized PCIe card (looks slightly larger compared to the ZXR).

The NU Audio Pro by EVGA is currently without doubt the primary competition for the Sound Blaster AE-9 so i thought it would be nice to have both of them next to each other.

Aside reducing the temperature of interior components, the top aluminum shroud also provides EMI shielding.

Creative has also placed LEDs on the top rear of the card right under the product name but unfortunately these aren't RGB ones.

A 6-pin power connector located at the rear of the card provides power to the external audio control module.

The rear of the PCB is painted black as you can see from the above picture (no backplate).

Let's not forget that the AE-9 features 4 swappable OP-AMPS, two for the line out and two for the headphones out.

At the front of the card we see the red and white RCA connectors (stereo output), two 3.5mm jacks (analog 5.1) and two S/PDIF (digital/optical 5.1) connectors for both input and output.

The audio control module (ACM) features a small VFW screen and a volume control knob and doubles both as a discreet Xamp headphone bi-amplifier (3.5mm & 6.3mm headphone outputs / up to 600ohm) and as an audio interface (XLR/TRS connector, 3.5mm microphone input and rear RCA connectors) and also supports +48 volt phantom power for use with condenser microphones (features an SNR of 123dB and a THD of up to 0.0004%).

Two long rubber feet are used to keep the audio control module in place.

A mini HDMI connector is used to attach the ACM to the Sound Blaster AE-9.

Here you can see how the rear top LEDs and the ACM look like when the Sound Blaster AE-9 is in operation.