INTRODUCTION

   PC audio may not have enjoyed the same gigantic leaps in technology as graphics have over the years but there's no denying that it has come a long way since the early 90's and the very first 16-bit sound cards. Without getting into too much technical detail I’ll just point out that back in the mid 1990's even 16-bit/44.1kHz playback was considered enthusiast-grade whereas now some gaming and audiophile audio cards can "climb" all the way to 32-bit/384kHz. Almost 3 years ago Creative released the Sound Blaster Pro Gaming AE-5 PCIe sound card which has enjoyed high popularity levels, especially among gamers. Well last April Creative announced plans for a successor to that specific model, the Sound Blaster Pro Gaming AE-5 Plus which I’ve been using for almost a month now.

   Creative is a worldwide leader in digital entertainment products. Famous for its Sound Blaster® sound cards and for driving the multimedia revolution - which established a user base of 400 million - Creative drives digital entertainment with cutting-edge audio solutions that include premium wireless speakers, wireless headphones, powerful audiophile-grade digital amplifiers and next-generation home-theatre systems. Aiming at the new mobile networked generation by bridging the worlds of the computer, smartphones, and tablets, Creative continues to reinvent the Sound Blaster, with its ground-breaking Sound Blaster Roar series and USB-audio class of products such as the Sound Blaster X7.

   Under the black aluminum shroud/cover of the brand new Sound Blaster AE-5 Plus (currently available in black and pure white editions) we find the Sound Core3D (CA0132-4AN) audio processor together with the Xamp discrete headphone bi-amp (each audio channel is individually amplified - 1Ohm impedance can drive studio-grade headphones of up to 600Ohm) and the ESS SABRE32 Ultra-class (ES9016K2M) 2-channel DAC (digital-to-audio converter) which supports 32-bit stereo (analog output) playback at 384kHz (122dB DNR and THD of 0.00032%). The Sound Blaster AE-5 Plus also packs the Aurora reactive RGB lighting system (complete with an RGB LED strip - 3 RGB LED strips for the pure white edition) which can output up to 16.8 million colours in 9 different patterns. These specifications however are far from new since they are identical to those of the original Sound Blaster AE-5 model. What has changed is the introduction of Dolby Digital Live and DTS Encoding which should "enrich" the audio experience of everyone who uses an A/V amplifier with their computers (myself included).