A Sound Card for my PC

I like the Creative AE-7, though the AE-9 is the one I'm dreaming about these days

I’m a committed audiophile and the centre of my music-universe is my PC, where my entire collection of music is stored. There are thousands of MP3s there (very few FLACs, unfortunately), ripped or downloaded over the last 10-15 years from different sources. I’ve never used Spotify and my only sources of music are my own MP3 collection and YouTube. That probably says something about how old I am (51 going on 81), but hey, that’s okay, I’m happy with MP3s and YouTube. They’re better than the cumbersome old LPs, cassettes and CDs I grew up with.

Coming back to my PC, it’s currently hooked up to a pair of Edifier R1700BT speakers that are pretty good and handle whatever music I play on them. They aren’t perfect and I do have a long wishlist of other speakers that I want to try, but for now it’s all good. But the thing I’m not so happy about is the fact that for the last many years, none of my PCs have had a sound card fitted to them. Back in the mid-1990s, when I was running Pixels Multimedia, my Pentium 100 and 133 PCs had 16-bit Creative SoundBlaster cards, which were connected to Creative speakers. In more recent years, as PCs have become vastly more powerful, onboard audio has also improved and most motherboards are able to handle all basic audio requirements that the average PC user may have, including gaming and music playback. Of course, for those who want to push the performance envelope – or those who want the best possible, audiophile-grade sound – there is still the option of adding a separate sound card to your PC, which should definitely amp things up a few notches.

While I haven’t tried using any of the newer soundcards, I have been looking on Amazon for the last few days and have identified a few that I like. Also thought of sharing the list with you, so here we go.

Creative Sound Blaster AE-7

Creative claims that the AE-7, a PCIe sound card, offers ‘pristine’ audio output and ‘supreme’ audio fidelity with 127dB dynamic noise reduction and high-res 32-bit/384kHz playback via ESS SABRE-class 9018 DAC. According to the company, the sound card offers theatrical-grade virtual surround sound and true hardware-accelerated audio, which takes some load off your computer’s CPU. ‘Sound Blaster handles audio processing on the card itself, freeing up your CPU to handle other tasks,’ says Creative. The card comes with a standalone controller unit, which has a full array of input and output connections. The AE-7, which uses Sound Core3D tech and supports DTS Connect and Dolby Digital Live encoding, also comes with a dedicated software suite that allows the user to customize audio playback. You can save multiple profiles and switch between them for optimized sound for gaming, music and movies.

Creative Sound Blaster AE-7 is available on Amazon for Rs 23,000. Gamers might also want to consider the Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus, which retails for Rs 14,000 on Amazon

Creative Sound Blaster AE-9

‘Paying homage to our audio enhancement legacy and our never-waning thirst to explore the possibilities of audio, the Sound Blaster AE-9 is quite simply the best PCI-e sound card we have ever made,’ says Creative, about the AE-9 and that instantly puts it on top of my wish list for sound cards. ‘The core of the Sound Blaster AE-9 is the flagship audiophile-grade hi-res ESS SABRE-class 9038 DAC, which delivers 129dB of dynamic noise reduction (DNR), and 32-bit 384 kHz playback over PCM. DTS Connect and Dolby Digital Live encoding is supported and Creative’s ‘CleanLine’ tech is designed to filter and isolate noise for crystal clear audio delivery.

Creative Sound Blaster AE-9 is available on Amazon for Rs 40,000

For those who might be interested in checking out other options, the Asus STRIXRAID DLX and Asus STRIX SOAR 7.1 sound cards are also available on Amazon, though I’d prefer to stick with Creative sound cards for my PC. The dream is to get the Creative AE-9 and then get one of these speakers to complete the package!