Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Hardware may be outstanding, but software can have show stopping issues with installation. I had a Creative Sound Blaster Recon 3D card ... great card ... but the Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 was supposed to be a huge step up. Got the hardware from Amazon, uninstalled the old software, shut the computer down, replaced the old sound card with the AE-5, hooked everything back up, started up the computer. Installed the AE-5 software and ... only the front L/R channels had sound. Testing showed the rear L/R speakers, C/Sub speakers were getting a signal inside the card, but no output to the amplifier powering the speakers. Creative tech support, after much trouble shooting, decided the card was defective, so I returned it to Amazon and ordered a new one. New card arrived and same problem. After more trouble shooting from Creative tech support, they finally said I should either install the card on another computer (I suppose the intent was to see if the card worked on a different computer) or reformat my hard drive and do a fresh install of all software on my computer. I declined. What Creative decided, after my sending them my system info file, is that the old Creative Recon 3D software left bits in the Win10 registry that interfered with the new Creative AE-5 software's functions. They had no way to clean that up, they stated that editing the registry was fraught with problems and beyond their ability. So ... word of warning ... some folks who wish to use their 5.1 speaker system may encounter problems that Creative tech support cannot fix. If you're using the AE-5 with earphones or a 2.0 speaker setup, you will probably be OK. If the card you are replacing is of a different brand than Creative, you might be OK. Perhaps some Creative software will more fully uninstall. For lots of folks, this card might work out just great. But it didn't work for me. And the fault was entirely with the Creative software. Which Creative tech support is incapable of solving, except using ridiculous and unacceptable solutions.