Sound Blaster

WorldBrand briefing

AI supplement

Original synthesis to sit alongside the encyclopedia article below. Not part of Wikipedia; verify facts on Wikipedia when precision matters.

Sound Blaster is the iconic long-running PC audio product line and flagship brand developed by Singaporean tech firm Creative Technology. First launched in 1989, it established the de facto global industry standard for consumer desktop sound cards for decades, and later expanded its scope to cover gaming headsets, portable audio accessories and external high-fidelity audio interfaces.

Key moments

1989First generation Sound Blaster 1.0 released, building on Creative's earlier Game Blaster precursor hardware
1991Sound Blaster Pro launched, cementing its position as the universal stereo audio standard for multimedia PCs
1992Sound Blaster 16 introduced, bringing affordable 16-bit stereo sampling capability to the mass consumer market
1994Sound Blaster AWE32 launched, integrating advanced wavetable synthesis technology following Creative's acquisition of audio specialist E-mu Systems
1998Sound Blaster Live! series released, adopting PCI bus architecture to deliver higher bandwidth, more immersive 3D audio performance
2000s to presentSubsequent flagship lines including Audigy, X-Fi, Recon3D, Z series and AE series launched to serve modern high-end gaming, audiophile and content creation use cases

Through the 1990s, Sound Blaster held an almost unassailable dominant market position in the discrete consumer sound card segment, with nearly all DOS and early Windows PC games optimizing their audio pipelines exclusively for Sound Blaster hardware to deliver the best possible sound quality, creating a powerful compatibility moat that competing generic audio cards could not overcome. As motherboard-integrated audio became standard for mass-market PCs in the 2000s, the brand repositioned itself to target high-value niche user segments including competitive esports gamers, audiophile music listeners, and professional small-scale content creators, rather than fighting for low-margin mass market share against zero-cost onboard audio solutions. Its decades of accumulated proprietary audio signal processing intellectual property, including EAX environmental 3D audio extensions and Crystalizer dynamic range restoration technology, provides clear functional advantages over generic integrated audio products.

Historical industry standard status created long-term ecosystem lock-in, with decades of existing game and multimedia content optimized for the Sound Blaster hardware architecture
Diversified product portfolio beyond internal PCIe sound cards now includes external audio interfaces, gaming headsets and USB DACs, competing directly against established peripheral brands such as HyperX, SteelSeries and dedicated audiophile audio manufacturers
Maintained strong brand recognition among older generations of PC enthusiasts that has kept user loyalty high even amid decades of market transformation

As one of the most iconic dedicated consumer hardware brands in the global PC ecosystem, Sound Blaster operates as the flagship product line of Singaporean audio technology firm Creative Technology, with a 35+ year legacy of defining the boundaries of desktop personal audio. For decades, the brand held de facto global industry standard status for discrete consumer sound cards, earning near-universal recognition across PC gaming, audiophile, and content creation circles for its consistent focus on advancing audio signal processing performance and cross-product compatibility.

Following the widespread adoption of motherboard-integrated audio for mass market PCs in the 2000s, Sound Blaster executed a targeted strategic repositioning to focus on high-value niche user segments rather than competing for low-margin commodity market share, leaning on its deep repository of proprietary audio intellectual property including EAX 3D environmental extensions and Crystalizer dynamic range restoration technology to deliver differentiated performance that generic integrated audio solutions cannot match.

This deliberate positioning has allowed the heritage brand to maintain strong relevance across generations of evolving PC hardware, from the DOS era of the early 1990s through to the modern cloud gaming and professional content creation era, retaining a loyal cross-generational user base that is rarely seen for legacy computing hardware brands.

Brand leadership

Score: 87/100

For decades, Sound Blaster has been the undisputed category leader in discrete consumer PC audio, setting industry standards that competing manufacturers and game developers have long aligned their product optimization around, holding a dominant share of the premium discrete sound card and high-end PC audio accessory segments globally.

User interaction

Score: 79/100

The brand boasts deeply loyal communities spanning retro PC hobbyists, competitive esports players, audiophiles, and independent content creators, with regular active user forums, community-driven modding projects for legacy hardware, and high engagement for its new product launch events among core target demographic groups.

Brand momentum

Score: 72/100

Following its successful strategic shift away from low-margin mass market sound cards to high-value niche audio solutions, Sound Blaster has posted steady year-over-year growth in its premium gaming headset and external high-fidelity audio interface lines, rolling out updated proprietary DSP technologies that capture rising demand for high-performance gaming and content creation audio tools.

Brand stability

Score: 91/100

With over 35 years of continuous market operation without any major core brand restructuring or operational discontinuity, Sound Blaster has avoided the massive market share collapses that erased many contemporary 1990s PC hardware brands, holding consistent, defensible niche market positions through multiple major industry paradigm shifts.

Brand heritage & age

Score: 94/100

Launched in 1989, Sound Blaster is one of the longest continuously operating dedicated consumer PC hardware brands in history, with its decades of accumulated industry intellectual property, cross-platform compatibility legacy, and multi-generational brand recognition forming an unmatchable age-related competitive moat for new market entrants.

Industry profile & recognition

Score: 85/100

Sound Blaster is universally recognized by PC gaming, audio hardware, and content creation industry stakeholders as the foundational innovator that defined modern consumer desktop audio, with its technological milestones cited as a standard reference in nearly all modern PC audio product development documentation.

Global brand reach

Score: 83/100

The Sound Blaster brand maintains active distribution and dedicated regional user bases across North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, with localized product support and market positioning tailored to regional gaming and audiophile consumer preferences across more than 50 global markets.

AI-powered brand value reasoning frameworks can deliver data-aligned indicative assessments of brand strength and potential market valuation for long-established tech hardware brands such as Sound Blaster. All value-related figures referenced in this encyclopedia entry are for illustrative, educational purposes only, and do not represent a formally audited official brand valuation. To access audited, fully verified official brand value data for this asset, please make direct contact with the World Brand Lab for relevant formal assessment services.

Sound Blaster is a family of sound cards and audio peripherals designed by Creative Technology/Creative Labs of Singapore. The first Sound Blaster card was introduced in 1989.

Sound Blaster sound cards were the de facto standard for consumer audio on the IBM PC compatible platform until the widespread transition to Microsoft Windows 95 and the integration of commoditized audio electronics in PCs. Windows 95 standardized the programming interface at the application level and thereby eliminated the importance of backward compatibility with Sound Blaster cards.

By 1995, Sound Blaster cards had sold over 15 million units worldwide and accounted for seven out of ten sound card sales.[1] To date, Sound Blaster has sold over 400 million units,[2] and their current product lineup includes USB-powered DACs as well as other audio adapters.[3]

Creative Music System and Game Blaster

Creative Music System

The history of Creative sound cards started with the release of the Creative Music System ("C/MS") CT-1300 board in August 1987. It contained two Philips SAA1099 integrated circuits, which, together, provided 12 channels of square-wave "bee-in-a-box" stereo sound, four channels of which can be used for noise.

These ICs were featured earlier in various popular electronics magazines around the world. For many years Creative tended to use off-the-shelf components and manufacturers' reference designs for their early products. The various integrated circuits had white or black paper stickers fully covering their tops to hide their identities. On the C/MS board in particular, the Philips chips had white pieces of paper with a fictitious "CMS-301" inscription on them. Real Creative parts usually had consistent CT number references.

Surprisingly, the board also contained a large 40-pin DIP integrated circuit bearing a "CT 1302A CTPL 8708" (Creative Technology Programmable Logic) serigraphed inscription and looking exactly like the DSP of the later Sound Blaster. Software, including Creative's own, use this chip to automatically detect the card (by trying certain register reads and writes).

Game Blaster

A year later, in 1988, Creative marketed the C/MS via Radio Shack under the name Game Blaster.

First generation Sound Blasters, 8-bit ISA & MCA cards

Sound Blaster 1.0, CT1310, CT1320A, CT1320B

The Sound Blaster 1.0 (code named "Killer Kard"),[4] CT1320A, was released in 1989. In addition to Game Blaster features, it has a 9-voice (11 voices in drum mode)[5] FM synthesizer using the Yamaha YM3812 chip, also known as OPL2. It provided compatibility with the market leader AdLib sound card, which had gained support in PC games in the preceding year. Creative used the "DSP" acronym to designate the digital audio part of the Sound Blaster. This stood for Digital Sound Processor, rather than the more common digital signal processor, and is a simple microcontroller from the Intel MCS-51 family (supplied by Intel and Matra MHS, among others). It can play back 8-bit monaural sampled sound at up to 23 kHz sampling frequency

Second-generation Sound Blasters, 16-bit ISA & MCA cards

Sound Blaster Pro, CT1330

Model CT1330, announced in May 1991, was the first significant redesign of the card's core features, and complied with the Microsoft MPC standard.. The Sound Blaster Pro supported faster digital input and output sampling rates (up to 22.05 kHz stereo or 44.1 kHz mono), added a "mixer" to provide a crude master volume control (independent of the volume of sound sources feeding the mixer), and a crude high pass or low pass filter. The Sound Blaster Pro used a pair of YM3812 chips to provide stereo music-synthesis (one for each channel). The Sound Blaster Pro was fully backward compatible with the original Sound Blaster line, and by extension, the AdLib sound card. The Sound Blaster Pro was the first Creative sound card to have a built-in CD-ROM interface. Most Sound Blaster Pro cards featured a proprietary interface for a Panasonic (Matsushita MKE) drive. The Sound Blaster Pro cards are basically 8-bit ISA cards, they use only the lower 8 data bits of the ISA bus. While at first glance it appears to be a 16-bit ISA card, it does not have 'fingers' for data transfer on the higher "AT" portion of the bus connector. It uses the 16-bit extension to the ISA bus to provide the user with an additional choice for an IRQ (10) and DMA (0)m channel only found on the 16-bit portion of the edge connector.

A short lived joint developed project between Creative and Tandy resulted in the Creative/Tandy Multimedia Sound Adapter, 849–3030.

Third generation Sound Blasters, 16-bit ISA cards

Sound Blaster 16

The next model, the Sound Blaster 16, announced in June 1992, introduced: Eventually this design proved so popular that Creative made a PCI version of this card. Creative's audio revenue grew from $40 million per year to nearly $1 billion following the launch of the Sound Blaster 16 and related products. Rich Sorkin was General Manager of the global business during this time, responsible for product planning, product management, marketing and OEM sales. Moving the card off the ISA bus, which was already approaching obsolescence, meant that no line for host-controlled ISA DMA was available, because the PCI slot offers no such line. Instead, the card used PCI bus mastering to transfer data from the main memory to the D/A converters. Since existing DOS programs expected to be able to initiate host-controlled ISA DMA for producing sound, backward compatibility with the older Sound Blaster cards for DOS programs required a software driver work-around; since this work-around necessarily depended on the virtual 8086 mode of the PC's CPU in order to catch and reroute accesses from the ISA DMA controller to the card itself, it failed for a number of DOS games that either were not fully compatible with this CPU mode or needed so much free conventional memory that they could not be loaded with the driver occupying part of this memory. In Microsoft Windows, there was no problem, as Creative's Windows driver software could handle both ISA and PCI cards correctly.

16-bit CD-quality digital audio;

Fourth generation Sound Blasters, 16-bit ISA cards, dynamic sample-based synthesis

Sound Blaster AWE32

Released in March 1994, the Sound Blaster AWE32 (Advanced WavEffects) introduced an all new MIDI synthesizer section based on the EMU8000. The AWE32 consisted of two distinct audio sections; the Creative digital audio section (audio codec, optional CSP/ASP chip socket, Yamaha OPL3), and the E-mu MIDI synthesizer section. The synthesizer section consisted of the EMU8000 sampler and effects processor, an EMU8011 1 MB sample ROM, and 512 KB of sample RAM (expandable to 28 MB). To fit the new hardware, the AWE32 was a full-length ISA card, measuring 14 in.

Sound Blaster 32

A derivative of the AWE32 design, the Sound Blaster 32 (SB32) was a value-oriented offering from Creative. Announced on June 6, 1995, the SB32 became the new entry-level card in the AWE32 product-line (previously held by the AWE32 Value.) The SB32 retained the AWE32's EMU8000/EMU8011 MIDI-synthesis engine and built-in instrument ROM, but dropped the onboard RAM, the Wave Blaster header, and the CSP port. The SB32 used the Vibra chip to reduce component count, which meant bass/treble/gain control was limited compared to the AWE32. The loss of onboard RAM is offset by the inclusion of 30-pin SIMM RAM sockets, which allow up to 28 MB RAM to be installed and used by the EMU engine.

Fifth generation Sound Blasters, PCI cards, multi-channel and F/X

Ensoniq AudioPCI-based cards

In 1998, Creative acquired Ensoniq Corporation, manufacturer of the AudioPCI, a card popular with OEMs at the time. It was a full-featured solution with wavetable MIDI (sample-based synthesizer), 4-speaker DirectSound3D surround sound, A3D emulation, and DOS legacy support via a terminate-and-stay-resident program. It was cheap due to lack of hardware acceleration. It is full-duplex but at least in MS Windows it cannot play back several sources at once.

Creative released many cards using the original AudioPCI chip, Ensoniq ES1370, and several boards using revised versions of this chip (ES1371 and ES1373), and some with Creative-labeled AudioPCI chips. Boards using AudioPCI tech are usually easily identifiable by the board design and the chip size because they all look quite similar. Such boards include Sound Blaster PCI64 (April 1998), PCI128 (July 1998), Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI, Vibra PCI and Sound Blaster 16 PCI.

An ES137x chip contains three stereo sample rate converters, some buffers and a PCI busmaster interface. Analogue interfacing is done by a codec chip, which runs at a fixed sampling frequency of 44 (Ensoniq Audio PCI) or 48 kHz (Creative's versions). (ISA soundcards had not resampled but switched between different time bases.) ES137x do not support SoundFonts but a filter-less MIDI engine with

Sixth generation Sound Blaster Sound Core3D cards

Sound Blaster Recon3D

The Recon3D series was announced in September 2011 and includes the Recon3D PCIe, Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional and Recon3D Fatal1ty Champion. The cards use the new integrated Sound Core3D chip, which features the Quartet DSP from the X-Fi series as well as integrated DAC, ADC and I/O interface in a 56-pin package.[24] The Asia-only Recon3D Professional Audio is basically a Recon3D PCIe with some extra accessories such as cables.[25]

The Recon3D series of sound cards do not support ASIO.[26]

The Recon3D comes with a bundled software called the SBX Pro Studio. SBX Pro Studio allows users to adjust the amount of virtual Surround, Crystallizer, Bass, Smart Volume and Dialog Plus for their Recon3D sound cards.[27]

Sound BlasterAxx

Sound BlasterAxx is a series of USB powered speakers that has the features of a sound card. The speakers also have built-in microphones. The series of speakers work with Mac OS X other than Microsoft Windows.

Sound BlasterAxx SBX series

The Sound BlasterAxx SBX series was released in year 2012.[43] There are three models in the series, the Sound BlasterAxx SBX 8, Sound BlasterAxx SBX 10 and Sound BlasterAxx SBX 20. All three speakers have a bass port, Headphone Out and Aux-in/Mic-in 3.5mm jacks behind. The speakers do not contain rechargeable batteries and they require a USB power source.

The speakers work with the Sound BlasterAxx control panel software for adjustment of SBX Pro Studio and Crystal Voice settings. The Sound BlasterAxx Control Panel has got a Mac OS X version other than the Microsoft Windows version.

The Sound BlasterAxx SBX 8 is the only speaker that does not have Bluetooth capability. The Sound BlasterAxx SBX 10 and Sound BlasterAxx SBX 20 are Bluetooth capable and can be used for answering phones calls from iOS and Android smart phones. The Bluetooth version for the speakers is Bluetooth 2.1(Enhanced Data Rate). The Bluetooth codecs supported are SBC and AAC, aptX is not supported. The speakers also do not support ASIO and do not have the Scout Mode feature.

List of USB audio devices

Sound Blaster Extigy
Sound Blaster MP3+
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX
Sound Blaster X-Fi USB
Sound Blaster X-Fi HD USB
Sound Blaster X-Fi GO! Pro
Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro'
Sound Blaster X-fi Elite Pro
Sound Blaster Digital Music Premium HD
Sound BlasterAxx SBX 8 / SBX 10 / SBX 20
Sound Blaster Play!
Sound Blaster Play! 2
Sound Blaster Play! 3
Sound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1
Sound Blaster R3
Sound BlasterAxx AXX 200
Sound Blaster Roar

Connectors

External connector

Sound Blaster cards since 1999 conform to Microsoft's PC 99 standard for color-coding the external connectors as follows:

Up until the AWE line in 1994, Creative cards have short text inscriptions on the backplane of the card, indicating which port does what (i.e. Mic, Spk, Aux In, Aux Out). On later cards, the text inscriptions were changed to icons. With the latest cards from Creative, the cards were changed to use numbers as the ports are flexi-jacks and can have different functions assigned to them at run-time (i.e. changed from speaker output to mic in), but a color overlay sticker is included with retail units to help consumers identify the commonly used functions of the ports in their default modes.

Internal pin connector and jumper

A lot of audio/data pin connectors and jumpers-setting is present in the internal body of the sound blaster, different from card to card, and along the years of productions.[46]

Most common pin connector:

Most common pin jumper setting (especially before plug-and-play features):

Driver software modification (soft mod)

Some drivers from the Audigy 2 ZS have been soft-modded by enthusiasts. These can be installed on Creative's older cards, including Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy, and Audigy 2. It has been claimed to offer improved sound quality, hardware acceleration of higher EAX versions in games, 64-channel mixing for Audigy 1, and an overall improvement in the card's performance. Several forum posts across the web have reported favorable results with this technique, excepting Live! users where the drivers only add the ability to use the newer software applications (i.e. the newer mixer applet). Comments on forums from developers of the software mod have said that Live's hardware is not capable of EAX3 nor 64-channels of hardware sound mixing.

Later, in 2004, Creative released updated drivers top-to-bottom for the Audigy through Audigy 4 line that put these cards basically at feature parity on a software level. As of 2006, the entire Audigy lineup uses the same driver package. DSP decoding at the driver level on other cards than Audigy 2 ZS and 4 is still not supported by official drivers, but it works with soft-modded drivers on the other cards with hardware DSP (like Audigy 2 6.1).

When Windows Vista was released, there was only a single beta driver for the Creative Audigy series that was usable on the operating system with minimal functionality and frequent instability reported by users. A Creative Forum activist named Daniel K. modified drivers from the X-Fi and applied it to the Audigy and Live! series, restoring most if not all of the features that came with the original XP setup CD in Vista. X-Fi drivers have noticeably better sound quality under Vista, and more bug fixes because of the newer build (last modified version is 2.15.0004EQ April). He managed to enable the X-Fi Crystallizer to work on Audigy series cards in software, however because of the

Audio effects processor

Compatibility with Linux

From 2019, Linux distributions support Sound Blaster Cards via kernel drivers[48]. In case of non-Plug-and-Play ISA cards, a configuration file in /etc/modules must be reconfigured, writing for example with Sound Blaster 16 card installed: snd-sb16 isapnp=0.

X-Fi series cards have basic support in Linux, but the advanced features like signal routing, relay control or external I/O consoles are not supported.

Support for the newer Sound Blaster cards (Z and AE series) was added to the kernel during 4.19 – 4.20 release timeframe.

External links

References

75 Power Players: Back at the Lab... Next Generation, Imagine Media, November 1995^
About Creative^
Sound Blaster Internal and External USB DAC and Amp Sound Cards and Buying Guide - Creative Technology (Singapore)^

Sound Blaster Live!

When the Sound Blaster Live! was introduced in August 1998, the use of a programmable digital signal processor in PC-audio was not unprecedented, as IBM had already done that with cheap Mwave sound- and modem-cards and Turtle Beach with their professional Hurricane soundcards.

The Live! was built around Creative's new EMU10K1 chip, which contained 2.44 million transistors and was advertised of processing a flashy 1,000 MIPS. The EMU10K1 (and its successors) did not use on-card RAM/ROM storage for instrument samples, instead it used a PCI busmaster interface to access sample-data stored in the host-PC's system memory. A/D- and D/A- converters as well as analogue mixing is done by an AC'97 chip running at 48 kHz sampling rate. All members of the SB Live! family have at least four-channel analog audio outputs and a 15-pin MIDI/Joystick multiport.

For game titles, EAX 1.0 (and later 2.0) (environmental audio extensions, which briefly competed with the now defunct A3D 2.0) added hardware-accelerated acoustic effects. The EMU10K1 provided high-quality 64-voice sample-based synthesizer (marketed as "Wavetable"), with self-produced or third-party customized patches or "Soundfonts", and the ability to resample the audio output as input and apply a range of real-time DSP effects to any set of audio subchannels present in the device.

The first model and flagship of the SB/Live family was the ''SB Live! Gold''. Featuring gold tracings on all major analog traces and external sockets, an EMI-suppressing printed circuit board substrate and lacquer, the Gold came standard with a daughterboard that implemented a separate 4-channel alternative mini-DIN digital output to Creative-branded internal-DAC speaker sets, a S/P-DIF digital audio Input and Output with separate software mappings, and a fully decoded MIDI interface with separate Input and Output (along with on mini-DIN converter.) The Gold highlighted many features aimed at music composition; ease-of-use (plug-and-play for musicians), real-time loopback-recording of the MIDI-synthesizer (with full freedom of Soundfonts, and environmental effects such as reverb, etc.), and bundled MIDI-software.

The mainstream model was the Sound Blaster Live! Like the Gold, the Live featured multi-speaker analog output (up to four channels), and identical music/sound generation capabilities (without the bundled MIDI software and interfacing-equipment.)

Later versions of the Live!, usually called ''Live! 5.1'', offered 5.1-channel support which adds a center channel speaker and LFE subwoofer output, most useful for movie watching. The Live! 5.1 could also use one of the 3.5 mm jack ports as an SPDIF out, which allowed the connection of an external decoder.

Creative also released a ''Sound Blaster Live! Player 1024 edition, which is identical to the regular Sound Blaster Live!'', but with the addition of some extra software.

Sound Blaster Audigy

The Sound Blaster Audigy (August 2001) featured the Audigy processor (EMU10K2), an improved version of the EMU10K1 processor that shipped with the Sound Blaster Live!. The Audigy could process up to four EAX environments simultaneously with its upgraded on-chip DSP and native EAX 3.0 ADVANCED HD support, and supported up to 5.1-channel output.

The Audigy was controversially advertised as a 24-bit sound card. The EMU10K2's audio transport (DMA engine) was fixed at 16-bit sample precision at 48 kHz (like the EMU10K1 in the original Live!), and all audio had to be resampled to 48 kHz in order to be accepted by the DSP (for recording or rendering to output.)

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (September 2002) featured an updated EMU10K2 processor, sometimes referred to as EMU10K2.5, with an improved DMA engine capable of 24-bit precision. Up to 192 kHz was supported for stereo playback/record, while 6.1 was capped at 96 kHz. In addition, Audigy 2 supported up to 6.1 (later 7.1) speakers and had improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over the Audigy (106 vs. 100 decibels (A)). It also featured built-in Dolby Digital EX 6.1 and 7.1 decoding for improved DVD play-back. The Audigy 2 line were the first sound cards to receive THX certification.

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (September 2003) is essentially an Audigy 2 with updated DAC and op-amps. Audigy 2 ZS uses the Cirrus Logic CS4382 DAC together with the op-amps and can produce an output SNR of 108 dB. There were a few slight printed circuit board modifications and 7.1 audio support was added.

Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro (November 2004)[21] was an Audigy 2 ZS with updated DACs and ADCs, the new DAC being the Cirrus Logic CS4398, boosting the output SNR to 113 dB. Other than a breakout box, it has no distinguishable difference from the Audigy 2 ZS. The DSP is identical to the Audigy 2 ZS's but Creative put an "Audigy 4" sticker to cover the chip, making it appear as if it is a new chip. The Audigy 4 Pro is not to be confused with the Audigy 4 (Value) which contains lower quality DACs and does not have golden plated jacks. The Audigy 4 (Value) is more in line with the Audigy 2 Value series. The Audigy 4 had a shorter life span than its predecessors, due to the short window between it and the next-generation Sound Blaster X-Fi.

Sound Blaster Audigy Rx (September 2013) is similar to the Audigy 4 but with a dedicated 600-ohm headphone amplifier and a PCIe 1x interface.[22]

Sound Blaster Audigy Fx (September 2013) also features a 600-ohm amplifier and a PCIe interface, but lacks the EMU10K DSP.[23]

Sound Blaster Z-Series

The Sound Blaster Z-Series was announced in August 2012 and includes the PCI Express x1 cards, Z, Zx and ZxR which use the same Sound Core3D chip as the previous Sound Blaster Recon3D series.[31] The Z-Series improved sound quality over the Recon3D series by including more dedicated audio hardware such as Op-Amps, DACs, and ADCs.[32]

The Sound Blaster Z is the baseline card of the series. Some of its main features are Cirrus Logic 116 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) digital-to-analog converters (DACs), a dedicated headphone jack with 600 ohm amplifier, and is bundled with a Beamforming Microphone that captures sound in a specific direction. One can switch between listening with headphones and desktop speakers in the Sound Blaster Z Control Panel. This card has a red color theme with a red LED light on the board. In addition to the red model, there is an OEM version that lacks the LED light, metal shielding and bundled microphone.

The Sound Blaster Z SE released in 2021 is identical to the Z, but with 7.1 channel virtual surround for compatible headphones, no bundled microphone and no driver CD as the card is only compatible with the Sound Blaster Command software.

The Sound Blaster Zx card is identical to the Z[31] (exact same card, exact same card SKU/Model (SB1500) on card itself, compared side by side in store), with the only notable change compared to the baseline "Z" being the addition of the desktop ACM (Audio Control Module). The Zx & ZxR were both bundled with the Audio Control Module (ACM) which is basically an extension cord for headphones. The ACM contains both 1/4" and 3.5 mm headphone and microphone jacks, a potentiometer headphone volume knob, and a built-in dual-microphone Beamforming array. The ACM uses a red color theme that matches the card. The entire package (Card and ACM) carries a separate model number of SB1506, which is different than the base SB1500 printed on the included card (as the card is just a SB-Z now bundled with accessories).[33]

The Sound Blaster ZxR is the top of line sound card of the series and uses an entirely different card from the Z and Zx. Some of its features include TI Burr-Brown 124 dB SNR DACs, two swappable op-amps, a 600 ohm 80 mW TI TPA6120 headphone amplifier, and 192 kHz stereo pass through. The Sound Blaster ZxR comes with a daughter board which provides optical S/PDIF input and output, and two RCA inputs that feature a TI Burr-Brown 123 dB SNR analog-to-digital converter (ADC); it has its own Sound Core3D processor and takes up a second expansion slot in the computer if installed. The ZxR can record up to 24-bit/96 kHz. The ACM and two boards (main and daughter) have a black color scheme with no LED lighting.