Creative AE-5 Plus PCIe DAC and Amp Review

A Closer Look & Performance

The Sound BlasterX AE-5 PLUS is a lovely looking bit of kit. It’s a PCIe device, so make sure you’ve got space on your motherboard for it. Those with mini-ITX boards will likely have the main slot taken by a GPU, and some mATX boards may be limited too if you have a 2.5x thick GPU. However, most ATX system will have a couple of space 1x slots available between the main 16x slots.

The housing is metal, so it has a nice durable and premium look and feel to it. Of course, the metal will also provide it with some passive heat dissipation and generally protect the internal hardware.

There are five jacks and an optical out on this card. From left to right they are line-in/mic-in, headphone jack, front LR, rear LR, center/sub. Of course, all of them are gold plated too for better conductivity. I especially like the headphone jack, as that comes with quite a few features of its own. It runs through a custom Xamp discrete headphone Bi-Amp. Each channel is individually amplified, allowing for a whopping 600 Ohm of amplification; enough to drive planar-magnetic headphone drivers.

That’s not to say the rest of the card isn’t packing some impressive hardware too. You get the SABRE-class DAC. Delivering 122dB, 32-bit/384kHz PCM audio. That means you could listen to lossless audio formats such as FLAC, DSD, WAV. Of course, it’ll also handle the best your gaming has to offer too, albeit ultra-high audio formats aren’t so common in gaming, at least not yet. It does include many of the high-res formats you’ll find on modern movies and Blu-Ray formats though, so you’re getting the best of many worlds from this card.

I like that while it is a serious piece of hardware, it doesn’t take its self too seriously either. You get a digital RGB header on the back of the card. Of course, the RGB strip is included in the box, but you could easily use your own too.

The back of the card is finished in a bold black and white design. Which seems a little out of contrast to the black and red on the other side. Then again, if it’s sitting below your GPU, will you ever really see more than the edge of this thing? It’s unlikely.

Another bit of LED lighting is built in here, so what should look pretty funky when powered up.

Around the back, you’ll find a MOLEX header. MOLEX, in 2020? OK whatever, but my buddy SATA wants a world when we’re done here. There’s also a HD Front Panel Audio Header so you can use the audio jacks on your PC case.

The Sound BlasterX AE-5 PLUS really is the sum of its parts. Creative has cherry-picked some of the best components in the business and added a touch of their own, erm, creative magic to the mix. Listening to movies, music or anything else through this thing is great fun. It adds a level of power and clarity that ensures you’re getting the absolute best.

The RGB looks fantastic, and I couldn’t get the strip to work, but only because I didn’t have any MOLEX to hand. Again, that should be SATA.

The software is great, and if you’ve got any Creative products, you may be pretty familiar with the Command interface. There are profiles to pick from and a bunch of easy to understand dials to adjust.

A powerful EQ with separate settings from headphones and speakers.

All your basic configuration options for your setup.

The awesome Scout Mode. Zoom in on enemy footsteps audio, it’s like a wall hack but for your ears.

There’s all the fancy encoding stuff here too, which is great if you’re wanting to stream higher quality formats.