Got the card last night, not overly impressed.
The software suite for this card sucks, the voice morpher software also sucks, and the card has none of the usual creative features seemingly. No Dolby encoding, no CMSS headphone, and the 7.1 headphone effect sucks.
This card is leagues above onboard sound, but is nowhere near as good in my opinion as the Soundblaster Z or even an earlier X-Fi card.
I am still tuning this card, but from what I see so far, this card for lack of a better word, is TRASH.
The sound card is paired to a set of Logitech Z906 speakers, or output to an AV receiver in the rumpus room with real speakers. Not overly impressed, a bit let down.
This card is no better or worse than the ASUS Xonar seemingly – which is a huge shame. Creative has a better headphone amp, but that's about all.
Also, the AE lets you play back at 32 bit and 96000hz – which is a bit of a farce. There is no 24 bit 192000hz mode like previous cards offer.
I think what they did with this card was remove a few features to cut costs and replace those features with crappy RGB lighting.
So, in my opinion this card is not as good as the soundblaster Z, and the extra cost is for the RGB lighting – not the sound quality.
Overall I rate this card a 7/10.
Beware the fake reviews all over the internet claiming this card is the greatest Creative card of all time – because it isn't.