Creative Creative Labs SB0886 PCI Express Sound Card

I’ve had a Sound Blaster “Fatal1ty” Pro sound card installed in my custom-built Core i7 920 series CPU-equipped PC since April, 2009, so at this point have been ‘around the block’ with the product, and feel well qualified to comment about what makes it tick, where there are issues, if any, and give an overall view of how it functions.

I am running the card in PCI-Express Slot No. “0” in an EVGA E760 Classified motherboard, the Single-Lane slot (1X) which is right next to Slot No. 1 where my first EVGA GTX 285 1GB SC video card is located. I am running two 285’s in SLI Mode, along with a D-Link “Extreme N” PCI-Express network card, plus an Areca 1680IX-8 PCI Express SAS to eSATA/SATA/SAS RAID Controller, so each and every slot is filled, (or negated by the twin-lane video cards) the entire bay packed full of the finest equipment $$ can buy. Cooling and keeping the integrity of the various cards is “assignment No.1” when you are running this much equipment in a PC, and placement of the various cards is strategic, and specific to each one’s needs, it goes without saying.

The Sound Blaster card is a piece of work! I have a set of Logitech Z-5300 (predecessor to the Z-5500 setup, today’s top line speaker system) speakers, that would be five (5) 28W RMS Satellite speakers, and a 240W RMS sub-woofer driven by discrete amps, with peak power approaching 600W at full song, a most impressive sounding speaker system. The Fatal1ty card drives the speaker system in 5.1 mode (Dolby 5.1 it is more commonly known as), and the sound is full, clear, clean, and can be deafening at any setting past “5” on the Logitech controller. I never have it past 3-4 normally, as that is PLENTY of volume!

The speakers are hooked up to the Black, Orange, and Medium Green colored ports of the sound card, ie 3 speaker wire output, not 4. Orange and Medium Green are apparently left and right primary channels plus the sub-woofer, while Black is main power, ground, and discrete channels (surround sound), or so I have discovered experimenting with various connections. The Light Green/Grey port is not used with my setup…if you had a 4 speaker cable setup you would utilize the Light Green/Grey port for the 4th channel in a Dolby 7.1 setup, for example, but my system is not that sophisticated…it has left, right, left rear, right rear, middle and sub-woofer channels, which is all there is to a 5.1 speaker setup.

Key to establishing good sound in any setup with the Fatal1ty sound card is disabling the onboard sound from the motherboard, and by that I mean you must go into BIOS and disable it, not just “turn it off” via the Sound Control Panel in Windows. Presently I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit OS. Previously I ran Vista Ultimate 64-bit, with equally fantastic sound output, no issues at all to speak of but the onboard sound having to be defeated 100% for the Fatal1ty card to function correctly.

I also use the Fatal1ty sound card as a “sound in” device for audio recording. I master tapes and records with a DAK PC-2800 Mixer, and the sound card functions as the “line in” through the Blue port of the card, ie that is where you plug in the “line in” from the mixer. One must go into the Sound Control Panel in Windows and choose the “Line in” function to be able to do mastering, and disable the microphone and any other possible “line in” connections for the mixer to function properly, and the same goes for any other type of “line in” into the Fatal1ty card…you must go into the CP and choose the correct input before your “line in” device of any type will function.

As for how the card functions doing mixing, it does great, no issues whatsoever! I don’t have distortion, carry-over sound, non-discrete interference, none of the typical maladies that can plague a sound card as the “line in” device, with this card, it just works, as long as you go into the CP and choose the correct input for what you are doing. You can, of course, have the speakers and the “Line in” function hooked up simultaneously without issues also, so no problems there either. In fact, I use a set of Audio Technica headphones, plugged into the Orange and Green ports of the card (leaving the Black port for the speakers alone), and a Rolls HA43 Pro headphone amp so that I have unexpurgated sound control during mixing, ie CLARITY! It all works seamlessly with the Fatal1ty sound card, no problems at all.

What are the difficulties with this setup, if there are any at all? I can think of some issues that plague the system, and you must observe these shortcomings and not go against them or you’ll have problems:

1) You cannot “adjust” the Mode of the Creative Sound Control Panel “live”…ie going from “Game Mode” to “Entertainment Mode” with iTunes open, for example, is impossible…you may crash the computer, or you may crash iTunes or the Control Panel may turn white and crash (!), not a pleasant situation ***ADJUST MODE With ALL SOUND Applications TURNED OFF!***

2) The Equalizer in the Creative Sound Control Panel isn’t very precise, and will conflict with the Crystalizer (3D Crystalizer) Sound Control Panel if you’re not careful, and the discrete control panel segments in and of themselves must be CAREFULLY adjusted, especially if you want to avoid distortion and conflicts within the various panels in the CP ***DO NOT MAX OUT The Various Sound Controls and Expect good sound!***

3) When you are updating the Control Panel (ie going from one software variation to the newer iterations, ie v6.1.5 to v6.1.9)it is a bit complex, and involves a restart to take effect. It is best accomplished by UNINSTALLING the Creative Control Panel completely with Windows uninstaller tool, or the Creative uninstaller tool, then running the updater function, installing the new version “fresh” and ‘virgin’, so to speak (this reminds me of the nVidia control panels for video cards!!) *** DO NOT install one version OVER the previous version, you will have a mess on your hands!! ***

4) It is said that you may run the Digital (optical) connection concurrently (at the same time) as the analog speaker connection, with good results, but I for one do NOT recommend this tactic, as I have seen poor results from attempting to do this…you can try, and maybe you will succeed without distortion or other problems, but take a good warning where a warning is due, and use analog by itself, and digital (optical connection) by itself, NOT TOGETHER!

The Creative Sound Blaster Fatal1ty Titanium Professional Sound Card sure beats the dickens out of the OEM onboard sound system in the motherboard, this much is certain! Don’t ever let anyone tell you the onboard sound is equal to a setup like this card, because they are full of BS or worse, if they claim this to be a fact. I have seen this subject debated in forums far and wide, and reality is this: a full-featured, and perfectly good functioning sound card is capable of feats with discrete sound application that the onboard sound is just not capable of reproducing. Bottom line? Your $125 (or so) is well spent with a card like this, ie you really can’t go wrong if you observe those simple caveats above, and use your head with respect to the Creative Control Panel.

I wanted to give this sound card 5-stars, but because of the small detractions for the issues above, it earns 4-stars in my review, not 5-stars.

There is one further complication that I didn’t mention because everyone pretty much accepts this to be the gospel, and very well-informed people don’t bother with even trying to deal with it: Creative “Tech Support” is basically NON-EXISTENT! Oh sure, you can write them and get “advice” from the tech department, but that’s sort of like a complete waste of time. Please, if you need support with respect to any of the sound card’s features, you are best served by one of the forums dedicated to solving problems with these cards, and NOT Creative Tech Support, because IT SUCKS! *** BIGTIME!!!***

I have had exemplary performance from my Fatal1ty sound card, and I don’t see where there is any problem with a normal, rational person from getting the same, so don’t be afraid of this sound card because of anything in this review. The problems are reasonable problems, and can be effectively dealt with by being prudent, and careful with those features above that need special treatment. Other than that, I highly recommend the Creative Fatal1ty Sound Card 100% over onboard sound…there just is no comparison.

Wavey Davey – 12-27-2009

It ended up failing years after but it worked well while it worked.

Causes computer to crash tried on multiple motherboards same issue even with new drivers or using old ones