Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D THX PCIE Fatal1ty Pro Sound Card SB1356

Sound quality it's amazing in games, using a good headset. No WinXP compatibility, so, no way to make it run under XP.It offers hardware acceleration, but needs ALchemy software to enable (because of Win7 lack of DirectSound3D support).WinXP uses DirectSound3D, but then we don't have the drivers. Don't understand why Creative choose to not develop them.Final: Very good board, but ONLY FOR WINDOWS 7.

I recently assembled a new PC and have never been a fan of On board Audio hence I started looking around and then while browsing I came across this new Creative sound card. At the time it was out of stock from Amazon but i was quite pleased when Amazon eventually got their hands on it and sent it to me before Christmas. Anyways coming back to the car.=====================PACKAGING=====================The card came as advertised, shipping was great as usual from Amazon. The box was sealed and undamaged. Arrived as advertised (Prime) two days shipping.=====================BOX CONTENT & INSTALLATION=====================The box contained the sound card (Recon3D), a beam forming microphone, and an installation disc. Along with a quick install guide. THat's it. Kinda miss the old days when creative used to bundle quite a lot of free stuff with their cards in the form of games, applications, that would take advantage of all the new technology in their cards. But oh well, that was all that was included.Installation was a breeze, dropped the card in a PCI-e 1x slot, mount the bracket to the case via the screw. That's it you're good to go. Incase your motherboard has onboard audio as many do nowadays, make sure you disable the onboard audio to make it less confusing.The sound card has a really cool red light, that lights up the entire inside of the case, although for those that don't like that sort of thing, you probably already have a case without a window so that pretty much negates that.Switched on the PC, Windows 7 detected the card and installed the drivers via the disc provided. That was it. had the card running in 10min installation time. I've read that a lot of people had issues with creative drivers in the past, and I can assure you this was a breeze to install, I'm using a 64bit version of Windows. So really quite pleased with the easy install.The beam-forming mic included with this card is rather nifty, sits on top of your LCD, I just wished creative had some kinda adhesive tape that would help secure the mic further. I just placed it on my monitor and luckily it sat quite well there. HP 22" LCD. The wire runs from behind and into the sound card's rear panel.==========================SOUND QUALITY & INCLUDED SOFTWARE==========================I'm using a 5.1 setup so this applies to that. The improvement in sound is quite noticeable, the bass sounds meatier , the centre channel clearer. there is a marked improvement in quality. I'm really pleased with this, since this was the major reason in buying this sound card. Improvement in games that I play such as SW:ToR, WoW, Skyrim, etc.The software provided is also quite easy to use and isn't a ram hog like some of the old creative tools that had to be installed in order for the card to run it's best.NOTE: For those that don't want the sound card with frills like the red led illumination and the casing the card is in along with the beam forming microphone, i'd suggest just opting for the Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D THX PCIE Sound Card SB1350, it's slightly cheaper about $50 but still has all that quad core processing goodness.===========================VERDICT===========================Over all I'd recommend this card to anyone that wants their games to sound great. I haven't used the headphone amplifier that is built into the card, but i'm quite pleased with my purchase. This is probably the best gaming sound card out there and I recommend it to anyone that wants the very best sound quality in their games.

I have had numerous issues with my on-board realtek hd audio codec and wanted a higher quality upgrade to connect to my home theater with a dolby digital output. Installing and connecting the device was a cinch, I immediately had audio to my receiver without issue. However, though I had enabled the "Dolby live" feature on the device it didn't seem like DVDs and other content were actually being listened to in surround sound. Upon looking at my receiver, it was receiving a digital input, but it was not dolby digital encoded. After much tinkering, I finally determined that the the device had to be set in 5.1 speaker mode. Sadly, however, this eliminated the option to hear from my headphones. So unless I am listenign tho multi-channel content, I generally leave it in headphone mode so I can listen to either my headphones or stereo (as the presence of my wife or children allows). Audio quality is otherwise fantastic - as to be expected from creative.

A dire warning for anyone 'upgrading' from their X-Fi card, please reconsider your purchase of the Fatal1ty Professional Recon3D. It's powerful, yes, the bass is great, and that is about all there is to it... Unfortunately Creative removed the setting to manually change the bass/treble setting which was present in all their previous cards/software, Audigy, X-Fi, etc. After contacting Creative customer support several times I received the following answer, and I quote:"I understand that you wanted the feature to control the treble and the bass which was not provided in the Recon3D control panel but was in your old X-Fi software.This particular sound card is marketed as a gaming sound card and thus it's feature may differ from the other sound cards. I apologize for being unable to assist you further in this matter."The treble of this card is inadequate. According to the creative representative I have to change the treble and bass using the EQ settings. Tried that, highly undesirable results... The treble setting on my 'old' X-Fi Xtreme Music card produced crystal clear sound. Music, Games, EVERYTHING sounds 'muffled' on the Recon3D Professional. If I have to choose between clarity and quantity/loudness, I choose the clarity of the X-Fi card above this dissapointment anytime.Till Creative shapes up and issues a software update to 'fix' this, I give this card 1* for it's inability to provide. Sure the card looks great, but I am definitely speaking with my 'ears' NOT my 'eyes.'

The card itself is good, has excellent sound especially with music, but the one thing that is not good - the driver for the card does not load always, and it requires you to reboot sometimes at least three times for the driver to load. So beware of this, and don't rely to creative to fix the issue. If you want a pen pal then please don't hesitate to interact with creative because they don't have a clue as to how to support their products. I did not buy this card from Amazon directly or they would have exchanged it for something else, even so I bought it here. It was important to the seller that it took some time to email Creative back n forth until I just got tired of their non-support, and by then it was too late to exchange, or refund.