Tin Salamunic: Sound design is responsible for nearly half of the gaming experience, so it’s surprising that debates pertaining to audio performance and hardware aren’t as prevalent as arguments over resolution and frame rate. Maybe it’s because quality audio equipment is harder to acquire, and the options are more divergent. Budget headphones and soundbars may have come a long way over the years, but if you want to fully appreciate first-rate sound, you can easily spend a fortune on high-end hardware.
CCG writes - "The Creative Labs Sound Blaster Katana SE is a solid soundbar for those looking for something small and relatively affordable. It would be very difficult to find a small desktop amplifier with all of these features, especially with HDMI ARC, and that doesn't even account for the soundbar/speaker feature itself. When considering all that this offers: the five inputs, the decent speaker, the good headphone jack, the decent microphone, the PC and mobile-friendly app with tons of customization, the sharp looks with an integrated RGB strip - well, that's tough to match, much less beat for $299.99."
For many gamers; audio is just as important to the experience as are the graphics. No matter how good a game looks; the experience can be hampered by bad audio in the game and by bad audio hardware. Creative has released the Sound Blaster AE-7 which combines a sound card and amp to give gamers a new edge.
Skewed and Reviewed have posted a positive review for the new external Sound Card from Creative. They liked the ease of use, portability, and sound the unit offers but noted it does not work with USB headphones.
