Great way to handle your As both a gamer and audio enthusiast, I have always chosen a sound card over an integrated audio chip for two reasons. 1) A decent sound card generally features higher quality DACs (Digital audio converters) and Amps than an integrated solution, allowing for cleaner, richer, more accurate sound. 2) Hardware DSPs (Digital Signal Processors) provided mixing capabilities that offloaded mixing tasks from the CPU. This allowed for hardware accelerated 3D positional audio in games where all audio effects were processed directly on the card. This was particularly important in the early days of gaming when CPU cycles were at a premium. Unfortunately the advantages of such cards aren't nearly as clear today. Microsoft eliminated hardware accelerated audio from its audio stack in Windows Vista and it's been that way since. As such, most applications (including games and the OS itself) perform all mixing in software by default. Although it is still possible to bypass the Windows mixer and send audio data directly to the soundcard to be processed, only the most audio conscious applications can do this. So is there any reason to purchase a dedicated sound card in today's day and age? And if you're an existing sound card owner, is there any reason to upgrade? Absolutely. I was skeptical at first, but then I took a chance and picked up this card when Amazon dropped the price (I had Best Buy price match it for me). Unlike the Creative sound cards that came before it, the Z was designed to over come the aforementioned challenges. Let's see how the Z still covers the two reasons to own a sound card listed above. 1) The Sound Blaster Z has excellent Burr-Brown DACs, capable of outputting a maximum resolution of 24-bit / 192Khz audio with a SNR of 116dB. This pushes the theoretical limits of human hearing, and provides a crystal clear, balanced sound that you won't get from most integrated audio chips. The DAC is one of the most critical components in reproducing an analog sound that is as close to the original as possible. Previous Creative cards featured decent Cirrus Logic DACs that could output close to that resolution. However, a few major problems often prevented the sound from ever reaching the DAC in "bit-perfect" condition, and failed to achieving the highest resolution the DAC supported. For one thing, the DSP which provided the advantage of hardware accelerated mixing also came with a price: it could not achieve the true 24-bit / 96 or 192Khz audio that the DAC supported. Another problem was that Windows would resample the sound before sending it to the sound card DSP where it would get resampled again (unless the user or application used an API to bypass the Windows mixer). Multiple sample rate conversions can introduce artifacts into the sound. Although the Z still has this problem with its DSP (the SoundCore 3D chip), the Z's much improved driver package offers a method (called "Stereo Direct") that allows you to bypass the DSP altogether, allowing for bit-perfect playback providing you bypass the Windows mixer with ASIO, WASAPI exclusive mode or OpenAL. This is great for music playback unless you want to let the Z enhance the sound in some way (upscale to 5.1, use the crystallizer to enhance lossy music, use virtual surround for headphones, etc). Either way, you can enable and disable the DSP as you please. When the DSP is disabled and the Windows Mixer is bypassed, the sound goes straight through the DAC to your speakers unaltered. Be warned if you do this, however. Not even Windows nor the Creative SBX control panel can alter the volume in this state, but that's usually what audio purists want. 2) Now what about when you want to take advantage of the DSP? Aren't all DSP effects handled in software unless you bypass the Windows Mixer? Yes and no. When Creative made Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8 drivers for the Sound Blaster X-FI, they implemented most DSP effects for gaming and music (like EAX and CMSS3D) in software. As a result, things like CMSS3D and EAX effects would drop as soon as you switched to WASAPI exclusive mode. The only way you could get the DSP to apply these effects in hardware was by using OpenAL. With the Z, most effects are applied in hardware even when bypassing the Windows Mixer (assuming the DSP is turned on). With the Z I was still able to have CMSS3D and other DSP effects when using WASAPI exclusive mode. The same could not be said for the X-FI where those DSP effects were only handled by the hardware when using OpenAL. But does that even matter? I think so. I'd rather have the high end hardware on the Z process the sound than let software do it (especially Windows). As for games, DSP effects such as EAX will still be handled in software if the game uses Direct Sound for audio. Nevertheless, as I understand it, other gaming DSP enhancements in the SBX control panel such as Scout Mode, Crystal Voice and 3D positional enhancements are applied to the sound in the hardware DSP *after* the game / Windows pass it to the card. Overall, this is a great card that provides some clear advantages over its predecessors. If you are considering this as someone who is new to sound cards, it is a worthy purchase if you want an enhanced gaming experience or quality audio in general. If you are thinking about upgrading from a previous Creative card, do it, even if only for the fact that the card has better drivers and can be fully utilized in Windows Vista / 7 / 8.computer sound.