Creative Sound Blaster ZxR prices in Ireland

This sound card is utter rubbish, in every way imaginable. Plus: Neat card to watch. Beam microphone works perfect. Minus: I bought this to get surround sound in my new 4.0 system. To begin with, it is the noise levels as high as my wretched Realtek built-in sound card. The noise is so loud, it's about the same level as the footsteps of Call of Duty AW, when I run at a pretty high volume. Thus, it will be totally unplayable. Watching myself on so changed the sound, and I hear that both the hard drive and the mouse changes the way the sound is, even if I just stare at the desktop. Just like the built-in card. The electrical noise is unchanged no matter if I raise or lower the volume in windows, but it will be pretty much white noise at maximum volume. I have an Asus Xonar Essence STX, and with this sound card is dead silent in the speakers, no matter how much I raise. Disregarding the noise, so the sound quality is really sad. The card is built entirely of running 5.1 system, so it can not get any decent bass at all, even with the equalizer missions. The only thing that happens in the equalizer is that it becomes distortion very quickly, if you do not lower the gain significantly. What most makes you have a lot of bass and a whole lot of crackle ... EQ is applied afterwards in the windows sound thanks, and there is not the sound card. I can pull up + 12db on my Xonar without distortion, (unless I raise so much so that the membranes exiting the suspension ...) Bass boost does nothing, it seems like everything is sent to the sub-channel that I selected is not available. Crystalizer makes the same as it did on the X-fi raise treble and bass above about 200hz to such an extent that it scrapes. Just gives ear pain and definitely no pressure at all. Stereo upmixing missing, there is a surround-sound stereo thing but it gives most treble back. I have four full-range speakers, so I want to send the sound unaltered rear. This card is returned immediately. What cruelly disappointed I was, 1750 crowns for the bad sound like? I get so much electrical noise that I can not listen to music or play with it as it was intended. It roars when you look around in the game, or move your mouse on the desktop. The card seems completely devoid of shielding, it is even more noise than with the built-in sound card, they're usually known for their poor sound. I have an Asus Xonar Essence STX now, and this is the absolute silence from the speakers when nothing is playing. A video where you can clearly hear the sound: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxZIa2s3ZsnWalhCd0FhSXN6Wm8/view