

We had just been reviewing the incredible Asus RoG Xonar Phoebus, of course, but even so there's nothing about the tonal quality of the Recon3D PCIe that stood out.

Sound quality is certainly not what you might call 'audiophile'.Īs hard as we tried to play around with the control panel settings, both music and games felt a little hard when compared to something like the X-Fi Titanium HD. But in honesty, as far as gaming goes, it's hard to tell the difference between this and the bargainous Asus Xonar DG, which remains an all time favourite. That seems to be the tack taken by Creative with the Recon3D range, but when its a little more expensive than the older Creative X-Fi Titanium or Asus Xonar DX - both excellent gaming cards with good music performance to boot – it's got to do something special to stand out.Ī headphone amp is a big step forward, and using the dedicated headphone jack certainly makes things very loud. Plus, THX TruStudio has a good reputation for position effects behind it – this should be good for gaming. Some might worry about the lack of 7.1 outputs too, but the key appeal is a dedicated headphone amp capable of driving 600ohm headsets. The few components on board the Recon3D are hard to identify – there's the SoundCore 3D part, obviously, and a flashable firmware chip, but nothing like swappable op amps on board. Analogue 5.1 surround, headphones, optical
