Sound Blaster AE-9

[Markus Krause]

I recently bought an AMD Ryzen CPU. This results in using with a new mainboard. Legacy PCI support is dying. I found a mainboard with B350 Plus chipset that comes with a PCI slot, but it has other shortcomings like lower bandwidth RAM access.
PCIe to PCI adapters seem to destroy(!) soundcards. So this is not an option at all.

I am currently using a RME HDSP 9652 (PCI). I got mixed feeling about this card. It got good sound quality and low latency, but the mixer software is way too complex for my purposes and badly designed. The PCIs version of the RME also a very expensive card and i am not currently not considering to buy it.

During the 90s and 2000s I developed freeware software for SoundBlaster cards (All Sound Tracker, SoundGenerator, ...). I made good experiences with these cards. That's why this one got my attention:

Sound Blaster AE-9
https://us.creative.com/p/sound-blaster ... aster-ae-9

What prevents me from buying is that fact that Creative Labs used to add all kind of 'sound-enhancers' to their hardware in the past. This is a no-go for me, since i need a 100% linear phase and frequency response.

1) Does anyone own this card?

2) Has anyone made experiences with using the recent Creative Labs soundcards in an professional production environment?

3) Is the sound of the card neutral (no EQs and enhancers possible)?

4) Latency with ASIO drivers?

Thanks in advance,
Markus