· I recently got a new Soundblaster AE-X pcie sound card. Previously, I was using a Soundblaster AE-7 pcie sound card. The issue I'm having is that when I try to play DSF files with the AE-X using the ASIO device, there's no audio. I've tried 'native', 'DoP', and 'Initial DCS Method' and none of them work. Roon will show playback progressing but I just hear a hiss. The native ASIO device with the previous AE-7 worked. And if I play a DSF file via Foobar with ASIO via the AE-X that works. So I'm trying to understand what it is about how Roon detects this new AE-X card that is causing DSF playback to fail. For a while, all the AE-X devices were disappearing / re-appearing in Roon (like literally they would flash in and disappear), but I fixed that by really clearing out all drivers. I have gone through this with Creative's support team; they claim native playback is working but I am checking with them if they actually tested a DSF file (I am providing them one just in case). Otherwise...do you guys have an insights or ideas? I know it's a new sound card and admittedly their new Nexus software is a little buggy compared to Creative's previous command center. Anyway would appreciate any help you can give. Heck, I'll send the damn card to you guys if that helps ;). Thanks!
Tell us about your home network
· Asus RT BE86U + 3 Asus RT AX86U routers in AI Mesh. Roon server and all endpoints are connected via ethernet (2.5G and 1G switches depending on the room at equipment).
This usually indicates that some DSP processing is happening, destroying the DSD signal. Please make sure no processing is happening on the signal from Creative Labs’ sound card driver setup.
Actually, if I hit play the ASIO device just disappears and i get the ‘select audio’ device button before it re-appears. This is in ‘native’ playback (default) mode. If I select DoP or initial DCS method, the song will appear to play and there’s just a hiss. Nexus shows the card is in ‘direct mode’ and even if it wasn’t all processing features are off by default.
And what are you trying to play? You can post a picture of your signal path here.
The card is rated for stereo DSD only - DSD sourced from SACD often contain multichannel content though.
They’re all stereo DSD tracks ripped from SACDs in DSF format. If I choose ‘native’ it’ll fail so I can’t show the signal path. But if I select DSD over PCM, it looks like this:
If you scroll up a little, you’ll see where I linked to a video that demonstrates Roon’s behavior when I try to play the track using the default ‘native’ setting of the AE-X’s ASIO device in Roon.
I know it says ‘Realtek ASIO’ but it’s the AE-X’s ASIO, Creative hasn’t renamed it to ‘SB DSD ASIO’ like in the AE-7. Otherwise I’m not sure I understand your question.
The only other thing I can see is that if I select one of the WASAPI devices, it seems to support DSD as well:
But, you don’t get ‘native’ option here. only the others. And when you play a track, you hear hiss and the track playing softly (have to turn the volume up). so I don’t think this is an intended device for DSD audio (and it wasn’t for the AE-7 either).
Native support is rather rare and most devices that support DSP too often only accept DoP.
Which, again, points to the card doing DSP on the DSD stream, destroying it in the process.
You should probably discuss this with Creative Labs too as from the signal patch it is clear that Roon isn’t doing any stream altering DSP. The Card and drivers fall in the responsibility of Creative Labs.
But I’m also just another Roon user, not representing Roon Labs opinion on your case.
Yeah I asked them to test playing an actual DSF file in Roon so we’ll see what they say. If I play a DSF file using ASIO in Foobar2000 it works perfectly fine. So personally I’m leaning towards it being a Creative driver issue as well. But because playback in Foobar is working I’m just trying to cover all bases.
Thanks for writing in and sharing your case - congrats on the new purchase as well (outside of this issue, of course)!
@BlackJack is spot on correct here, keep us in the loop on if Creative is able to reproduce this issue. We’ll enable diagnositc mode for your Roon Server in the meantime, if you’d like to share a specific date/time/track name upon reproducing the issue yourself.
Hi Benjamin! Creative support claimed they were able to play the dsf track I provided them using the ‘Realtek ASIO’ device in Roon. Mil (agent) intended to attach a video showing them playing it but I think they forgot to attach it. So waiting for the actual video.
Meanwhile, I’ll trying playing something a little bit and drop a reply here when I do in case you folks can glean anything. The one positive is that at least the SB devices aren’t disappearing from Roon anymore.
For the AE-X, the playback device can be one of 3 things:
1 - headphones directly connected to the AE-X via the ACM module (from the AE-7). That has a volume pot and headphone / mic ports. I just max out the volume in Windows and use the volume pot to adjust headphone volume.
2 - NAD D3020 v2 integrated amp → speakers. again max out the volume in windows.
3 - Schiit Jotunheim 2 headphone amp → headphones (for music). again max out the volume in windows.
Here is the video the Creative team provided showing that Realtek ASIO was playing the DSF file successfully in Roon. So I’m kind of at a loss at this point as to what to do on my end. I already wiped and re-installed Roon (which anyway I kinda needed to do since you have to use Docker on Synology now).
Ok … so as a last ditch effort, I wiped my computer and re-installed windows 11. Initially, when I selected the Realtek ASIO device, it would disappear and re-appear. So uninstalled the drivers, and did the following: turned off fast start, turned off PCIE power management, enabled ASPM in the BIOS (something I had turned off during troubleshooting). After the reboot, turned on Roon and …it’s working. No idea what the root cause was ultimately.
EDIT: May have spoken too soon. Stopped playback, went to youtube, didn’t hear anything and then came back and the device has disappeared. Eventually after refreshing the devices, it’s come back. But then if you hit play it disappears. I think I’m going to give up on this. Waste of money and time.
Thanks for the updates and additional information! From a fresh Roon Server diagnostic report, we can see they actually contradict the “Roon can’t do native DSD on the AE-X” framing.
Native DSD64 plays cleanly through the AE-X’s ASIO driver multiple times in these logs, no DoP, no DSP, no volume mangling. The real problem is an intermittent driver/connection instability that makes the ASIO device drop offline (“disappear”), and that instability has been steadily resolving over the logged period. What you’re chasing is a flaky endpoint, not a DSD-handling bug in Roon.
The actual failure is connection instability, and it’s a driver/OS issue. The one clear in-log drop (06/18) is
[raat_ll/client] OnDisconnected: BeginRead read count is 0 → lost client connection. Retrying → failed to connect(0) Operation canceled → reconnect.
That reconnect cycle taking ~1–13 seconds is exactly the “device flashes out and comes back” behavior in your video. This is the ASIO driver tearing down its stream, not Roon refusing to play.
Your instinct in post #16 about PCIe power management was almost certainly right; that’s a classic cause of an ASIO/PCIe audio device intermittently dropping its endpoint.
The hiss-and-soft-playback symptom is a separate, expected thing: that only happened on the WASAPI AE-X endpoints, which (as @BlackJack noted) get DSD as DoP or do DSP on it. That’s not your DSD path, your DSD path is the DSD ASIO driver, and it works. So stick to Creative SB/SBX AE DSD ASIO, leave it in native mode, and don’t use the WASAPI AE-X outputs for DSD.
For the remaining intermittent disappearance, the evidence points entirely at PCIe/driver power behavior rather than Roon:
Keep the ASPM / PCIe link-state and "fast startup" settings you already changed.
In Windows power options, set PCI Express → Link State Power Management to Off, and disable USB/PCIe selective suspend.
In Device Manager, untick "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" on the Creative device.
Given the AE-7 was still showing up days later, do one more clean sweep of leftover AE-7/Realtek/ASIO4ALL drivers so only the AE-X DSD ASIO remains.
@benjamin - thanks for the in depth analysis! You know, I actually erased my whole computer and did a clean windows 11 installation before my last round of testing. That 30 seconds of successful playback was as good as it got before the endpoint started flaking. I’ve since just put the AE-7 back in to the computer. But I will share your reply with the Creative support team to see if maybe there’s something here that could be useful to pass on to the product / dev team over there. If you have any additional thoughts that might be useful to them, would be appreciated. Somehow they seem to not be having these issues which is where it’s tough for me to understand where the root cause is.
Hi @noris! I didn’t get a lot back from them, but they did respond:
"Thank you for sharing with us the latest from your side.
Our team will take note of this and in case any development or newer driver/software version release, I will update you and see if it will help. As of this moment, we do not have any driver/software updates.
I have shared the link emphasizing on the specific issue you are encountering. "
ie. they have a link to this thread / page. So let’s see. For now I just put my AE-7 back in and I’ll try the AE-X again the next time I see a driver update.
