Creative Sound Blaster X5 vs iFi Zen DAC 3

Both are desktop DAC/amps, $285 against $229. This page puts them side by side on the only three things a maker can be held to — power, output impedance and noise — and then asks the question that actually matters: which headphones do they treat differently?

The iFi Zen DAC 3 reaches 100 dB on 564 of the 567 models here, the Creative Sound Blaster X5 on 561.

A figure marked not published is missing from the maker’s own material, which is not the same as being good or bad. Where one of these two publishes a number and the other does not, the comparison on that axis cannot be made at all — and saying so is more useful than guessing.

Both makers publish a power rating, which is less common than the table above makes it look: of the 280 sources here, 209 publish a figure at at least one load and only 2 publish one at all four. Creative Sound Blaster X5 publishes at 150 Ω and at 600 Ω; iFi Zen DAC 3 at 32 Ω and at 600 Ω. Every other row is worked out from those — between two published loads, or beyond them holding voltage constant, which understates rather than flatters.

So the two columns are not equally firm row by row: at 150 Ω only the Creative Sound Blaster X5 figure is the maker’s own and at 32 Ω only the iFi Zen DAC 3 figure is the maker’s own. On those rows the derived number is the one to doubt first.

What each of these labels means, and why a derived figure is still worth printing, is set out in how this data was built.

3 headphones reach 100 dB on the iFi Zen DAC 3 but not on the Creative Sound Blaster X5 — Moondrop COSMO, Symphonium Helios, Symphonium Zenith.

561 of the 567 models here reach 100 dB on both. That is a power count and nothing more; whether either source suits a given headphone also depends on the two lines above.

The counts above say how many models the two treat differently. This says by how much. The same 8 headphones appear on every page of this kind, ordered from the easiest to drive to the hardest, so a row can be read across pages as well as across columns. Headroom is at a 100 dB SPL peak.

The widest gap on the list is the HiFiMAN HE400se: iFi Zen DAC 3 has +13 dB of headroom there against +9 dB. 4 dB is about 2.7 times the power, which matters for peaks rather than for how loud the music sits.

The hiss columns are empty for Creative Sound Blaster X5 and iFi Zen DAC 3 because neither maker publishes no output noise figure. That is a gap in the specification, not a quiet amplifier, and it is left blank here rather than filled with a plausible number.

The Creative Sound Blaster X5 costs $56 more than the iFi Zen DAC 3, and on these three axes the money buys nothing: among the 567 models here there is not one that the Creative Sound Blaster X5 handles and the iFi Zen DAC 3 does not — not on power, not on the one-eighth rule, not on hiss. The traffic runs the other way: the cheaper iFi Zen DAC 3 drives 3 models to 100 dB that the Creative Sound Blaster X5 does not.

Everything in this paragraph counts only figures the two makers published. An advantage on an axis one of them leaves blank cannot be counted, and is not counted — how often that happens is its own page.

Each has a page of its own with every power figure traced to what the maker published and a full headphone list: Creative Sound Blaster X5 and iFi Zen DAC 3. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.