Creative Sound Blaster X3: power output and what it will drive

The Creative Sound Blaster X3 is a desktop DAC/amp at $100. It delivers 45 mW into 32Ω and 21 mW into 300Ω, which ranks it 254 of 280 for raw power among the sources in this database.

Measured at 100 dB SPL it has comfortable headroom on 443 of the 567 dynamic and planar headphones catalogued here, enough but not generous on 99, only marginal on 11 and not enough power for 14. Power is published at 32Ω, 150Ω, 600Ω; the rest of the table is derived from those figures. Output impedance is not published. Output noise is not published, so the hiss estimate cannot be run.

This entry does not repeat the manufacturer's printed power figures. It uses 45 mW into 32Ω, 35 mW into 150Ω, 14 mW into 600Ω.

Creative publishes no milliwatt figure at all for the X3. What it does publish is an output voltage at a stated load, for each gain setting: “Low Gain: 32–149Ω (1.2V RMS @ 32Ω, 1.5V RMS @ 150Ω), High Gain: 150–600Ω (2.3V RMS @ 150Ω, 2.9V RMS @ 600Ω)”. Because the load is stated, those voltages give a power directly — 1.2 Vrms into 32Ω is 45 mW — and that is where the figures above come from. This is not the same thing as a published power rating, and it is not the same thing as working down from an unloaded voltage either: it is Creative's own number at Creative's own load, with one division done. The method is checked against the Sound Blaster X5, where Creative prints both the volts and the milliwatts and the two agree to the printed digit.

Derivation holds output voltage steady between and beyond the published loads rather than output power, because that is what an amplifier actually does. The full method is written up here.

Source: us.creative.com.

Ordered from easiest to hardest to drive. Headroom is measured at 100 dB SPL, which is louder than almost anyone listens — a small negative number means the source still plays loud, just without reserve for peaks.

These figures come from each manufacturer's own sensitivity rating. A handful of planars — the HiFiMAN Susvara and the Abyss AB-1266 in particular — are widely reported to need far more than their published sensitivity implies, so treat a bare pass on those as optimistic rather than settled.

The manufacturer does not publish an output noise figure for this source, so the hiss estimate that runs on every other page here cannot be run on this one. Rather than substitute a plausible number, this page leaves the question open.

If you know the noise figure from a measurement you trust, the hiss calculator takes it directly and tells you where that noise lands in your own in-ears.

The manufacturer does not publish an output impedance for this source. That is the one number that decides whether it leaves your headphones alone or acts as a tone control, so its absence matters more than it looks: without it, nothing here can tell you how this source will behave with a multi-driver in-ear.

If you find a measured figure you trust, the checker will work out the consequence for any headphone.

Of the 280 sources here, 27 do everything the Creative Sound Blaster X3 does as a headphone output: reach 100 dB on every headphone it reaches. The cheapest of them is the Generic CX31993 dongles at $12, against this one’s $100 — $88 less, and a USB dongle rather than a desktop DAC/amp.

This counts a headphone output and nothing else. Inputs, converters, microphone preamps, balanced outputs, the volume control, the case and the warranty are all outside it, and any of them can be the reason to buy the dearer box. What the count does say is that the three numbers a maker can be held to do not separate them.

Worked out in advance against its closest rivals: vs Aiyima A2 Pro · vs Creative Sound Blaster X5 · vs FiiO K11. Each of those pages lists the headphones that tell the two apart.

Or put any two side by side in the source comparison tool, or run your own headphones through the amplifier matcher. Or see every Creative source in the database, and how much of what this site says about them came from Creative’s own documents.