Linux Patches Surface For Supporting The Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5

Last year Creative Labs introduced the Sound BlasterX AE-5 PCI Express gaming sound card while finally there are some patches pending for supporting this high-end sound card in Linux.

Connor McAdams who most recently got the Creative Recon3D support into good shape on Linux has now been working on getting the Sound BlasterX AE-5 working well on Linux.

This $150 PCIe sound card features a SABRE32 Ultra Class DAC, BlasterX Acoustic Engine, Xamp Discrete Headphone Amplification, and even an integrated RGB lighting controller.

Creative hasn't supported the Sound BlasterX AE-5 under Linux but with a new set of patches to ALSA's hda/ca0132 driver code he has it working. All outputs are working but the only known issue right now is some inconsistency issues with the microphone jack.

Those that happen to have this high-end sound card and wanting to test these kernel patches can find them for now on the kernel mailing list. There's still time where we will hopefully find these as part of the sound-next changes for the Linux 4.20~5.0 kernel.