This is my first add-on soundcard, and the experience has been pretty good when paired with my Audio-Technica ATH-M50x, except for a few things that I had to work out. Will be keeping the card, as it is a good upgrade, but here is some good stuff to know.First Problem:The drive power coming from the headphone port of the card is extreme, especially if you have low-ohm headphones, so much so that (Without software modifications) I had to keep the volume on windows around 10% or below (Without modification), and I did slightly worry that one day I'll forget that volume is at 100% and my headphones will explode.My Solution:Turn on the equalizer, set it to flat/whatever you like, move the overall sound volume (In the equalizer pane on the left) all the way down to -12db. I can comfortably go up to 50% volume now, I do wish that up to -24db was an option to ensure my headset and ears are safe from volatile audio.Second Problem:When I got the firmware and the Sound Blaster Command software directly from the website at creative.com/support/SBZSE, it recognized the card immediately and everything was fine, until I decided to do a driver update from 6.0.102.75.The device stopped being recognized from the SBC application, but I still was able to pick up the device firmware in device manager.My Solution:I reinstalled the SBC application from the website, and that fixed the issue. Probably a app-firmware compatibility issue, no big deal for me, but this might be quite the headache for somebody less tech-savvy who got this card to immediately try to update, and find that it doesn't get recognized by the software for some reason. Maybe it will work on somebody else's computer, but for me doing an update caused a minor fixable firmware problem.Overall I do like this, and I find the included software pretty user-friendly, but the descriptions for the SBX profiles could be more technical in what surround, crystallizer, bass, smart vol and dialog+ do.I'll quickly describe what those settings do for me here, they are all essentially post-processing audio overlays:Surround makes noise more spatially oriented, it attempts to simulate a good surround sound speaker setup/interior environment.Crystallizer kind of sharpens the audio, which can be good or bad based on preference, based on what you listen to.Bass is pretty self explanatory, the deep beats being boosted, if your audio setup can handle it.Smart volume is a audio normalizer, it adjusts the audio range of what you are listening to to be more or less extreme. This is good for preventing large audio shifts in media on night setting, which I find very useful, because many YouTube videos and some musical pieces aren't normalized properly, and it is easy to get blasted by sound randomly.Dialog+ is just a equalizer/booster for the human vocal range at 350 to 3400hz, with a heavy focus on 400hz (I'm guessing) to make speech more audio-legible. This is a pretty nice feature, especially for some movies where the actors mumble/say things quietly.Also nice is the fact that you can turn those features on/off through SBC software, highly customizable.One last good feature I like, that I didn't know about is the scout mode. I have my scout mode set to ALT+CTRL+F12 for quick activation, and just program my Keychron V6 keyboard's extra buttons with VIA to have it activate on one press. It does enhance some of the frequencies associated with footsteps, and far-thrown noises to enhance audio spatial info, but the change is subtle. Good for when you need a little extra awareness in-game.