We purchased the Sound Blaster Audigy RX so that our expert reviewer could thoroughly test and review it. Read on for our full product review.

The Sound Blaster Audigy RX is a six-year-old sound card that’s partly based on another, even older card. Some of that technology is now nearly 15 years old, and at this point many motherboard manufacturers have turned to decent audio chipset makers for their audio. That leaves the RX in a tough niche market: those with really old systems, those looking for native 7.1 surround support, and those looking for a cheap dual-mic recording solution.

The Sound Blaster Audigy RX has a fairly simple design: a PCB with a DAC chip, a low-power headphone amplifier, and supporting components. The core chipset, the E-MU CA-10300-IAT, is the same chipset as the aging Audigy 4, which launched in 2005. Even at the time of the Audigy 4's launch, the CA-10300 was considered less advanced than the CA-0102 chipset in the Audigy 2, hardware that first debuted over 17 years ago.

For the RX’s $50 MSRP and all the dust-covered tech, we’d like to see at least a cover to reduce electrical interference from the rest of the PC. Compared to flashier cards like the Sound Blaster Z or ASUS Strix Raid PRO, the RX looks cheap but functional. As for the end-user experience, it’s fine but entirely unremarkable.