Creative Sound Blaster E5 USB DAC/Amp Combo

For those of you looking for a replacement battery, I found this on AliExpress: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256801736969682.html I haven't ordered one yet, but plan to. Cheers!

For anyone still stuck with an E5 brick, I suggest to drop the battery completely and turn it into a true desktop DAC/AMP unit, see this: https://github.com/Jamesits/sound-blaster-e5-battery/blob/master/FAKE_BATTERY.md The result, which now feeds my Topping DAC via Bluetooth 4/NFC: [image]

Lol, yes that is expected. I guess their firmware upgrades (there were supposed to fix this) didn't work either. Creative totally blew this one. Not only the battery management is bad, the PCB design is flawed, because you can't use it without a battery, and I think they still have it in production. I also saw refurbished units on their website for the third price of retail, probably the result of swollen batteries as well. Did Creative replace it for you or Drop? back then, I got a refund from Drop for this mishap, which was the much preferred way IMO. However, I still wanted to use my E5 brick, so some good folks posted their solutions on GitHub: https://github.com/Jamesits/sound-blaster-e5-battery. You'll find that it's rather easy to make it work without their battery, a very rather simple set of solders and you are done, without any modifications to the body of the unit. It'll also still be useable as a mobile unit, just grab a powerbank and bind it with the rubber bands from Creative (included in the box).