Can you turn off the lights on a Creative Sound Blaster AE-7?

[JWNoctis]

I've got a Sound Blaster AE-7 recently. While it worked well enough, I've also found no way of turning its white LED highlights off. Just trying to keep the build to a theme, mostly.

The lights turned on with a delay on startup and took about 0.5s to brighten, which I thought may imply some form of programmatic control, but I've so far found no way to turn them off in Sound Blaster Command, and a brief search returned no relevant results. To be fair, they are not all that bright, and are pretty inoffensive compared to the likes of AE-5, but some way to just turn them off would have been great to have. More ghetto solutions like black tape are currently reserved as last resort, while desoldering them would just void the warranty, and probably end up breaking something else.

As to other options, the seller does not accept unconditional return, and selling it off and just use the onboard sound or an USB DAC seemed even more wasteful at the moment, sunk cost paradox notwithstanding.

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[Ruru]

AFAIK you need to physically modify the card to disable them.

 

[#22]

Didn't you miss potential led switch in Settings->Device tab, so not Lighting one? My G6 has it's two led switches divided like that what's not really intuitive. It's for sure software controlled, so if Command doesn't do it, at best you could try you luck with older Connect (if it's still downloadable). In general it's best to ask such things the source, Creative itself

 

[JWNoctis]

Didn't you miss potential led switch in Settings->Device tab, so not Lighting one? My G6 has it's two led switches divided like that what's not really intuitive. It's for sure software controlled, so if Command doesn't do it, at best you could try you luck with older Connect (if it's still downloadable). In general it's best to ask such things the source, Creative itself

There appeared to be no options for LED there. The only options are factory reset and driver update, unfortunately.

I don't think Connect ever supported AE-7, the latter being too new, but I'm not quite sure.

AFAIK you need to physically modify the card to disable them.

Guess it's black tape, then. Time to find some that both look reasonable and preferably leave little residue.

Honestly, it's quite an unexpected oversight.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Guess it's black tape, then. Time to find some that both look reasonable and preferably leave little residue.

Honestly, it's quite an unexpected oversight.

Why tape, put black paralon or carton. No harm done. You can sandwich it.

 

[Onasi]

No need for such extreme measures even, careful application of a black permanent marker is enough. Creative have been awful with this, though, going alllll the way to the Z I had at one point which had an annoying red led which couldn’t be turned off.
Though the LED epidemic is one reason why I prefer solid panel cases, lol. And external USB DACs.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I'm surprised the AE-7 cannot do this, my NU Audio's RGB can be disabled, although the only lighting is the "EVGA | NU Audio" lettering so I never really disabled it, since it doesn't look or feel intrusive at all. I'm also surprised the RGB hasn't gotten dim yet, this card's what, 5 years old and in daily use since?

 

[JWNoctis]

Why tape, put black paralon or carton. No harm done. You can sandwich it.

Good idea. Guess anything that holds the shape and sufficiently opaque should do. I'll see what I can come up with.

No need for such extreme measures even, careful application of a black permanent marker is enough. Creative have been awful with this, though, going alllll the way to the Z I had at one point which had an annoying red led which couldn’t be turned off.
Though the LED epidemic is one reason why I prefer solid panel cases, lol. And external USB DACs.

I'd say permanent markers are...quite a bit more permanent than desired, and don't actually block light all that well unless we are talking about paint markers.

Agree with everything about the LED epidemic. Yes, it doesn't look bad, but at least let people turn it off.

I'm surprised the AE-7 cannot do this, my NU Audio's RGB can be disabled, although the only lighting is the "EVGA | NU Audio" lettering so I never really disabled it, since it doesn't look or feel intrusive at all. I'm also surprised the RGB hasn't gotten dim yet, this card's what, 5 years old and in daily use since?

Unfortunately NU Audio is no longer available anywhere new. I've actually looked into it while trying to find an internal sound card that significantly outperforms onboard sound.

As to the RGB not getting dim, maybe they last longer when not being driven to peak brightness, as these evidently weren't.