ETA on Creative X-Fi Audiocards

[biostud]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello

Originally posted by: Excelsior
It just seems like a bunch of marketing BS and hype to me. You can't make an mp3 sound better than it already is...

Yeah, I glanced at the info above and that happened to be the part I randomly read first.

"With the X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity 24-bit Crystalizer, MP3 music and movies are converted to Xtreme Fidelity, which deliver an experience beyond the original CD or DVD recordings." = wtf?

Maybe coding a stereo sound into surround without the usual distortion of sound?
But most likely marketing BS 😛

 

[Crescent13]

Originally posted by: Anand Lal Shimpi
Late summer or early fall I believe.

Take care,
Anand

Nice to see you in the forums Anand! I was thinking late fall, but you're probably right 🙂

 

[Snakexor]

do the lower end cards (ie below fatal1ty) support eax 5.0?

 

[Brian48]

I thought this was very interesting.

After using the X-Fi to listen to audio with the 24-bit Crystalizer, we will have a very hard time going back to plain old 16-bit, 44.1kHz. We listened to several MP3s and CDs using the 24-bit Crystalizer and songs did sound much better with it enabled--like having the equalizer settings optimized, but much better. The 24-bit Crystalized songs became more vibrant, and disabling the feature felt like we were crippling the audio. The X-Fi menu lets you enable or disable the Crystalizer, and there's also a slider setting that lets you adjust the degree of the effect (we kept ours pegged at 100 percent).

This is from Gamespot's preview article.

What really caught my eye was this line:

Borrowing a page from the graphics manufacturer playbook, Creative will make the X-Fi chip available to other hardware manufacturers, including other sound card companies. Selling the chip to other manufacturers will help make up for development costs and increase the number of X-Fi-enabled devices available in the market.

Can you imagine X-Fi sound cards produced by Hercules, Turtle Beach, Philips, etc..? Man, the market is really changing.

 

[Oyeve]

An X-FI chip in an iPod. Bet you it happens.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Brian48
I thought this was very interesting.

After using the X-Fi to listen to audio with the 24-bit Crystalizer, we will have a very hard time going back to plain old 16-bit, 44.1kHz. We listened to several MP3s and CDs using the 24-bit Crystalizer and songs did sound much better with it enabled--like having the equalizer settings optimized, but much better. The 24-bit Crystalized songs became more vibrant, and disabling the feature felt like we were crippling the audio. The X-Fi menu lets you enable or disable the Crystalizer, and there's also a slider setting that lets you adjust the degree of the effect (we kept ours pegged at 100 percent).

This is from Gamespot's preview article.

What really caught my eye was this line:

Borrowing a page from the graphics manufacturer playbook, Creative will make the X-Fi chip available to other hardware manufacturers, including other sound card companies. Selling the chip to other manufacturers will help make up for development costs and increase the number of X-Fi-enabled devices available in the market.

Can you imagine X-Fi sound cards produced by Hercules, Turtle Beach, Philips, etc..? Man, the market is really changing.

I would never trust a review like that; it's all too easy to fool people by simply cranking up the treble, which a lot of people equate with better sound. As for selling the chip, you can bet on it not being cheap.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: Brian48
I thought this was very interesting.

After using the X-Fi to listen to audio with the 24-bit Crystalizer, we will have a very hard time going back to plain old 16-bit, 44.1kHz. We listened to several MP3s and CDs using the 24-bit Crystalizer and songs did sound much better with it enabled--like having the equalizer settings optimized, but much better. The 24-bit Crystalized songs became more vibrant, and disabling the feature felt like we were crippling the audio. The X-Fi menu lets you enable or disable the Crystalizer, and there's also a slider setting that lets you adjust the degree of the effect (we kept ours pegged at 100 percent).

This is from Gamespot's preview article.

What really caught my eye was this line:

Borrowing a page from the graphics manufacturer playbook, Creative will make the X-Fi chip available to other hardware manufacturers, including other sound card companies. Selling the chip to other manufacturers will help make up for development costs and increase the number of X-Fi-enabled devices available in the market.

Can you imagine X-Fi sound cards produced by Hercules, Turtle Beach, Philips, etc..? Man, the market is really changing.

I would never trust a review like that; it's all too easy to fool people by simply cranking up the treble, which a lot of people equate with better sound. As for selling the chip, you can bet on it not being cheap.

Yeah, not to mention making something a little bit louder also makes it "sound better". A little bass/treble boost and an overall volume increase of a dB or two would make a significant difference in how it would sound if it's doing something like that.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: ryanv12

Originally posted by: biostud
Am I the only one who noticed the X Fi tab in the BF2 Demo?

I noticed it too, and I'm pretty excited about the fact that they claim that it'll make even your regular old sounding stuff sound like 24 bit.

I would not get excited about anything in BF2 relating to Creative hardware. BFV was a disaster when you enabled EAX even with the best Creative hardware, BF2 seems only marginally better.

I don't know who is to blame for this, the developer, the publisher or Creative, but I am no longer excited at ALL about Creative hardware. They need to demonstrate the ability to make CONSISTENT working drivers before I buy another Creative product.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Yeah, not to mention making something a little bit louder also makes it "sound better". A little bass/treble boost and an overall volume increase of a dB or two would make a significant difference in how it would sound if it's doing something like that.

Exactly. My BS-meter was off the scale on reading the crap about making MP3s sound better. How about play it how I recorded it. A soundcard's job with digital music is to reproduce what it is told, not to modify it. I hope this 'mode' or whatever is something that can be enabled/disabled.

It should be fairly simple to reverse engineer whatever filter they use on this by messing with the EQ in the drivers and comparing outputs of other soundcards. Hopefully at least one of the XFi reviews does that so we can see how creative decided to 'enhance' playback of recorded music.

 

[biostud]

22 Aug

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: Concillian

Exactly. My BS-meter was off the scale on reading the crap about making MP3s sound better. How about play it how I recorded it. A soundcard's job with digital music is to reproduce what it is told, not to modify it. I hope this 'mode' or whatever is something that can be enabled/disabled.

Soitenly it will be a toggle option just as effects are now. They are simply responding to the market which favours mock surround effects, "enhanced bass", equalizers, &c. over fidelity.

 

[ArneBjarne]

Originally posted by: Auric

Originally posted by: Concillian

Exactly. My BS-meter was off the scale on reading the crap about making MP3s sound better. How about play it how I recorded it. A soundcard's job with digital music is to reproduce what it is told, not to modify it. I hope this 'mode' or whatever is something that can be enabled/disabled.

Soitenly it will be a toggle option just as effects are now. They are simply responding to the market which favours mock surround effects, "enhanced bass", equalizers, &c. over fidelity.

Unfortunatly they don't stick to talking about making it sound better by adding something new:

"For music, it adds back the audio detail that is lost during MP3 or WMA compression"

Obviously it is impossible to add back the exact detail discarded in the compression or it wouldn't be a lossy compression to begin with and nothing would have ever been lost.

 

[Stretchman]

Hmm...

If the new cards are coming out soon, then perhaps I should wait a while yet. I'm actually going to assemble my new system this week, and wasn't sure if I should get an Audigy 2 and then swap it out later, or just use my motherboards onboard sound for now.

 

[Brian48]

Decided to give it a go tonight. Picked up the base "Extreme" model at BestBuy. So far, I'm fairly impressed. Without having to result to using MAD+SSRC plug-ins with Winamp, the sound is very good at default when playing my .mp3's. BF2 really sounds incredible too.

The odd thing is the drivers. Although I've never considered the Creative drivers to be as bloated as many would have you think, the install package is extremely lean (by Creative standards).