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Creative's X-Fi Audio Chip Reviewed
theraindog writes "The Tech Report has posted an in-depth review of Creative's new X-Fi audio processor. The 51-million transistor chip employs a unique audio ring architecture that pushes an apparent 10,000 MIPS, supports up to 128 hardware-accelerated voices for 3D audio, and can upsample and upmix stereo 16-bit/44.1kHz audio to multichannel 24-bit/96kHz. Creative says that the X-Fi's upsampling and upmixing capabilities can make MP3s sound better than the original CD, and although that claim isn't validated by listening tests, the X-Fi does sound better than other consumer-level audio cards. It also performs better in games, in part because precious few sound cards feature hardware acceleration for 3D audio."
I feel bad for Creative, they are pretty much the one and only sound card manufacturer (yes I know there are others but they are the most popular IMO). But is there really a demand for a bigger and better sound card from the average consumer?. How often are you in the middle of playing [insert game name here] and found yourself saying "man, I need a sound card upgrade, I'm just not getting the performance i need!!". In addition, when was the last time you thought of water cooling your sound card?.
My point is merely that sound cards provide great sound, but if your not in the Music industry, all the cards sound pretty much the same.
. . . why does Creative still refuse to include an optical out on its sound cards?
Yes you can get the live drive, but on a media PC that's designed to be on show, it makes sense to have the digital outputs out the back, where they can be easily concealed.
HiteC do one, as do turtle beach, why not Creative?
Creative says that the X-Fi's upsampling and upmixing capabilities can make MP3s sound better than the original CD.
In other news, Creative have created a new image compression standard that makes compressed images "look better than the original uncompressed version". A Creative spokesperson has announced that this compression standard uses the same technology as X-Fi to create information out of thin air.
Seriously, there is no way to make a recording that is compressed by a lossy algorithm such as MP3 sound as good as the original without creating information out of thin air. Of course, X-Fi can't do this, so it must be "guessing" what the original information was. This would of course mean that what you are listening to is just a moderately close approximation of the original recording that has had information added to it to sound "better" (by some Creative engineer's definition of "better").
That line about MP3s sounding better at 96kHz is a bunch of marketing BS.
There are reasons for 24bit/96kHz, but upsampling just to play it out of a speaker isn't one of them. That's kind of like printing out something at 2400dpi only to scan it back in again at 300. At best, you're going to wind up with exactly the same thing, while at worst you're going to have a bunch of aliasing artifacts from the upsampling.
Upsampling for playback is worthless even if your source material is perfect CD audio. Taking something even worse than that (MP3) and upsampling it is just turd polishing.
Want better sound? Buy better speakers. And a sound card that has high-quality analog components. The digitial part is not the weak part of computer sound playback. Hard to market that, though: "Now with 10db more S/N! And better capacitors!"
24bit/96kHz is good for doing high quality recordings, then manipulating the sound and mixing it. Once that's done there's no point in distributing it in anything better than 16/44.1, if all that's ever done with it after that is playback. If you want your listeners to be able to do their own remixes, that may be another story, but then you have to distribute separate mixer tracks anyway...
314-15-9265
That image technology has been around forever. Just watch an episode of CSI.
I was going to make much the same observation and then something occured to me:
Quality of sound is subjective.
It's why every crappy CD player and walkman comes with a Bass Boost. Boosting the bass doesn't make the sound more authentic than the original but, for the average listener with no idea what clear music should sound like, more bass is appealing and a selling gimmick.
Similarly, you upsample, apply smoothing algorithms, apply fractal algorithms, whatever, you may be able to give a perception of clarity, of spacial separation, etc. far in excess of what the original CD had. That doesn't mean it's what the artist and engineers intended, it doesn't mean it's more accurate to the original performance, but you'll still get the average 13 year old telling you that Britney's latest masterpiece sounds even better now.
So, you can make a track sound "better" to an average sampling of listeners without it being more accurate to the environment of the original recording. It's all about their definition of better.
That's like saying you can make JPEG look better than the uncompressed image. Yes, you can improve the quality of MP3 by careful interpretation of data and perhaps extrapolating information for higher frequencies (which most often suffer from MP3 compression -- MP3Pro does something similar), but it will NEVER be as crisp and clear as the original material, let alone better.
Not that you'll be able to hear the difference on your $20 desktop speakers you got at the 'Shack anyway.
No encryption can withstand the power of the Lucky Guess.
Basically all pro cards from the low end up are designed to do one thing only: get audio in and out of the computer accurately. You pay for more ins and outs, better converters, etc, but all they do is play and record sound.
The Creative cards from the Live on up are all DSPs. They are designed to convolute sound. So in a game if they want it to sound like you are in a parking garage, they give the proper commands to the card and it convolutes the sound to do it's best appromation of a parking garage. This leads to both lower CPU usage and more realistic sound than doing the processing all on the CPU.
So the problem is, because of this consumer focus, sacrafices were made. One was that the Lives and Audigys output (and input) only one sample rate: 48kHz (Audigy 2s have 96kHz, but only in special cases). They'll accept any you like under that, but sample rate convert that. They do an ok job, but not great, distortion is introduced that you can see on a scope and hear on good equipment. So they are right out for good recording. Also, they kinda chepskated on the converters for the cards, so they are noisy, compared to others in their price range.
But, for all that, they are real, no-shit, DSPs. If you get the OSS kX drivers (http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?skip=1) you can actually write your own assembly programs for the DSP and control what it does.
Now the X-Fi is extremely exciting as it fixes most of the problems people had. For one it has three different modes it can be set in. In pro mode it dispenses with all teh resampling crap and does accurate 1:1 bit capture at any sample rate up to 96kHz. In other modes where it does resample, it does it with a kickass high-order filter that introduces essentially no distortion.
I am unsure if it has the ability to function as a VST plugin built in, but certinaly nothing precludes it from doing so. It's a powerful DSP and has the capability to route sound in and out of it.
So, really, it's not comparable to pro cards. They are designed to do different things mostly. There are some pro cards that feature DSPs, but very few. These days in pro work, the effect processing is done in software. It's more flexable and real time is non-critical. However in a game, you can't dump 20% of your CPU in to doing a single high-quality reverb, so having a DSP is a real boon.
Personally, I use both. I have an M-Audio Firewire 410 for pro, an Audigy 2 for consumer. I imagine that'll become an X-fi very soon here.