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."

Comments

Re:Creative Left Out

[Guspaz]

You're thinking of the Aureal Vortex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A3D). A3D simulated a low-detail version of the 3D environment and calculated reverb based on the reflections inside that environment.

A3D died off years ago, and Aureal was bought out by Creative. EAX still can't come close to A3D's capabilities.

For an idea of the A3D generation, Quake 3 supported A3D for 3D audio, though it was later removed when A3D died off.