Sound Blaster Xi-Fi details released

[Helevitia]

I've been using on boards sound for about a year now and I hate it. I switched from an Audigy. The Audigy blows this realtek chip away. I'm looking forward to a new SB card.

[Jammrock]

I've been using on boards sound for about a year now and I hate it. I switched from an Audigy. The Audigy blows this realtek chip away. I'm looking forward to a new SB card.

Still running my Audigy. Can't sand onboard sound. Bleh! For my serious music listening at work, where my PC is my only option, I have my Echo Indigo, which is head-over-heals better than the Audigy.

[High_Jumbllama]

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

It is so extreme it can make stuff up!

[satgeek]

It is so extreme it can make stuff up!

After reading that line, right then I knew that I would not be purchasing this card.

[Jammrock]

LOL...dZues and I discussed this topic with video processing a while back. It's not that a video, or in this case, an audio processor magically adds missing details, it's more along the lines of smoothening out the rough edges. To save space when compressing A/V they pull out details, not all of which come back unless you are using a lossless compression scheme. Something like Creative's new scheme has algorythms that will predict where that detail is missing and simply "smoothens out the rough edges" of the audio.

Think of a 640x480 video source. If you watch it in full screen at 1024x768 with no processing it will look blocky, pixelated and rough. Add in your processing and it smoothens out the rough edges, colors, etc. So it looks better vs. non-processed, but processing does not "add detail and resolution." Meaning that the ideal situation would be to have a 1024x768 raw source on a 1024x768 monitor and not need any processing at all. That's not proactical however.

In the audio sense, the Xi-Fi probable resmples and processes all audio so it matches the Xi-Fi's "natural resolution." It would add smoothness to the playback, probably reduce or eliminate pops and clicks (in theory of course), etc., but it would not, and cannot, add additional detail/resolution to the music. Thus an MP3 may sound better, in the sense that it plays back smoother, but the XiFi wouldn't add "detail" to the mosuic that can only be found with a better recorded version of the music.

just my $0.02.

Jammrock

[rylan]

Sounds basically like a hardware DSP with an interpolation algorithm.

[Tjalfe]

Sounds basically like a hardware DSP with an interpolation algorithm.

sounds like at FIR filter with say coeficients of [0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1,0.1] ...
makes for a nice 10 point averager

[The PIT]

Only time I had crackling was with a Via chipset and a DVD drive connected to the secondary channel. Disabling the onboard ide controller and putting everything on a promise card solved the problem.
You can guess the southbridge chip.

[Jammrock]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1850389,00.asp

First Xi-Fi review is up. They seem to like it.

Jammrock

[Dr Mordrid]

When my TBSC's need replacing I'll get a real audio card for my editing systems; M-Audio, Echo or something a bit more capabler than Creatives junkware.

Dr. Mordrid

[Nowhere]

Don't just rip your music - Super-Rip it!
When you Super-Rip, Sound Blaster X-Fi uses the 24-bit Crystalizer & CMSS-3D features to permanently reconstruct and enhance your recording! Instead of a low-quality MP3 file, you'll get an XtremeFidelity 24-bit WMA file!

Here I was like: "shit, properly ripped music will become so much harder to find :/"

Also:

So with X-Fi we set out to turn a perceived negative into a very robust must-have feature. The X-Fi Sample Rate Converter engine is incredibly powerful at over 7,000 MIPS equivalent processing power

And when looking at other parts of Creative site you see over 10000 MIPS as total power. Great. Brilliant. Insted of designing a solution that doesn't resample at all (like my old Vortex), still decide to resample everything, but this time use 70% of power of you shiny new audio processor to not do it in a shitty way...

However:

Environment Occlusionâ„¢
OK, The Bad Guys Are Outside!

This feature makes gaming audio more realistic by recreating the effect of sound from adjacent environments passing through solid objects. It can even recreate how different materials affect sound, such as wood vs. brisk vs. stone and has been enhanced to be even more realistic than previous versions! This allows you to tell when a bad guy is outside the room you are in rather than inside.

Previous versions of EAX® supported a feature called occlusion. This feature recreated the effect of sound passing through a solid object (see the other EAX® sections for a detailed description). However the basic Occlusion effect only occluded the direct sound, but not the environmental reverb associated with that sound. This reduced the effectiveness and impact of the overall effect. Environment Occlusion? improves the realism by allowing the reverb effect itself as well as the direct sound to be muffled due to occluding objects. So you get the best simulation of real-world audio ever achieved!

EAX® MacroFX™
You Closer To Your Gaming Audio!

EAX® MacroFX™ will have you ducking for cover! With this feature close-up audio can be very accurately recreated, so bullets and laser blasts will never have sounded so frightening as they zip past your head only centimetres away!

Previous versions of EAX® ADVANCED HD™ were very good at recreating medium-range and long-distance sounds. However it couldn't handle close-up sounds - effects that could sound as though they were just 20cm away from your ears! Someone whispering in your ear, a sword slashing just past your head, or a laser blast zipping past your ear. Now, with EAX® MacroFX™, developers can recreate the sound of a machine-gun firing from a distance and have the bullets whizzing past your head, sounding so close you'll be ducking for cover!

I think we see parts of A3D back, finally. Too bad that only accurate occlusions, not reflections. (you ask why the second quote might be about evolution of A3D tech? Simple: I've never heard more impressive and frightening 3D sound effects than "disks" or rockets pasing right by my head in UT while using A3D)

[TransformX]

I miss Aureal, they were for Creative like AMD is for Intel.

[Fluff]

Looking forward to the E-mu variant.

[Fluff]

Remember the biggest discrepancy in frequency response is from the speakers!!! Not the source.

If that x-fi can mimic a proper crossover in hardware that would be very cool.

[VJ]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1850389,00.asp

First Xi-Fi review is up. They seem to like it.

What do you expect?
!!!EXTREME!!!Tech reviews the Creative !!!EXTREME!!! exprience: X-FI.



Jörg