Creative Unveils Sound Blaster X-Fi Ultra-Audio Cards

You’ve heard of Creative Technology Ltd.‘s Sound Blaster Audigy products? According to Creative, you ain’t heard nothing yet: The company’s 51-million-transistor X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio processor delivers 24 times the power of the Audigy chip to usher in a new era in music, movies, and games.

The new processor powers four new PC sound cards, each with three optimized modes for music or movie playback, gaming, and music creation and editing. The first mode uses the X-Fi Crystalizer and CMSS-3D technology to convert audio to 24-bit/96kHz quality; remaster and enhance it by analyzing which parts of the audio stream suffered from compression to 16-bit MP3 or WMA formats; and upmix it so even headphones sound like surround sound, with different elements (such as voice versus ambience) sent to different channels (such as center versus surrounding).

The gaming mode promises to deliver up to a 40 percent performance boost while delivering full audio enhancement effects and 128-voice 3D realism. The audio creation mode provides digital-matched recording capabilities in resolutions from 44.1kHz to 96kHz, with no-CPU-load latency as low as 1 millisecond, and up to eight different 24-bit hardware effects with SoundFont sampling.

The Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic card ($130) upgrades any existing libraries of MP3 or other music files to the Xtreme Fidelity audio standard, with 109dB SNR playback quality. The X-Fi Platinum ($200) adds an internal drive bay with front-facing I/O plus an IR remote, while the X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS ($280) provides maximum EAX environmental realism for gamers. The flagship X-Fi Elite Pro ($400) includes professional-quality digital-to-analog converters; 64MB of audio memory; an I/O module with Crystalizer, CMSS-3D, 3DMIDI, and EAX controls; a pre-amp for direct recording; and high-impedance inputs for electric guitars.