Page 6 - Listening

Listening

You can listen to music in any of the driver's three modes. It doesn't really matter because they all do the same thing. What does matter is whether you listen on headphones or speakers. In Headphone (not CMSS-3DHeadphone, you won't want to listen to music with that) mode the X-Fi seems to do a little crossfeed to create an out-of-head experience. Hey, when you've got 10 or so gigaflops, might as well put 'em to work. That's a nice touch, but I wish it was disclosed. I use Foobar2000 for music playback, which has its own crossfeed filter, which led to a confusing double crossfeed effect. Other than that, the headphone is pretty straightforward. This is a relief from Creative's previous models, which also added bass and treble boosts. Kudos to Creative.

I am impressed with the X-Fi's sound. I was impressed with the Audigy2 Platinum eX (the one with the external box) sound as well, which the X-Fi shares a family resemblance. The X-Fi produces the finest sound I've yet heard from a consumer card. It's that simple. From top to bottom, the sound of the X-Fi is extremely clear, deep, detailed, and with decent bass. I could gush more, but I think I'm starting to sound like an audiophile idiot.

How about some examples? Glad you asked. We used our reference sound card, the Terratec DMX-6fire, to test against the X-Fi. We also used our Grado SR-125 headphones as our reference output device. DVD playback and casual listening was handled by the Logitech Z-680 5.1 speakers. Sorry Kev, no Martin-Logan's here. ;)

Utada

On Utada's US release, Exodus, the X-Fi brought out new clarity to the layers in Animato. This 128kbps MP3 (fraunhoffer) encoded song has the melody doubled by piano and layered with several backing vocal tracks and ambient industrial sounds. The X-Fi brought out all these from the mix. This is impressive, as the 6-fire didn't quite keep up.  There's also a bridge section of the song with a triple-it note figure played on what sounds like spoons. Again, the X-Fi brought this out of the texture better than the 6-fire. About the only area where the 6-fire had an edge was the bass; the 6-fire's breakout box has much larger capacitors for bigger, badder bass.

Beethoven Op. 131

I used a 16 bit/44.1 kHz live Old First Church recording of the opening fugue of Beethoven's famous string quartet to gauge timbral accuracy. One thing that the 6-fire is extremely capable of is a natural and detailed sound for classical music. Basically, if a sound card sounds good on classical music, it will can sound good with other types. Except maybe Polka.

I can wrap this up easily. It's about equal with the X-Fi a bit better. Both the X-Fi and the 6-fire have nearly identical sound with classical music, very clean and detailed. Timbral accuracy was virtually identical as well, violins sound like violins and bow scrapes sound awful, as you would expect to hear with a live instrument in front of you. Previous SoundBlasters were not even close, as they tended to sound a little too thick, nasty and dirty, even the Audigy 2 ZS. The X-Fi separated the four instruments better, making this fugue easy to follow. The other difference was a bump in the microphone that was audible with the 6-fire but wasn't so on the X-Fi.  Again, this would change with the breakout versions of the X-Fi.

Bob

I have a very small collection of 24 bit/192 kHz recordings of Bob Marley and the Wailers live, which was digitized from the Babylon by Bus LP. The X-Fi is excellent, but it gets points for even playing the file. I have no direct comparison cards in the test system, but as I recall the last sound card I had that could play back this file was the AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1. If memory serves it did not sound as 'full' as the X-Fi does.  I can also say I have not heard the level of detail in this recording of Jammin' before. Bob does some amazing things with his voice and it all came through gloriously with the X-Fi!

Black Sabbath

This should be in a 'recording' section, but I used an old LP of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath digitized to 24 bit, 96 KHz wave. I can tell you that having an outboard box with your sound card makes connecting RCA cables much, much easier. But, just to make it even, I used the same line-in on the back of both cards.

The X-Fi did fine, but required additional level adjustment from my MC cartridge. On playback of the title track, the 6-fire was definitely darker, sharper, and even colder than the X-Fi. Probably the best example of what the X-Fi could do was the sweet sounding cymbals. I loved it. The X-Fi overall brought out a slightly brighter character, but still warm and natural.  If you don't mind me going all audiophile on you, the X-Fi brought a light to the recording, illuminating the sound.  I'm sorry I can't be more specific than that, it's very hard to describe! If you are looking for something that will be all that and a bag of chips for digitizing those old LP's, the X-Fi XtremeMusic is excellent!

But wait!  There's more!