Friday, August 5, 2005
Creative Labs and the X-Fi Mojo
Posted by Jason Dunn in "HARDWARE" @ 01:00 PM
"The most powerful audio processor ever built will soon be providing previously unimaginable benefits to users around the world. Delivering such benefits as accelerated frame-rates in games, providing the most realistic headphone surround experience and even adding back in to music the sparkle that is lost during MP3 or WMA compression - this new technology is going to transform the world of entertainment. Whatever you enjoy doing, if it involves audio, is never going to be the same again!"
The evolution of DSP (digital signal processors) found in audio cards happens at a much slower pace than the GPUs in video cards, largely because computer audio reached a "good enough" level for most people back in the '90s. Creative Labs was also extremely effective at marketing their Soundblaster line of products, so much so that now they essentially have the market to themselves. The danger though is that on-board audio is commonplace now in many motherboards, and most users (myself included) don't need or want a dedicated sound card. The X-Fi aims to change that.
I'm sure if I knew more about audio I'd even more impressed by this specs page, but even so, the fact that the X-Fi has 51.1 million transistors compared to the current generation Audigy card with a mere 4.6 million transistors tells me that the X-Fi is a heavy hitter. The X-Fi music page has some interesting information as well - the X-Fi claims to "dynamically put the vitality and impact of the original recording back in". Is such a thing possible? Maybe - lossy compression techniques work by cutting out frequencies (data); the lower the bit rate, the more the frequencies are compressed, and the smaller the file size. I suppose it's theoretically possible for the X-Fi to "fill in the blanks" and restore some of the lost frequencies, but I've heard that hype before and won't believe it until I hear for myself. The X-Fi also has "super rip" functionality:
"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!"
They seem to be saying that ripping with X-Fi results in a higher quality audio file than normal - but how? Encoding quality is determined by the encoder itself and its rules for frequency compression - how would the X-Fi help with this? All in all, X-Fi looks impressive but it's difficult to see through the marketing fog and find real answers.
The evolution of DSP (digital signal processors) found in audio cards happens at a much slower pace than the GPUs in video cards, largely because computer audio reached a "good enough" level for most people back in the '90s. Creative Labs was also extremely effective at marketing their Soundblaster line of products, so much so that now they essentially have the market to themselves. The danger though is that on-board audio is commonplace now in many motherboards, and most users (myself included) don't need or want a dedicated sound card. The X-Fi aims to change that.
I'm sure if I knew more about audio I'd even more impressed by this specs page, but even so, the fact that the X-Fi has 51.1 million transistors compared to the current generation Audigy card with a mere 4.6 million transistors tells me that the X-Fi is a heavy hitter. The X-Fi music page has some interesting information as well - the X-Fi claims to "dynamically put the vitality and impact of the original recording back in". Is such a thing possible? Maybe - lossy compression techniques work by cutting out frequencies (data); the lower the bit rate, the more the frequencies are compressed, and the smaller the file size. I suppose it's theoretically possible for the X-Fi to "fill in the blanks" and restore some of the lost frequencies, but I've heard that hype before and won't believe it until I hear for myself. The X-Fi also has "super rip" functionality:
"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!"
They seem to be saying that ripping with X-Fi results in a higher quality audio file than normal - but how? Encoding quality is determined by the encoder itself and its rules for frequency compression - how would the X-Fi help with this? All in all, X-Fi looks impressive but it's difficult to see through the marketing fog and find real answers.
