Shvetsov Igor

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Advantages

Finally, the Pioneer HDJ-1000 headphones, which had been lying for 5 years, rejected for poor sound (I thought I bought a fake), sounded, and even? Conclusion, for high-impedance headphones you need an amplifier, this device has it)))

Flaws

The price, but I found it on Avito for 3 thousand, so I don’t care)))

Comment

For those who are not subject to audiophile excesses, but appreciate a decent sound

16 5

good components and, as a result, very good characteristics;
RCA connectors are standard for hi-fi equipment;
the presence of a RIAA corrector and a ground contact for connecting vinyl players with MM heads;
nice case design and soft USB cable;
new drivers have ASIO support;
relatively moderate price.

Flaws

support for sampling rate 44.1 kHz - only for S / PDIF output, and for analog, alas, only 48 and 96 kHz;
inconvenient (and unnecessary) digital volume control;
ASIO support - only for playback, and only for analog output;
the microphone input is made for a 6.3 mm plug (as if for “solid” microphones), but in reality it is stereo and powered for ordinary “electronics”.

Comment

I have a device release with the THX logo, not SBX, but this is pure marketing and drivers (the hardware is absolutely the same, apparently some kind of licensing problem).
I selected a high-quality external solution for a netbook in order to use it as a universal player (FLAC and APE) for a good hi-fi amplifier.
The quality of the RIAA corrector suits, it sounds absolutely no worse than the one built into the integrated amplifier - it will go for digitizing "vinyl" from my collection 30 years ago :-)
I am satisfied with the purchase, there are no problems with operation (on the Internet they often scare with the buggy of Creative USB devices).

Complain Did the review help? 34 9

Simple. Only 2 modes in which you can listen (24/48, 24/96). There is a line input SNR 100db (you can use the card for various measurements). Works on drivers from the site normally both in 10-ke and under 2012 R2. Works 24/96 via "HIFIMEDIY USB ISOLATOR". With him, the complete absence of any noise / interference. Input and output on RCA connectors. Everything is simple and clear. The sound with the right “cooking” (high-quality resampling at 96 kHz) is better than most built-in solutions. In general, if you don't get hung up on comparison with more expensive solutions, you can listen to the card and even really enjoy it.

Flaws

In terms of sound quality under the same conditions, ASUS Xonar Essence STX loses, which seems to be unsurprising given the 3 times difference in price. I hoped I would not hear a difference, but no, miracles do not happen. ASUS has better detail, while Creative has too accentuated high frequencies, and in general the sound is perceived as a little “blurry”, I didn’t feel a lack of lows (at all). Very strange is the lack of support for frequencies multiple of 44100 Hz. But I listen to foobar2000, the resampler there is very good (dBpoweramp), so I don't consider it critical for me. I also think the blue light bulb is stupid. And the volume control nafig not needed and inconvenient.

Comment

A card is like a card, how much it costs and plays. The frequency of 44100, I think, was specially slaughtered by marketers for some reason (God forbid they will use it instead of E-MU), the sound does not differ in anything outstanding, it does not cause the “WOW” effect. I don’t write anything about headphones - I only listen to speakers. In the reviews they write well pulls any "EARS". Given the price, it would probably be possible to put the card 5-, if not for the lack of support for 44 kHz.

Complain Did the review help? 10 9

Better than stock HD Audio. You can hear the improvement in quality on normal acoustics or headphones, I tried it.

Flaws

1. Software and drivers are not very good.
2. The volume control with the new driver works extremely poorly, with twitching and level jumps, it beat the tambourine with the driver.

Comment

Perhaps if I had bought the card earlier than January 02, 2020, my review would have been better.
For some time I suffered and suffered with static periodic clicks in the headphones, read the forums, and, according to the advice, twitched the USB cords and climbed uselessly to adjust something in the BIOS. I changed the XUHD driver ... 0025 “Release date: Jan 2, 20” to the older XUHD ... 0024 “Release date: Aug 26, 16”, the clicks disappeared, I hope forever, the jamb will appear again, I will hand it back to the store, I will add a review , unsubscribe.

Complain Did the review help? 2 0

The sound is cool, detailed enough, much better than regular HD Audio.
The non-linear distortion at the headphone output does not float much when the volume changes (as far as I managed to hear in 1 day).

Flaws

I got a marriage, a non-working volume control, I had to return it - this is not even a minus, it happens.

Minus, as noted earlier: "support for a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz" is not for all outputs.

I will note one more inconvenient moment, which manifested itself in 1 day of use. After waking up the computer from "sleep", not all applications had sound. Only those where you can explicitly specify the source worked correctly (Creative ASIO, for example). But browsers and many other programs take the sound from the device by default - there was no actual sound, even a reboot did not help, only disconnecting the USB and reconnecting it. Not very convenient, I constantly send the computer to sleep.

24.09.2014 17:05

The Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD is no longer a new product on the market, but it is one of the brightest attempts by the said company to please an already completely inexperienced audiophile audience.

An external sound card is definitely a specific product. So automatically audiophile. Because the average user is unlikely to bother with the search for the right device for playing any kind of music, and even more so for scoring acoustic scenes, for example, in computer games.

The buyer, who decides to organize a mini-studio at his workplace, approaches the choice of an apparatus for reproducing the incoming and outgoing signal purely from subjective preferences. Here are important specifications sound recording / playback, external ports for connecting acoustics and auxiliary devices, such as musical instruments or a microphone. Thus, there are quite a lot of subtleties in a device called an external sound card.

On factory drivers and without the use of complete and third party programs to improve and change the sound, the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD sounds really good.

The Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD is no longer a new product on the market, but it is one of the brightest attempts by the said company to please an already completely inexperienced audiophile audience. By and large, this device is able to implement two main functions - to reproduce very high-quality sound, and also to record it using one input connector. ¼ format jack located on the front panel black box.

The main characteristics of the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD stereo card are as follows: signal-to-noise ratio - 114 dB, the X-Fi processor already known to many (from the gaming series) is installed inside, the quality of playback and recording is 24bit/96kHz which is quite good for home use. Headphone amplification - 330 ohm.

In addition to the voiced instrument jack located on the front panel of the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD, there is another headphone output with exactly the same form factor. On the reverse side of the device soldered analog tulips(two pairs), as well as optical input and output TOSLINK. The sound card is connected via a connector USB 2.0. Creative also did not forget about grounding the device, which is very nice.

The true potential of Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD hidden in the control panel, which is installed from the disk or the manufacturer's website.

During operation, a blue diode notifies the user of the device's performance. The front panel of Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD also has a volume control in the style of classic receivers. Many users scold such, but in vain. Perhaps it is too miniature, but the device itself is quite modest in size. In any case, it is convenient to control the volume, the smooth and moderately tight movement of the plastic handle is designed just for this.

With factory drivers and without the use of bundled and third-party programs to improve and change the sound, Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD sounds really good. To be honest, after using the Behringer U-Phoria UM2 external card, there was no difference (passive Dual speakers from Germany connected to the Telefunken RA200 amplifier were used as an acoustic pair). The volume reserve is more than enough, the frequencies of all ranges are excellent.

But the true possibilities of the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD hidden in the control panel, which is installed from the disk or the manufacturer's website. It contains various EAX effects, an equalizer, THX TruStudio Pro functions. The panel is not overloaded with options, which means that any user will be able to rebuild the sound at their discretion. It really is worth it. The familiar sound of your favorite songs is literally updated with each turn of the slider of one or another parameter.

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD does not have ASIO support, which means that recording, as well as subsequent playback of the track, occurs with a significant delay.

Another significant a plus Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD is a soldered instrument input, which can be used to record sound from musical instruments, such as guitars, as well as from a full-fledged microphone. The sound card copes with this task very well and at the end you get audible the quality of the track, not studio quality, of course, but sufficient for personal experiments. But there is one flaw - Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD does not have ASIO support, which means that recording, as well as subsequent playback of the track, occurs with a significant delay. Thus, when overlaying one track on another, especially when playing the first one in parallel, difficulties in the workflow can arise. This is the minus of any non-professional solution, after all, the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD is an amateur device.

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD can be purchased for 3700 rubles and higher. By and large, this is a worthy offer for the opportunities that the monitored device offers the user, if we are talking about non-professional external cards for the home.

Beginning musicians who want to constantly evaluate the quality of their work, which is called on film, this device is also suitable, but with the reservations described above, which are associated with a large recording delay. In any case, when recording only one track in mono or stereo mode, there will be no problems in fact.

And the quality of the sound played through the analog inputs is really great, without any exaggeration. It is only necessary to acquire the appropriate speakers, preferably more powerful.

new generation of processors and sound Xtreme cards fidelity

What is Xtreme Fidelity?

On August 2, 2005, Creative held a conference in Germany, where the European press was shown a new generation of sound cards - SoundBlaster X-Fi.

Earlier, on May 13, 2005, Creative announced Xtreme Fidelity technology, abbreviated as X-Fi, and the sound processor of the same name.

If the new processor is more or less clear, then what is “Xtreme Fidelity technology”? According to the manufacturer, its essence is to provide 24-bit quality, sound clarity with at least 110 dB signal / noise and new CMSS (Creative Multi Speaker Surround) 3D sound technology in headphones and multi-channel speakers. According to Sim Wong Hu, founder and CEO of Creative, "Xtreme Fidelity is the result of our vision for a new audio standard that can bring a dramatic improvement to MP3 playback, PC game gameplay and digital movies, thus laying the foundation for a whole new digital home entertainment platform.".

Speaking of Xtreme Fidelity, the manufacturer focuses on two new technologies: 24-bit Crystalizer and CMSS-3D. As conceived by Creative, the technologies are designed to remaster, enhance and remix in real time existing conventional and compressed 16-bit stereo material to 24-bit quality, with multi-channel sound in speakers of any configuration, as well as headphones.

In order to enable the capabilities of the new standard, Creative creates the X-Fi processor under the motto "Xtreme Audio Needs An Xtreme Fidelity Processor!"("exceptional sound requires a top quality processor").

retrospective

Previous sound cards since Live! sample of 1998, were based on modifications of the EMU10K processor. This processor was developed mainly for use in synthesizers and modules manufactured by E-MU as a hardware MIDI synthesizer with a built-in effects processor. At a time when the main requirement for a sound card was the presence of hardware MIDI with the largest possible memory bank, wide possibilities and high-quality effects, the EMU10K was a progressive chip. However, at present, as everyone understands, it is morally obsolete. Despite the 32-bit sound processing, programmable high-quality professional effects, support for 8 digital I2S or SPDIF interfaces, the shortcomings (the main one of which is a rigid architecture) brought everything to naught.

Since the development of the EMU10K, the interests of sound card users have changed significantly. In fact, there was a division of the audience into three camps: 1) office and other users who are satisfied even with integrated sound; 2) gamers who are not particularly interested in quality, who do not mind good three-dimensional sound in games, as long as it does not come at the expense of performance; 3) music lovers and audiophiles who use a computer for a convenient music library - they need a card solely for high-quality music playback.

However, fans of high-quality sound expressed distrust of Creative products, even despite the high-quality Cirrus Logic I2S DACs installed in the latest models. The main "horror story" destroying the image of Live/Audigy sound cards for many years was the presence of unswitchable mediocre hardware resampling (resampling) of all frequencies into a reference frequency of 48 kHz. To get high-quality playback of the 44.1 kHz format, in which most recordings exist, card users began to install DirectSound or ASIO plug-ins for software sample rate conversion (SSRC) for popular Winamp and Foobar mp3 players.

SRC Audigy vs. SSRC Winamp

Starting with Audigy2, the developers introduced a P16V block into the chip, allowing the cards to directly play 96 and 192 kHz for DVD-Audio playback. But this mode turned out to be available only for these frequencies and only through the DirectSound interface. The effect processor operating at 48 kHz should have been disabled in this case. Otherwise, resampling comes into play again.

In the low-end below, Creative begins to catastrophically lose the sound card market due to the expansion of AC "97 and HDA codecs, forcibly installed on motherboards. This greatly reduces the incentive for users to spend money on a separate sound card. In addition, the advent of the Internet and file-sharing networks makes the computer a tool so that for high-quality listening to music, many prefer semi-professional cards based on Envy24, with a minimum of hardware capabilities, but with a choice of a fixed sampling frequency, an honest 44.1 kHz digitally and a minimum of unnecessary bells and whistles.

Obviously Creative was needed new processor devoid of the shortcomings of the former. X-Fi has been in development for the last 5 years. Since the release of the first Audigy model, work has begun on a new generation of processors. Place of development - Creative Advanced Technology Center, Silicon Valley, California.

X-Fi architecture

According to the manufacturer, the new Xtreme Fidelity processor has more than 51 million transistors and a performance of more than 10,000 MIPS (millions of instructions per second). X-Fi is also 24 times more powerful than its predecessor.

The heart of the processor is the DSP "Quartet", as there are 4 subprocessors working in parallel. The architecture is called TIMD (Thread Interleaved Multiple Data). To achieve parallelism, a processor architecture with very large instruction words is used ( Very Large Instruction Word, VLIW).

Such an instruction combines several ordinary instructions that are executed simultaneously (in parallel) by different functional blocks of the processor to increase its speed. The increase in performance is achieved due to the fact that the processor does not need to spend time organizing parallelism at the instruction level. The grouping of parallel executable operations is performed by the compiler.)

Each subprocessor has a 2xSIMD architecture. 2x comes from the fact that usually the subprocessor operates with two data streams - stereo data, complex numbers. By the way, both floating point and fixed point data types are used. The instruction set consists of 235 operation codes, and about 60 specialized commands often found in audio frequency processing algorithms, for example, complex multiplication of data from two streams, decimal logarithm, exponential.

The internal frequency of the processor is 400 MHz. Supports external timing for S/PDIF and I2S. The jitter value of the PLL (PLL) of the processor is given. The sound processing algorithms (reverb, equalizer, 3D sound propagation modeling effects) use 512 IIR filters ( IIR, infinite impulse response = IIR, infinite impulse response) second order. This will not surprise anyone in modern audio processing tools, but it should be noted that here everything works in real time for dozens of streams at the same time. The number of hardware filters, including 4 and 5 band parametric equalizers, bandpass, notch and other specific filters.

There are also rich mixing options - up to 4096 signals with hardware volume control and combining two sources. This can be used both to build a mixer that is flexibly configurable in terms of signal routing, and is also used in games, as it requires adjusting the level of each applied effect.

For connection to digital and analog interfaces, the processor has 4 I2S input/output buses, providing 8 input and 8 output channels. In addition, there is a proprietary protocol for transmitting 8 channels over a single wire, resulting in 32 x 48 kHz, 16 x 96 kHz, 8 x 192 kHz channels. For internal needs and routing, there are 4096 audio and 4096 parametric channels.

SRC

Sample Rate Converters (SRC, Sample Rate Convertors) are activated in cases where the sample frequency does not match the reference frequency of the current mode (otherwise the sample will play at the wrong speed and change the tone). 256 interpolators are used, with better quality than a typical 100th order polyphase FIR filter (FIR, finite impulse response = FIR, finite impulse response). The tone shift range is from 0 to 8.

How SRC X-Fi works

The picture illustrates how the SRC X-Fi converts 44.1kHz to 48kHz. First, the signal samples are doubled to 88.2 kHz. The polyphase FIR filter converts the signal up to 192 kHz with a factor equal to twice the ratio of 48/44.1. In the final stage, the frequency is reduced to 48 kHz. Such a scheme is more efficient in terms of computational costs and gives a better result, since aliasing due to non-multiple frequencies is not formed at the last stage.

When converting a standard tone of 997 Hz from 44.1 kHz to 48 kHz, the standard parameter responsible for the power of noise and distortion is THD + N equal to -136 dB, frequency jitter in the passband is ±0.00025 dB. Creative recommends checking these parameters with at least an AudioPrecision measuring station.

Given a headroom of 6 dB and 32 stages of processing cycle, THD+N can degrade to -124 dB, and the frequency response increases to ±0.01 dB. But the parameters of even the best DACs today in terms of noise and distortion are inferior to such indicators.

The quality of SRC X-Fi when converting 44.1-> 48 kHz

It should only be taken into account that the quality parameters in the frequency domain do not show the operation of filters in the time domain. But, given the positioning of cards primarily for games and movies, such conversion accuracy can be considered excellent. In past products, intermodulation distortion from SRC reached 0.1% in the high frequency region, while only a few users complained about the drop in quality.

There is a very important point, which is not much advertised by the manufacturer - unlike the previous generation sound processors, in X-Fi you can turn off oversampling along with the rest of the DSP effects! In this case, of course, the unique possibility of simultaneously listening to several signals of different sampling rates is lost, followed by the imposition of all sorts of effects and enhancers. However, fans of the highest quality sound need this least of all.

SRC converters also work in DMA mode, allowing conversions to be made directly to the computer's RAM without the participation of the CPU. To avoid collisions when the PCI bus is loaded, there is a configurable cache.

X-Fi Capabilities

Data processing for human head and ear transfer functions (HRTF) and headphone sound calculation is based on several technologies. These are the developments of UCDavis, Aureal and Sensaura. Used patents for MacroFX, binaural 3D panning. The implementation uses 48-tap FIR (FIR) filters, processing up to 128 3D sound sources.

CMSS (Creative Multi Speaker Surround) technology upgraded to CMSS-3D. The manufacturer claims that the quality of the sound field is higher than that of Dolby Prologic II / IIx, and in headphones the spatiality and naturalness of timbres at high frequencies surpasses Dolby Headphone.

Unlike previous processor generations, effects are now supported for both 24/96 and 24/192 modes. For processing high-resolution signals, for example, 192 kHz, Quadrature Mirror Filter technology is used - splitting the signal into 4 frequency bands of 48 kHz each, which are processed separately, and the results are added. Thus, when processing 192 kHz, the calculation speed increases, compared with conventional methods.

The architecture of the chip allows switching between modes without rebooting, so that sound cards can maximize the use of resources.

ASIO 2.0 is supported with latency For WDM and OpenAL, drivers and hardware have been optimized to get the lowest latency, with higher sound quality.

Comparison

The table shows approximate performance ratios between different generations of Creative cards (according to the manufacturer).

	Prod. calculated MIPs	Total production MIPs	Int. channels	MIPS vs Live!	Number of effects	Number transistors
Sound Blaster Pro	≈1	3+	-	0.0001x	-	100K
AWE 32 (EMU8000)	67	200+	-	0.2x	-	500K
Live! (10k1)	335	1000+	16 (effects)	1x	1	2M
Audigy (10k2)	424	1250+	64 (effects)	4x	4	4.6M
XFi	10340	30000+	4096 (Total)	67x	8	51.1M

X-Fi has an architecture that is completely different from previous generations of Creative processors, as well as all other processors, including graphics. The concept is a programmable ring-based architecture. This gives flexibility in signal routing, allowing any of the 4096 audio channels to route the signal to any processor element - Tank, SRC, Mixer, DSP.

Thus, the new X-Fi architecture consists of the following major innovations:

• Architecture "Ring"
• New DSP "Quartet"
• Ultra high quality SRC
• Hardware acceleration Mixer, Tank Engine (effects), Filter Engine, DMA.
• Simultaneous development and interaction of hardware and software parts

A huge amount of information about the X-Fi processor can be found on a special site.

Sound Blaster X-Fi sound cards

On August 8, 2005, Creative announced new line Sound Blaster X-Fi sound cards based on the processor of the same name. Four card models will be released: Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro, Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS, Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum, Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic.

The Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro features a professional quality 116 dB S/N DAC plus an external interface module with 24-bit Crystalizer, X-Fi CMSS-3D, 3DMIDI and EAX control buttons. The card is equipped with 64 MB on-board X-RAM audio memory, as well as microphone and guitar preamps. Estimated cost US$399.99.

Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS is designed to meet the needs of the famous gamer Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel. The card has 109 dB S/N, 64 MB on-board X-RAM. The kit comes with a switching unit for a 5" bay and an IR remote control. A PCI card with lower quality DACs. Cost US$279.99.

Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS

Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum. Same as Fatal1ty, but PCI card without onboard memory. US$199.99

Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic. The simplest payment option. Platinum without switching unit. US$129.99
By the way, even for this card there is a mention of the possibility of ordering an IR receiver on the USB bus and a remote control.

In this article, we will consider the most interesting model - Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro. A distinctive feature of the card is the maximum quality and performance, plus a huge external switching unit with a remote control.

Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro

Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro

The card itself, labeled SB0550, has gold-plated connectors and a mysterious rectangular detail in the top corner of the board. In fact, it turned out that this is an LED with the inscription X-Fi, which lights up blue when turned on and will be clearly visible in translucent modder cases.

Elite Pro Sound Blaster X-Fi PCI Card (SB0550)

Indeed, the phonogram is remastered with the help of a "widely known in narrow circles" mastering plug-in called "multiband compressor". To be 100% sure that I was right, I compared the work of Crystalizer with three mastering multiband compressors: Waves LinMB, iZotope Ozone, Steinberg MultiBand Compressor. When these plug-ins are enabled, the character of the sound changes similarly to the inclusion of Crystalizer.

To be 200% sure, I tested the Crystalizer with our RMAA program and compared it with the results. Waves LinMB Linear Phase MultiBand compressor(with standard preset Low Level Enhancer- I inform for those who want to repeat the measurements). The tests were done with the default Crystalizer setting, in the middle position.

Pay attention to the equalization of the frequency response and large intermodulation distortion - according to the measurements, the nature of the impact of the plug-ins is similar. However, the situation is much better. This is due to the fact that the nature of the musical signal differs from the test one. According to psychoacoustics, an overload of less than 6 ms is not fixed by a person, and a high-quality compressor does not allow prolonged overload, quickly reducing the signal level, which is regulated by the attack time.

You can find an analogy for Crystalizer technology in the world of digital photography. Suppose there is a plugin that converts JPEG, obtained by compression from some high-quality TIF, into 16-bit per color format, then tightens the levels (roughly speaking, increases brightness / contrast) and sharpness by 10-20% depending on the source. Ready! We get a new ingenious "48-bit Picturelizer", which makes JPEG better than the original TIF. Attention, the question is: in which case the quality will be better? That's right, only if the JPEG has a margin for such abuse, and the display device has problems rendering the lightest and darkest midtones of the original image.

In sound, the situation with MP3 and WAV is about the same, but there is a difference. Mastering studios use very expensive equipment that analyzes original file not in real time, but with some running ahead or not even in one pass, using the calculation accuracy of not 24 bits, but 64 bits of floating point. Further, the mastering compression parameters must be painstakingly adjusted individually for each recording on high-quality mid- and far-field control monitors. It is presumptuous to entrust a similar function to a real-time machine and talk about superiority over the studio result. At the final stage of mastering, the stage of formation of the psychoacoustic distribution of dithering noises (noise-shaping) takes place, which aurally turns a 16-bit recording into a 20-bit one, so all that remains is to send the recording bit by bit to the input interface of the DACs. Any intervention in this process has a detrimental effect on the quality, and even from an MP3 recording it will not be possible to surpass the original phonogram, and multiband compression can distort the tonal balance beyond recognition and lead to a redistribution of signal energy, which will cause overload at high or low frequencies.

Another thing is if we are talking about mediocre household acoustics with a limited dynamic range and a flawed frequency response, so even the most primitive tone control subjectively significantly increases the comfort of perception. In this case, additional band-pass compression of high and low frequencies makes it easier to perceive the soundtrack through these particular speakers, especially in combination with a moderately preloaded original soundtrack, with less aggressiveness (peak power ratio to the average value). In this case, the resulting distortion from processing will not exceed the distortion of the reproducing path.

This is how it worked in practice. On inexpensive active stereo speakers, some recordings subjectively sounded more legible, albeit with more aggression. On high-quality acoustics (studio monitors and mid-range Hi-Fi speakers), I easily found several MP3s, as well as original CDs, the quality of which was significantly reduced by Crystalizer, so that overload was heard, or the sound became overly aggressive, which led to rapid fatigue from listening.

During the measurements, it turned out that in addition to multiband signal compression, the level is raised by about 3 dB. So any quiet recordings will sound subjectively better even without compressor action.

Thus, the 24-bit Crystalizer will benefit the owners of inexpensive acoustics or budget headphones, which almost automatically means a lack of bass and treble, as well as problems with midrange detail. For owners of high-quality acoustics, the good news is that this technology is easily turned off.

The 24-bit Crystalizer technology has the right to life, but the presentation itself, with wishful thinking, is not at all encouraging. In reality, Crystalizer does not expand, but narrows the dynamic range, and 24 bits are really used, but only so that rounding error does not accumulate (this is normal practice, no modern DSP works at the same resolution as the original data).

СMSS-3D

CMSS-3D technology is designed to solve the main problem of the younger generation of users of multi-channel sound cards: "I have a 5.1 set of speakers. Everything is cool in movies, but only 2 front speakers play in MP3! And I want everything!!!"

As mentioned above, CMSS (Creative Multi Speaker Surround) technology has been upgraded to CMSS-3D. The developments and patents of IRCAM, UC Davis, Aureal, Sensaura and Creative's Advanced Technology Center are used.

CMSS-3D virtualizes the sound source of any channel to any device, thus providing:

• CMSS-3DHeadphone: surround sound in headphones;
• CMSS-3DVirtual: surround sound in stereo speakers;
• CMSS-3DSurround: converting stereo to multi-channel audio;
• CMSS-3D Interactive: 3D sound from multiple sources.

Testing was carried out with Sennheiser HD600 headphones. The problem of double imposition of virtualization effects was identified, with a deterioration in the effect of volume. The fact is that all musical recordings of recent years already contain, to one degree or another, an expansion of the stereo panorama, so the result may turn out to be unexpected.

At the same time, the demo file "The Rising of the Sun" from the "Essential Anuna" CD, containing almost raw stereo, showed nice results, and even superiority over DolbyHeadphones technology.

In addition to music, CMSS-3D technology can also be used in games. In this case, the game calculates 3D audio for 5.1 speakers, and CMSS-3DHeadphone converts multi-channel audio to surround sound in headphones.

XRAM

Unlike cards from decades past, the X-Fi's on-board memory is not used for MIDI samples, but for storing or caching sounds during game applications. There is a problem with a lack of RAM, so developers either reduce the bit depth of samples to 8 bits 11 kHz, which worsens the quality by an order of magnitude, or compresses them into lossy formats, MP3 or OGG, which leads to processor load when unpacking at the sample playback stage.

Thus, the introduction of on-board memory on a sound card allows: saving main memory, speeding up memory access, eliminating the need for real-time decompression, eliminating sample quality loss, increasing graphics performance and FPS.

To date, there is only one game with full support for X-RAM. It is not yet available to a wide audience UT2004 X-Fi Edition. We invite you to familiarize yourself with the results provided by Creative. As you can see, the introduction of X-RAM can increase performance by up to 20%, which is equivalent to upgrading the graphics accelerator, while also increasing the sound quality! Definitely a useful innovation.

UT2004 X-Fi Edition

Tests in RMAA 5.5

We can't resist publicly quoting Creative's manual for X-Fi testers.

"As already mentioned, Creative designed the Sound Blaster X-Fi family with sound quality in mind first. Precision", the industry standard for testing professional audio equipment. We see that many people use "RightMark Audio Analyzer" for audio quality tests due to its affordability and nice interface. However, due to the difference in methods between the two platforms, their results will be different. In the past, we've received some questions about these differences, so we want to show you the results and test methods we've compiled for both Audio Precision and RMAA, and we hope you find them useful."

Instructions from Creative for installing X-Fi cards for measuring in RMAA can be downloaded from the official website.

Audio Precision test results

		Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic/ Platinum/ Fatal1ty FPS	Remark
Digital Playback	frequency response	Lo –1dB Hi –1dB ≈ 45kHz	N.B. "Digital Playback" refers to the fact that only the quality of the line-out is tested using a digital source file. It is not a test of the digital outputs
	cross-talk	L-R: -105 dB RL: -105dB
	Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)	109 dB
		0.004 %
Line-IN / Line-OUT Record & Playback	frequency response	Lo –1dB ≈ ~17Hz Hi –1dB ≈ 42KHz	Output: 2Vrms
	cross-talk	L-R: -86dB R-L: -86dB
	Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)	98 dB
	Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise (THD+N)	0.004%

		Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro	Remark
Digital Playback	frequency response	Lo –1dB Hi –1dB ≈ 46kHz	PCM: 24-bit/96kHz, 997Hz Output: 2Vrms N.B. "Digital Playback" refers to the fact that only the quality of the line-out is tested using a digital source file. It is not a test of the digital outputs.
	cross-talk	L-R: -112dB RL: -112dB
	Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)	116 dB
	Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise (THD+N)	0.0008 %
Line-IN / Line-OUT Record & Playback	frequency response	Lo –1dB Hi –1dB ≈ 45 kHz	PCM: 24-bit/96kHz, 997Hz Input: 2Vrms Output: 2Vrms
	cross-talk	L-R: -106 dB R-L: -106dB
	Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR)	112 dB
	Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise (THD+N)	0.001%

RMAA 5.5 test results

Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro

	SB0550	SB0550	SB0550	SB0550
	+0.01, -0.07	+0.01, -0.07	+0.01, -0.07	+0.01, -0.07
Noise level, dB(A):	-94.8	-95.1	-113.0	-113.3
Dynamic range, dB(A):	94.7	95.1	112.8	112.5
THD, %:	0.0009	0.0009	0.0007	0.0007
IMD + Noise, %:	0.0051	0.0049	0.0010	0.0010
Stereo crosstalk, dB:	-95.1	-95.5	-102.7	-102.8

Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS

test	SB0460	SB0460	SB0460	SB0460
Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB:	+0.02, -0.08	+0.01, -0.09	+0.01, -0.09	+0.02, -0.17
Noise level, dB(A):	-94.1	-94.5	-102.1	-102.2
Dynamic range, dB(A):	94.0	94.3	101.6	102.0
THD, %:	0.0009	0.0009	0.0008	0.0008
IMD + Noise, %:	0.0057	0.0054	0.0026	0.0025
Stereo crosstalk, dB:	-97.0	-94.5	-101.5	-98.6

Comparing RMAA loopback vs. AP loopback, I would like to note that the discrepancy is a few percent, due to the difference in counting algorithms. In the latest version 5.5, the maximum compliance with existing international standards was observed (at the same time, the RMAA uses more accurate calculations than required by the standard). Given the kilodollar cost of Audio Precision and the free RMAA, we can fully recommend a program for checking the passport data declared by the manufacturer. The THD+N value should be taken from the detailed RMAA report.

Of the tests, only distortion graphs are of interest.

THD cards SB0550

IMD (DIN) cards SB0550

IMD (CCIF) from SB0550 frequency


IMD (CCIF) off frequency SB0460

Judging by the measurements, the problem with a lot of distortion is a thing of the past. The 44.1 kHz mode in X-Fi cards is no different from 48 kHz.

Hardware SRC quality test

It is interesting to compare the quality of the new hardware SRC X-Fi against the widespread real-time SSRC plug-in for the WinAmp MP3 player, which is of rather high quality and decently loads the CPU.

IMD (CCIF) vs. frequency

IMD (DIN)

Reference 16/44 - analysis of the initial data file generated by the test; shows the maximum achievable quality for 16-bit format.
X-Fi HW SRC OFF - Disabling hardware SRC in X-Fi is achieved by setting the reference mode to 44.1 kHz and the Enable Bit-Matched Playback option.
X-Fi HW SRC ON - enabling X-Fi hardware SRC is obtained by playing a 44.1 kHz file with the reference mode set to 48 kHz and disabling Enable Bit-Matched Playback.

WinAmp SSRC plug-in - playing a 44.1 kHz file in WinAmp with the SSRC plug-in installed, configured to convert to 48 kHz, while the card has a 48 kHz reference mode and the Enable Bit-Matched Playback option.

As we can see, the SRC of the map exceeds the SSRC of the plug-in, and there are no distortions visible in the diagram from its inclusion.

RightMark 3DSound

The diagram is deliberately built on a 100% scale to show that the difference, even by several times, is insignificant with a small number of buffers, and enabling EAX in 3D mode is practically free.

OpenAL API is ahead of DirectSound due to more direct access to hardware and optimization of the complete library CT_OAL.DLL (Creative OpenAL Driver, 5.12.1.1141) exclusively for X-Fi. The exception is the 2D mode. But, in this mode, OpenAL most likely will not be used, and the speed there is unprincipled. Most likely OpenAL 2D is 3D with fixed coordinates. The download is the same:

Games

As mentioned, Creative had the opportunity to test X-Fi on special version UT2004 with support for 128 voices. I can't help but give you the results:

• Realtek HD Audio: 7.1 Audio, EAX 2.0, 32 Voices
• Sound Blaster Live!: 5.1 Audio, EAX 2.0, 32 Voices
• Sound Blaster Audigy: 7.1 Audio. EAX 3.0, 32 & 64 Voices, CMSS-3D
• Sound Blaster X-Fi: 7.1 Audio, EAX 3.0, 32, 64 &128 Voices, X-Fi CMSS-3D, X-Fi 24-bit Crystalizer

So, in UT2004 the difference between HDAudio and X-Fi reaches 17% at 32 voices, with the best sound quality and enabled CMSS-3D and 24-bit Crystalizer. Computer configuration is quite average: P4-3.4, 1 GB, GeForce 6600.

From real games, direct support for X-Fi is so far only in Battlefield2 (even in the demo version!), Implemented through OpenAL. If you have a card, you can select a separate item in the sound options Creative XFi, EAX and Ultra High sound settings. In this case, on-board memory is used to cache samples and speed up sound processing. I must say that the samples in this game are mostly of average quality, many of them are 22 kHz, plus they are compressed into OGG with a variable bitrate of 100 kbps. So with the X-Fi option selected and EAX activated, the sound deserves a "Very Good" rating, but not "Excellent" due to the disgusting quality of the samples. Much more interesting to listen to the sound in Doom3 with patch 1.3, including EAX4.

We took our measurements in Battlefield 2 with a hack mod. The system used was P4 3.4 GHz, 1 GB DDR400, ATI X800, graphics settings 800×600, Medium. The Creative X-Fi + EAX ON + Ultra High mode delivered 52 FPS, compared to the Hardware + EAX OFF + Medium mode which showed 55 FPS. Thus, the difference in performance between the modes with maximum and medium settings does not exceed 5%, for which we must say thanks to the fast and powerful processor cards. And this is with such video settings, when the performance does not yet rest on the video card. In game resolutions, you can safely set the sound to the maximum.

According to the results of testing a real product, a new processor
Creative XFi an award is given website original design

To be continued…

Two USB sound cards with high-quality DACs

In today's material, we compare two most interesting sound cards: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD vs. Asus Xonar U7. These are two products close in price and capabilities, in which the emphasis was placed on high-quality converters. At the same time, both cards at the time of this writing were on sale at a very low price, a little over 3 thousand rubles.

The forum called the Asus Xonar U7 "the best choice" in absentia, based on looking at photos and specifications. Many completely in vain forget about the need for a direct comparison of devices in terms of sound. Most are also unable to correctly interpret the measurement results.

Name

• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD
• Asus Xonar U7

The Creative card has a confusing name as it is not related to the X-Fi cards and is not related to the Titanium HD card. As a result, the release of the card went unnoticed. This product is not known to anyone at all, except for some enthusiasts of sound on the computer.

The Asus Xonar U7 also has an obscure name. The rather old U1 and U3 cards are budget products with integrated audio quality. U7 has nothing to do with past products in this series.

Price

• creative: 3700 rub.
• Asus: 3100 rub.

The cards cost almost the same, the difference in absolute values ​​in price is not serious. More importantly, such an affordable price makes them interesting to a large circle of buyers. They have practically no competitors among USB-cards!

At the same time, the Asus card appeared quite recently. The manufacturer also reports that the Asus Xonar U7 Echelon Edition model will soon appear with an army camouflage body color and more functional drivers.

The target audience

• creative: mass, audiophiles
• Asus: mass, home theater

The Creative model is a card with full-size TRS headphone and microphone jacks. Interestingly, there is a Phono input for digitizing vinyl, with ground. It also works in the normal line input mode. THX and other proprietary processing is software only. For movies, there is an optical digital output for connecting a 5.1 receiver with a decoder.

You can connect 7.1 speakers to the Asus card by analogy, minijack connectors. The emphasis is on Dolby software included. Digital output - combined, optical / coaxial. Both cards have a line input, but in the case of Asus, the line input is combined with the microphone one, which is quite difficult to guess.

It remains a mystery why, in addition to the high-quality output, they loaded both cards with so many functions and software. This inevitably blurs the audience and distracts from the main advantage of the cards, namely quality DAC. The rest of the dregs are available in abundance in almost any sound card. In the description of sound cards and in the design of the boxes, as they say, "you can't see the forest for the trees." It is not clear who will organize a 7.1 cinema around a computer or laptop - this is inconvenient and unclaimed in practice. Fortunately, the user does not overpay much for all these additional functions, since the price of the cards is very low.

Volume knob

• creative: Miniature metal volume knob with original location. There is a mute function when you press the knob. It is not very convenient to use the pen, as it is located very close to the table surface: the fingers are in a very unusual position and slip on the surface.
• Asus: The smooth handle is recessed into the body. Pressing the knob turns off the speakers in favor of the headphones and vice versa. It is inconvenient to use: considerable effort is required, otherwise the finger slips. The notch for the finger is made for beauty - it is much easier to adjust by pressing your finger where there is no notch.

In both cases, a non-stop digital controller is used. The ergonomics of the regulators is very conditional. Due to the combination of the functions of the regulator and the button, the Asus regulator has quite a noticeable backlash. Many users would prefer to remove the button, but that there is no play. Also, the recessed Asus knob is handy when carrying the audio interface. In all other cases, this decision looks controversial.

Illuminations

• creative: blue LED on the top panel
• Asus: 3 signal LEDs on the top panel

The activity indicator on the Creative card is brighter. In principle, for most this will not be a problem. But we had a keen desire to seal it with electrical tape so that it would not be an eyesore and would not be constantly visible with peripheral vision.

Headphone out location

• creative: front
• Asus: front

Both cards have connectors conveniently located.

Filling

• creative: DSP Creative CA0189-2AG, AKM AK4396 2ch DAC (123dB), CS5361 2ch ADC (114dB).
• Asus: DSP CM6632A, 2-channel Cirrus Logic CS4398 DAC (120 dB), 6-channel Cirrus Logic CS4362A DAC (114 dB), 2-channel CS5361 ADC (114 dB).

The filling of both cards is very interesting. And this is the main feature of the cards, against the background of which everything else no longer interests anyone. The Cirrus Logic CS4398 DAC is considered a class higher than the AKM AK4396.

All Creative USB sound cards have their own CA0189-2AG RISC processor running at 100 MHz. Unlike the usual DSP Creative, this chip does not have hardware sound processing. His appointment is fast controller USB 2.0 and multi-channel interface to full fledged I²S/I²C converter ICs such as those used by Cirrus Logic and AKM. There are two crystal oscillators soldered on the board.

Asus uses an interesting CM6632A chip that supports both HDA codecs and I²S/I²C converters. Number of channels - 8+2 (analogue + digital) output and 2+2 input. There is support for a frequency of 192 kHz. The chip can be clocked immediately from three generators, 12, 24.5 and 22.5 MHz, which was used by the creators of the card. It remains not very clear the decision to throw pasta from one edge of the board with the DAC to the other with connectors.

All processing in both cards is done exclusively at the software level. Maximum frequency 96 kHz data is not a big problem, as 192 kHz content is almost non-existent. Hi-Res gave nothing to ordinary users and did not go to the masses, and aesthetes and lovers of Hi-End are unlikely to be interested in sound cards for $100.

Auto switch to headphones

• creative: there is
• Asus: there is

When plugged into the headphone jack, the speakers are turned off. This feature was first implemented in integrated audio as part of the AC'97 and HDA standard. First, the detection of connected headphones was carried out by impedance, and then by a mechanical sensor. External cards with good transducers are not inferior to integrated sound in this matter. However, in practice this can cause problems.

Complete software

• creative: a set of software on the disk, driver update on the manufacturer's website
• Asus: the same installation kit on the CD and on the manufacturer's website

The software disc is similar to all other Creative products.

The appearance and contents of the Entertainment Console of the X-Fi card have already been described more than once in our materials. The Audio Control Panel is included right away and allows you to control absolutely all the settings without the nooks and crannies of the graphical menu, with the exception of the equalizer. Creative Volume Panel - it is not clear why the necessary program is supplied for the assortment. An important difference between drivers for XP: they provide a choice of frequency and bit depth directly from the Entertainment Console. The frequency is limited to choose from: 48 or 96 kHz, regardless of the OS. This choice is typical for all Creative USB sticks.

Panel Asus cards arranged very strangely. Options can only be selected via context menu by the right mouse button!

There is an interesting parameter for setting the headphone output volume limit.

In the wilds of settings, Asus has a separate option - Dolby Home Theater v4, which seems to have surpassed Creative cards in terms of the number of "enhancers".

Support 44 kHz

• creative: No
• Asus: there is

The Creative card contains two crystal oscillators and also has support for 44 kHz at the DSP level. However, drivers for neither Windows XP nor Windows 7/8 support operation in 44 kHz mode: in the device settings, you can only set 48 kHz or 96 kHz. In a map for audiophiles, this indicates either inadequacy or complete incompetence of the developers. To listen to music in 99.9% of cases, a frequency of 44 kHz is used. We are looking forward to the comments of the map developers themselves.

The Asus card has support for all frequencies: 44, 48, 88, 96, 192 kHz.

Availability of an ASIO driver

• creative: No
• Asus: there is

The lack of an ASIO driver for Creative cards is beyond our understanding. The best listening option for a Creative card is the WASAPI interface and software resampling in the player. Converting from 44 kHz to 48 or 96 will always be forced by the Windows sound engine, or it is necessary to select the conversion on the fly in the media player. For example, in the player foobar 2000:

Sound in speakers

Listening was carried out on active monitors Adam S2.5A and Adam ARTist 5. For comparison, very well-known sound cards E-MU 1616M (CS4398) and E-MU 0204 USB (AK4396) were involved.

First surprise: all cards play completely differently! In terms of sound quality, the E-MU 1616M is in first place, E-MU 0204 USB is in second, Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD is in third, and Asus Xonar U7 is in fourth.

The sound of the Asus card is the least like the E-MU 1616M (despite the same DAC installed). Asus' distortion problems are to blame, since we know for sure about the unsurpassed implementation of the analog output on the 1616M card. This is a measurable 120 dB signal / noise, and a measurable 0.0003% distortion, and a wonderful clean sound to the touch. The 1616M is not much inferior in sound to the best implementations of rack-mounted studio devices, comparable to Pro Tools HD and Lynx Aurora, so we boldly choose the 1616M sound as a reference for devices in the sub-$150 category. E-MU 0204 USB concedes quite a bit. X-Fi HD sounds brighter and more accentuated on the highs, so with all the showiness it is a little further away from the original sound. Xonar U7 disappointed us with meager highs and a rather sluggish sound. Perhaps this problem is solved by flashing or drivers; We will certainly clarify this issue with the manufacturer. In any case, there should be no distortion of 0.01%. Both the digital and analog parts of the card are capable of more.

Let's scold Creative for the lack of a 44 kHz mode. This is simply inexplicable, nonsense! How can you make an audiophile card, put two crystal oscillators and forbid it to work at 44 kHz? Do not provide the user with an ASIO driver that bypasses Windows? This is just the wildest incompetence of developers. In the E-MU 0204 USB - a device for the same money - there are no such problems! It feels like one division of Creative is mercilessly competing with another: stubbornly developing a bicycle with square wheels when a racing sports car has long been developed and tested in the next room.

Headphone sound

We used Sennheiser HD600 (300 ohm) and Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro (250 ohm) high-impedance headphones.

The volume is enough in both cases, but the Asus card has almost no headroom. Creative was able to surprise us once again. In terms of sound quality, the places were distributed as follows: E-MU 1616M is in first place, Sound Blaster X-Fi HD is in second, E-MU 0204 USB is in third, and Asus Xonar U7 is in fourth. The professional interface E-MU 0204 USB, in principle, performed well, but X-Fi HD looked like a clear favorite against its background and had a significantly larger volume margin. The Asus Xonar U7 is the quietest card, but its volume rises sharply when processing is turned on. Perhaps this was done intentionally so that there was a so-called headroom for Dolby technologies and other auto-equalizers. Thus, the Asus card is the least suitable for simple listening to music; the emphasis is placed on the effectiveness of processing. The squeals and hoots of the card fans remain completely incomprehensible to us.

Measurements in RMAA

Tests at the RMAA gave an "Excellent" rating. This means that there are no frank jambs in the devices. It doesn't mean anything anymore. (But as soon as artificial intelligence makes it unnecessary to analyze human measurements, we will be the first to tell you about it!)

Both cards were tested through their own path as they have the same high quality CS5361 ADC.

Noise is slightly better than Asus, distortion - Creative. We were concerned about how the Asus graph looked in the floating tone IM test: usually anomalies in this test indicate frequency conversion or some other digital processing. We double-checked all the settings several times. The results don't change. We ran additional tests on clean installed Windows XP and Windows 7. We used the latest drivers and latest firmware. There is only one result: the Asus card has about 10 times more distortion at high frequencies.

Instructions for setting the maximum sound quality on a Creative X-Fi sound card.

2015-08-18T08:43

2015-0408-18T08:43

Audiophile's Software

Note: The information in this article is relevant for sound card Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer with PCI interface (as well as similar XtremeMusic, Fatality, etc.) and operating Windows systems from Vista to 10. The settings are focused on sound playback using a sound card connected to the output. When using interfaces/devices/drivers/programs other than those specified in this article, the setup may not lead to the desired result.

Copyright (C) 2015, Taras Kovrijenko

Full or partial copying of the text is allowed.

1. Introduction

Note: since I would not like to repeat myself, and also so that you do not miss something important, I strongly advise you to read this article from beginning to end.

The first thing I want to say is that the sound card is worth the money. Given its capabilities (which many probably don't know about), $100 is a very reasonable price. Besides, other manufacturers simply don't have analogues of this card (in terms of multimedia capabilities).

2. Preparing for installation

It means that we have, as they say, "out of the box". This is actually the sound card itself, a pack of manuals and other waste paper, and two disks: one for Windows XP, the second for Windows Vista. "And what about Windows 7 and 8 users?" - you ask. "Take these two discs and carefully put them in the trash can" - I will answer. Well, at least put the waste paper back into the box and throw it away in the closet. Simply because he won't need anything from that disk. Of course, you can install software from these disks, but the fact is that, for example, drivers will have to be installed for XP, and software for Windows Vista. In this case, you will have to go for a number of tricks (like compatibility modes, etc.). And it's not a fact that in the end it will all work properly. Well, in addition, a lot of unnecessary garbage is installed from the disk.

Therefore, we will go the other way, downloading in one package latest versions software, already sharpened for new operating systems - say thanks to Daniel Kawakami.

3. Installing drivers and utilities

So, how everything should look initially:

Moreover, in the Start->Programs folder (and in Add/Remove Programs) there should not be anything related to Creative. If this is not the case for you, run Add / Remove Programs and clean it. After removing all the software from Creative, unpack the Support Pack, go to the \Audio\Drivers\SBXF subfolder and run the Setup.exe file. After selecting everything, as in the screenshot, click ok:

Having got rid of the Creative software and received a device without drivers in the manager, we reboot again (just in case).

And now we proceed directly to the installation. It is advisable to install the following components from the X-Fi Support Pack:

• Audio Drivers - latest sound card drivers;
• Audio Control Panel - provides basic sound card settings;
• Console Launcher - control center for sound card capabilities;
• Speaker Setup Console (THX) - a utility for calibrating 3D effects according to the position of the listener relative to sound sources;
• Volume Panel - a handy utility that starts automatically and allows you to adjust the volume directly in the tray and run other utilities from there;
• ALchemy is a utility that restores hardware environment effects in Windows Vista+.

We respond positively to the proposal to restart.

If everything went well, after starting the OS, a silver icon with a volume knob will appear in the tray, and in the start you will see a group of Creative programs:

And, of course, the system should already make some sounds at startup (if they are enabled).

4. Windows Mixer Setup

As I said, Microsoft, starting with Windows Vista, has greatly complicated the sound subsystem. At the same time, not only the functionality expanded, but also some “pitfalls” appeared.

Well, let's try to get around these stones.

Go to Windows Control Panel->Hardware and Sound->Sound. This window will appear:

Disable SPDIF via the context menu (because in some cases this device can cause the sound card reference frequency to switch, which is undesirable), in the same way make our device (Creative SB X-Fi Speakers) the default device (if it is not is). Then double click on the device. Now check that the settings on the tabs match the screenshots:

5. Sound card modes

In order to maximize the use of X-Fi DSP resources for a wide variety of tasks, there are three modes:

• Audio Creation Mode - audio creation, and in our case - playback. Since only in this mode is available an accurate sound output without unnecessary conversions.


• Entertainment Mode - the mode is mainly designed for playing multi-channel audio (including tracks for video films) with the imposition of various effects, channel conversion, etc.


• Game Mode - the name of the mode speaks for itself. Only here you get access to the latest developments in Creative 3D sound for an unsurpassed presence in today's games.

It is convenient to switch modes through the context menu of the Volume Panel:

The settings window (Console Launcher) appears when you double-click on the Volume Panel icon in the tray.

5.1 Audio Creation Mode and Music Playback

So, let's turn off everything superfluous:

Now a few words about setting up the foobar2000 player. Due to the unreliability of other interfaces (they really sometimes turn out to be not quite adequate), it is recommended to output sound through ASIO. Fortunately, this card has a fully functional ASIO 2.0 driver. All you need to do is install the foo_out_asio plugin (you can download it from the foobar2000 + plugins page), add an ASIO device in the plugin settings, and select it in the output settings. Pay attention to channel markings (useful for multi-channel systems).

Now you can enjoy pure sound, not spoiled by any "improvers" and other nonsense.

Another nice little thing is that the ASIO driver automatically switches the reference frequency of the sound card in accordance with the sample rate of the audio being played. For example, if you first played a track with a frequency of 44.1 kHz, and then you start a track with a frequency of 96 kHz, the reference frequency will switch, accompanied by a characteristic sound. Some people don't like it, however, this feature is a significant advantage, because only if the frequency of the material and the reference frequency of the card match, bit-by-bit playback is possible. In addition, now you most likely will not need a resampler.

But here it is necessary to make a remark - sometimes there are tracks with a sampling frequency different from those supported by the ASIO driver (I remind you: these are 44.1, 48, 88.2, and 96 kHz). For such cases, you can add a DSP SoX Resampler mod to the chain (which can be downloaded on the same foobar2000 + plugins page). It will resample all frequencies that are not included in the list of supported ones (we specify them in the resampler settings) up to the specified frequency - in order to minimize quality losses, we will specify 96 kHz just in case:

5.2 Entertainment mode - watching movies

In this mode, some interesting features of the X-Fi signal processor open up to us.

Do you want to enjoy 5.1 sound of your favorite movie, but don't have multi-channel acoustics? No problem! After all, a person has only two ears, which means that with the help of two sound emitters it is possible to recreate absolutely any virtual source at any point around the listener, so much so that it will be indistinguishable from the real one!

Using special processing algorithms, the X-Fi chip converts multi-channel audio to 2.0 for acoustics or headphones (note that the algorithms for creating the surround effect in headphones and speakers are very different).

And now - about how we take advantage of these opportunities. First of all, let's start the Console Launcher:

Let's take a look at the main sections one by one.

In this section, you need to select the configuration of your speaker system, or headphones. Pressing the THX button opens the speaker calibration window. We are interested in the Speaker Position tab. The fact is that when using a two-channel speaker system (which most users have), the position of the listener relative to the sound emitters is far from always the same (worse, sometimes it is unstable, but nothing can be done about it). In order for the ambience algorithms to work, they need correct data about the position of the listener. In this case, you must specify the distance to each sound emitter and the angle of rotation relative to the central axis. If it is not clear, I will explain: I mean the angle between the two lines:

• a line connecting the listener's head to a point directly in front of his face.
• line between his head and sound emitter

The angle is counted clockwise (when viewed from above), the parameter value can take negative values.

So, if you want a 3D effect - take a ruler in your hands and go ahead - measure;)

On this tab you can enable the effect environment- amphitheater, concert hall, etc. In case it is selected None, the Enable EAX Effects checkbox does not affect anything, but just in case, leave this option enabled.

This option is responsible for enabling X-Fi CMSS 3D - an algorithm designed to improve the effect of the environment and the positioning accuracy of virtual sources. This function will be useful when playing multi-channel audio on 2.0 acoustics or headphones, or vice versa - for the so-called upmix - decomposing sound into several channels (for example, playing stereo recordings on a 5.1 system). If you turn it on when playing, say, stereo material through headphones, it will be of little use - except that some effect of virtual sound sources will be created directly in front of the listener, which, for example, does not sound very pleasant to my ears. But in any case, the choice is yours.

The famous (thanks to the eloquent marketers from Creative) X-Fi Crystalizer - sometimes it can give expressiveness to the sound, but at the same time it inevitably introduces a significant portion of distortion. Fans of "honest sound" of course not recommended. Although, by ear, it sounds very interesting when the slider is moved to the minimum - distortion in this case is almost imperceptible, but the effect is quite good.

Smart Volume Management - to some extent - the same Advanced Limiter in foobar2000, but with a larger pre-buffer. Since the DSP output is inevitably converted to a fixed-point format, care must be taken to prevent clipping, which is what the Creative programmers did. Seeing the excess of the permissible volume in a fragment of the audio stream, SVM underestimates its volume. The main drawback is compression (the volume balance between audio fragments changes significantly). Although, dynamic range compression is the second purpose of SVM. If, for example, you want to watch a movie at low volume at night (so as not to disturb anyone), but when the volume is lowered, quiet sounds cease to be heard - this is where the compressor will help. It will boost the volume of the quiet parts, bringing them to about the same level as the rest - and you can adjust the overall volume to the level you need.

But if there is no need for the above, I would advise you to turn on the effects (and play multi-channel sound incl.) - set the volume (Master Volume) not to the maximum, but to about 50% - usually this is enough to avoid distortion.

Here we see a conventional 10-band equalizer with an additional level control. If not needed, turn it off.

And this is the sound card mixer. Here you can enable playback from the line input, microphone, etc. Unnecessary sources are turned off (because the line input and microphone, for example, can make noise).

With a sound card - everything. As for the player, there are also some nuances here. First - the player should output the sound "AS IS". That is, all soft mixers must be disabled so that in the case of 5.1 tracks, for example, all 6 channels are directly transmitted to the sound card. For watching movies, I can recommend the MPC HomeCinema player and the ffdshow audio/video filters (included in the Sam CoDec Pack) . I would also like to write about their configuration in detail, but this will be later in another article. Below I will give the main points of setting up the sound output (the player and the ffdshow filter), and there - I hope you will understand:

5.3 Game mode - surround sound in games.

Without a doubt, Creative is the leader in 3D audio for gaming. It was Creative programmers who created a set of extensions for DirectSound3D, the so-called. EAX. You can read about this technology in the EAX FAQ article and Wikipedia.

The latest version of EAX at the moment is 5.0, but our card supports all versions up to and including the fifth one.

So let's get started with the setup. Some settings sections are the same as the Entertainment mode settings, so we won't go over them again.

This tab contains the main settings - speaker configuration (which must be set in accordance with the actual configuration of your speakers), SVM, EAX enable / control (meaning only environmental effects - reverbs, etc.). Mic Environment FX is a new feature that allows you to apply effects to the microphone sound according to the environment in a 3D game.

Also, speaker placement calibration (THX) is extremely important in this mode. And I also advise you to pay attention to the Master Volume - in order to avoid distortion, it is advisable to keep this control in a position somewhere around 35-40%.

Of particular interest in this mode are XFi settings CMSS-3D. When this feature is enabled (which is highly recommended for greatly improving the 3D effect in games), two new extensions introduced in EAX 5.0 become available:

• MacroFX- the effect significantly increases the realism of sound sources located in the immediate vicinity of the ear.


• Elevation Filter- the effect significantly improves the positioning of sources along the vertical axis (above/below the listener).

Parameter value On means to force the effect on for all sound sources (for which the effect is intended). By clicking on the Test button, you can run a small test of the effects of the environment.

Well, we are done with setting up the sound card. All that's left is the software setup. As I already wrote, unfortunately in Windows 7 programs do not have direct access to the hardware resources of the sound card through the DirectSound3D API. The only API that has access to hardware 3D sound is OpenAL. So, without hesitation, Creative set about developing the Alchemy utility that converts DirectSound/EAX calls to OpenAL. I will now tell you about its setup.

So, if you followed exactly all the instructions from the beginning of the article, you should already have Creative ALchemy 1.43.06 beta installed. No wonder I chose this particular version, because in some incomprehensible way the latest release version does not quite honestly perform its functions - it is obvious that EAX with its use is software, plus the MacroFX and Elevation Filter effects do not work.

So, on the left we see a list of installed games that were detected automatically. By moving the game to the right list, we automatically enable Alchemy functionality for it.

You can also add games manually. Let's take advantage of this opportunity. Install the RightMark 3DSound program and add the address of the folder with the executable file of the RightMark 3DSound Positioning Accuracy test utility (RightMark3DSound.exe) to the Creative Alchemy list:

Move the added program to the right list. Now the program can be launched.

The screenshot shows how you can recreate the sound source located behind the barrier, behind, to the right of the listener.

This program is a great opportunity to try out MacroFX and Elevation filter technologies. Turning these effects on and off, first try to bring the sound source in the program closer to the listener's ear, and then move it up and down along the vertical axis - you will feel the difference!

And don't be confused by the fact that the program does not include EAX 5.0 - most of the effects of this version are automatically applied to all sound sources, regardless of the version of EAX supported by the program / game.

Games are configured according to the same principle - the main thing is to add the address of the folder with the game executable file to Alchemy. If the game has the appropriate settings, they must enable EAX support. If there is no such option, there is an alternative: enable multichannel sound in the game. In this case, it will be converted to stereo by the sound card and you will get excellent sound positioning.

If you want to fully experience all the effects of EAX 5.0, I can recommend the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat. This game uses the OpenAL audio engine, which gives it direct access to all EAX effects (no need to use Alchemy) - You just need to enable EAX support in the game settings and select the SB X-Fi Audio device.

6. Epilogue

That's all I wanted to say about setting up the X-Fi XtremeGamer. I hope the information in this article was useful for you and now you can unlock the full potential of your sound card. Happy listening!