Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic > Reviews > An Excellent Card For All!!!

Author's product rating:   

Stability	Very stable
Sound quality	Excellent
Ease of Installation	Good - quick to install
Speed	Fast
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	Amazing sound, excellent upmixing
Disadvantages:	Software can be a pain .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

BRIEF:

I bought this card with some Creative 5.1 Speakers (T6060). The sound quality going from standard MP3, with no upmixing, 24Bit Crystaliser and no EAX effects, to everything turned on, is STUNNING! There is no other word for it. However, the software is slow and there are to many menus to do a simple task.

PERFORMANCE:

To establish this I had to start by taking a 235Kbps (VBR) track, kindly delievered from ripping a Linkin Park album. I started by playing the track with no upmixing or anything turned on. The track played in 2.0 on the speakers, so it felt dull compared to the surround sound I am used to. As well as this the bass was poor as there was no bass redirection to the subwoofer.

After turning on CMSS-3D in the Creative Console, more of an application sweet (but I'll get to that later), the track was playing in 5.1, stunning, somehow, the Creative X-Fi had pulled out every instrument and given them an appropriate speaker!? I don't know how it did it but it was pretty amazing, vocals in the centre, beats on all channels, other instruments on the left, background vocals on the rear speakers. Sensational.

After this I turned on Creative's fabled 24 Bit crystalizer, theoretically this improves the 16Bit MP3 to a CD level 24Bit sound quality. Once again the quality of the track had been further improved. Everything sounded sharper, and in particular the bass had become more powerful (but not to powerful to my taste).

The EAX effects we're nice to, but not very appropraite for rap metal. I always considered EAX a novelty, unless your listening to classic music you don't really want echos and things like that.

SOFTWARE:

The Creative software comes in lots of little applications. The three 'modes' for gaming, music, and creating music, all have a different panel. thats fine, but they take SO long to load. After clicking the icon I wait 5 serconds and still nothing, I have a relatively fast PC (AMD 3200+ with no spyware etc), and I didn't like that time.

Luckily I know from my old card Creative provide a simpler interface, that with my old card was hidden away in the program files, with no shortcut provided. However Creative put the shortcut in the control panel with the X-Fi and it makes things much easier. This Creative Console, that does exactly the same thing as the 5 second one, does exactly the same things in a much tidier interface.

CONCLUSION:

An excellent card for the price tag, and in Audio Creation Mode, it can even be used by Music Making enthusiasts.