Creative is the original company from Singapore that is still famous for its Sound Blaster sound cards and for driving the desktop multimedia revolution. Still a force to be reckoned with in computer audio, Creative continues to design cutting-edge audio solutions that include premium wireless speakers, wireless headphones, powerful digital amplifiers and next-generation home-theater systems. Bridging the worlds of the computer, smartphones, and tablets, Creative continues to reinvent the Sound Blaster now as a USB-audio class of products.
In 2016, Creative unveiled the X-Fi Sonic Carrier: a brand-new concept in hi-res audio and video delivery for home entertainment applied successfully in its soundbar products. In 2018, Creative launched an all-new technology for headphones called Super X-Fi Headphone Holography. This technology uses computational audio to recreate the listening experience of a high-end multi-speaker system in a professional studio, and delivers the same expansive experience in headphones, rendered binaurally. Super X-Fi further also uses Artificial Intelligence to compute a custom audio profile based on a person's unique anthropometry (HRTF profiles).
As small as a (small and thin) finger, the Sound Blaster X1 is now a universal DAC/Amp that is meant to translate multichannel, high-resolution and immersive audio with the highest fidelity, powered by a high-end 128dB AKM4377 32-bit Velvet Sound DAC and TI/Burr-Brown INA1620 dual audio operational amplifier. And while the original SXFI AMP was mainly designed as an extension of mobile audio devices, the new Sound Blaster X1 is best used with PCs and Macs, and with the Creative desktop app.
As Creative explains, with the Sound Blaster X1 users gain access to the Sound Blaster Acoustic Engine, where they can tap on the full suite of sound processing technologies to enhance their experiences for both work and play. Essentially, the new devices offers all the audio technologies that are not so commonly found integrated in PCs.
With Sound Blaster Surround Virtualization, users get to enjoy a phenomenal mesh of depth and range in audio immersion across movies, music and games. CrystalVoice technology caters for a host of smart adjustments during conference calls with features like SmartVolume and Acoustic Echo Cancellation; and there is also SmartComms Kit which helps to reduce background noise effectively and auto-mute users when they are not speaking.
There are professionally tuned audio and game presets to further please gamers, while the Scout Mode enhancer detects subtle audio cues and makes them obvious to keep gamers one step ahead of their competitors all the time. And of course, users still get to enjoy Super X-Fi "headphone holography," and HRTF ear-mapping via the SXFI app that tailors to users’ ears and helps them immerse in all their audio, especially movies and games, in the most natural way.
The new Sound Blaster X1 is priced at $69.99 USD and is now available at the Creative online store. A very compelling external audio solution that is impossible to ignore for computer audio.
www.creative.com
