Creative Super X-Fi Headphone Amplifier - $60 - AVSForum Best of Cedia 2018

I find that, annoyingly, most post-processing effects make the sound more "tinny" in general, but it's sort of a necessary evil in my experience.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
So, I've spent some more time with my X3 with new head images.

I'm not quite sure if the titles I have been running output in multichannel or just stereo (there are never any options in the Audio settings)

Do they just pick it up from the number of available outputs?

I think I can tell that there is a little bit more of an effect. I have tried closing my eyes and focusing on the sound while moving the mouse around in game, focusing on the difference between when a sound is in front of you vs behind you because that is where this technology is supposed to have the most benefit.

It's subtle, but I think it is there.

The sound definitely is more "remote" sounding and more tinny than with plain old stereo though, with a lit less midrange and bass. Maybe this is a necessary evil of surround?

I don't know. I'm feeling a little better about it than I did when it first arrived, but to call it "transformitive" as I have seen some say, I feel would be quite the stretch.
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Are the center and right-most lights green? IME there's a huge difference that's not subtle at all. Not necessarily in discreet positional audio but in soundstage; it sounds like the sound is coming from my speakers. If anything having SXFI off (white middle / orange right lights) sounds more tinny to me. I guess it could be different if you're using closed headphones; I'm running open-backed Fidelios and it's pretty crazy.
 
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When I had it, it sounded like I wasn't wearing headphones at all. Like the sound was naturally occurring around instead of from cans over your head. It made me question if my speakers were being used instead of headphones and I would do a double take all the time to make sure audio wasn't running through my speakers as a precautionary measure during late night gaming and YouTube sessions to make sure I wouldn't wake anyone up in the house

(kinda like forgetting if your glasses are on you or not and you check)
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
So, I've spent some more time with my X3 with new head images.

I'm not quite sure if the titles I have been running output in multichannel or just stereo (there are never any options in the Audio settings)

Do they just pick it up from the number of available outputs?

I think I can tell that there is a little bit more of an effect. I have tried closing my eyes and focusing on the sound while moving the mouse around in game, focusing on the difference between when a sound is in front of you vs behind you because that is where this technology is supposed to have the most benefit.

It's subtle, but I think it is there.

The sound definitely is more "remote" sounding and more tinny than with plain old stereo though, with a lit less midrange and bass. Maybe this is a necessary evil of surround?

I don't know. I'm feeling a little better about it than I did when it first arrived, but to call it "transformitive" as I have seen some say, I feel would be quite the stretch.
Click to expand...

To me, the sound sounds just like if I was using surround loudspeakers, although the windows sound test positioning sounds "off", but game positioning is just completely flawless.
It's very obvious in games if a sound is coming from directly behind me as opposed to in front or to the side. Night and day. I have a 5.1 speaker setup right here and I can hear surround *BETTER* on the Amp with headphones with SFXI mode, than I can on my own 5.1 speakers! It's that good.

Two questions.
Are you using windows?
Did you set windows sound properties to "7.1 surround"?
Also did you change the bit rate to 24 bit 96 khz or higher (speaker properties, advanced).

You can also test it on 5.1 surround as well, which seems to remove a little of the extra reverb processing, however I think an older version of the firmware didn't play 5.1 surround correctly on the Amp (I do not know if that applies to the X3 and X4, which I do not own).

I don't like to make hasty conclusions but it sound almost like something isn't configured properly.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Two green Lead's on front of unit suggests I did.

The biggest difference I could tell between SXFi mode and not Al mode was that everything sounded tinnier and further away, i didn't feel like I got more of a surround experience.
Click to expand...

t1337duder said:
Welcome to the audio world.

Having said that, I get a kick out of watching people fall for the same rebanded gimmicks over and over. In the end, if you're not spending the vast majority of your audio budget on your headphones (or speakers, which I prefer), then you're doing it wrong. Anything involving DAC's that are supposed to massively transform your audio experience are obvious snake oil. But like I said, it's fun to watch people submit themselves so masochistically to advertising.
Click to expand...

I'm not into the cult of audiophile but I like my music and have opinions about what I put in my earholes, unlike a lot of people. I also enjoy careful listening.

At the start I was 90% with Zarathustra's initial assessment. It worked with a few things but made most things sound tinny and thin, some stuff it made sound beyond tinny to shrill. Just another spatializer that was less crappy than most, but still pretty crappy. Following the posted instructions in here (and note, the thing came with NOTHING, thanks for posting everyone) improved things somewhat, but still kind of crap. It did nice things for some stuff, and absolutely ruined other stuff. Universally, even when it was doing good stuff, it was pretty fatiguing to listen to. Very overstimulating, and good for maybe 20 minutes max. One thing it was quite good at was environmental stuff. In games? It made the environments sound neat, especially weather sounds, but it totally ruined positional audio for bad guys in games.

Then I got pictures of my ears. Better, but can still totally be a mixed bag without picking headphones. I went through my favorite cans and IEMs, and running through the list until you find something you like is WAY, WAY better than sticking with "unknown IEM" or "unknown headphone". Like lots. this improved things greatly.

My main computer headphones are cheapie superlux HD 681 pair because they sound decent and are light and breath. (PS when they are down around $40 on amazon, they are a great value). Too bad they aren't on the list of headphones. But they are more or less clones of the old AKG K240 cans as far as I can tell. And this has the AKG K240 MKII on this list. So I went with that.

For me, it definitely expands the sound field beyond that "in your skull" feeling. It is more pronounced with IEMs or closed backs than with open backs or semi-open, and really does it's best with closed backs IMO.

I have some of my favorite classical stuff ripped to my machine, but not a lot and the recordings aren't great. Notably this really improves this one album of native American songs recorded WAY back when. The stuff is more anthropologist archive than artistic recording, and it shows. With this it's still not amazing, but the drums sound like drums and a lot of the noise is gone. With me meze 99 cans and set to the same AKG K240 setting, most of my classical stuff sounds AMAZING compared to the original recordings. Positional stuff that's not there can't be recreated, but you can do a lot to it. What it did to it helped fairly mediocre recordings sound like pretty damn good recordings. It's not a hig bit rate 7.1 recording, but pretty impressive.

I have my suspicions on what it is doing, here's my guess:

For 7.1 stuff, I think it is doing virtual speakers in a virtual space with echo and reverb models, then HRTF type math on that to offer up the spatialized presentation. You get better HRTF with the ear data and sound curves for individual cans.

For 2.1 stuff I think it is dropping out a lot of the 7.1 math and basically muting everything but left, center, right and sub. I think the center is a mono mixdown of the left and right channel, and the sub channel is pulled out via frequency, processed, and placed into the mix non-positionally unlike 7.1 sources where someone involved with the media itself pulled out the sub bass channel info.

Regardless, whatever they do, the HRTF math results in the "rear" channel coming from below and the "front" from above. Beyond that, the space being modeled for the positioning is not small. This can make some things sound great, and some things sound weird. It does not make live concerts sound live for most genres because it is trying to shove the "band" up front. The reality is a live show has sound reinforcement, and it doesn't generally sound like that unless it is classical music or something along those lines. In those cases, if they do sound reinforcement, it's usually all around the stage opening and not dispersed through the venue.

It also tends to have a chorus effect on vocals. It also does weird things to bass. IT makes it huge, but I like bass, so... BUT... it makes it non positional which can mess up it's mix in the sound for 2 channel stuff.

So some subjective examples.

Movies mostly sound really good, but the 3d audio is constrained, so sometimes it doesn't work. For example the omaha beach scene in saving private ryan is nothing like a theater, and not very good on the bits where sounds transit form in front to behind. The scene with the beans and scarves in crouching tiger hidden dragon is decent but not great. Some things are good though, like blade runner final cut, wall-e, and some others. All of it is arguably better than plain 2 channel headphones for watching movies.

As I stated classical stuff sounds good. As do most old recording done with care but without good technology. For example I have the album louis armstrong - sings back through the years. It's a good remaster. It sounds much better with x-fi on. I have some little richard that sounds like total ass on anything but speaker turned up loud. Similarly Chuck Berry stuff is largely a win. Then it just sounds kind of ass. IT actually sounds decent with x-fi on. The bad-religion 80-85 album has a lot of crappy old bad religion recordings. Most of them sound better with x-fi. Like all along the way sounds great. Frogger just sounds differently fucked. Charles manson's Lie album is just a pile of shit. It is a new kind of pile of shit with x-fi. It seems to want to make all the pops really positional. The chorus effect on vocals is in full force on it too, which makes his voice less ass.

Like kodo drummers stuff is a mixed bag. The drums sound better, but the recording goes low enough it says this is sub bass.. put it in the all present, not directional sub channel. So it feels like you are sitting at a live show but right in front of a sub0bass sound reinforcement monitor. Which kodo doesn't do at live shows. Also kodo are freaks and will do things like put 30 dudes on stage making flange and chorus and weird positional effects by altering the timing of how they synchronize, and it comes off really weird. Granted, plain 2 channel doesn't nail the real sound either. It is in my experience a live only thing unless they have put out a good 7.1 atmos recording, which would be cool to hear.

Niel young & crazy horse my, my, hey hey sounds awesome.

NIN another version of the truth (live officially given away "bootleg") is not awesome, but it's improved. The broken album just sounds louder (there's a lot of channel manipulation fuckery on that album, hence it shipping with a warning it may damage mono gear). Lots of NIN stuff is supposed to sound close, and this makes it sound big and massive. Which you may like, but it ruins some of the stuff. The various bootlegs sound... interesting. They still sound like ass, but now they often sound like you are standing in the back of a crowd at a show.

Nirvana bleach album generally sounds decent with it on.

Anything with a lot of synth and recorded to sound big and spacious pretty much works. Like KMFDM's a drug against war. The original recording is kind of fucked. x-fi does a lot to unfuck it.

Heck anything recorded to sound spacious mostly works. The lumineers ho-hey is recorded to sound like a large space. x-fi makes it sound really good. Sweet Home Alabama does as well.

Most things recorded after the loudness wars went into full effect that are meant to be "quieter" tend to sound pretty good. An example is KT tunstall's black horse and the cherry tree. Things recorded to sound like a massive wall of sound may fall apart. Like most OK go stuff. Coal Chamber's Chamber Music album is pretty much unbearable with it turned on unless you turn the volume way down. Then it's just a pile of overprocessed mud.

Leonard Cohen's everybody knows sounds like you turned it up louder except that his voice doesn't get as much louder as everything else. Both ways sound good.

Lou Reed's walk on the wild side sounds really good with it on. Like you are in a small club. It's one of the weird songs that x-fi doesn't make sound like it is in a small venue. Lots of black flag stuff is like that.

The beastie boys' what you want goes from bassy lo-fi sounding to sounding absolutely massive and crushingly bassy. You may or may not like that. But it IS kind of what it sounds like when they do it live.

The MC5's live kick out the jams album sounds like a new kind of ass. I prefer the old kind of ass on big speakers. Not all live recordings are improved by this.

Christian Death's live iconologia album sounds more live. Some tracks are a bit much to listen too, and I doubt real shows were as bass heavy as x-fi makes them, but it's a pretty good live recording, and it doesn't lose much without x-fi either. The studio albums (rozz williams era) don't work well with x-fi. They put a LOT of reverb on the guitars and mix them front and center and x-fi is jsut too much.

Some stuff just sounds weird. Like the Ramones. The Cat Powers Dark end of the street EP sounds like a lot more of what it is to the point it is very rapidly fatiguing. Faith No More's The real thing sounds like you are listening to it played by the DJ between bands in a small club. Filter's Hey Man Nice Shot without EQ or anything sounds a bit thin with the vocals kind of band passed but front and center. With x-fi it sounds bigger and the vocals seem mixed down a bit compared to the music. Satisfaction by Benny Benassi & the Biz sounds like someone put a DJ booth in a conference room. it's just weird and loud. The stone roses titerope just sounds like it's louder with different EQ.

David Bowie's Space Oddity sounds good with x-fi. It really works. Ziggy Stardust not so much, that strummy guitar in the right channel gets REALLY focused on and made kind of harsh.

Death in Vegas's Aisha goes from grooving lo-fi stuff to total ass. It's unlistenable.

Deep purple's Machine head album is generally helped by it. It mostly unfucks a lot of the recording sins on the album.... mostly.

the hives' tick tick boom just comes out louder with the bass blown out.

Things recorded with tons of reverb/echo tend to get fucked by it. Like the Rolling Stones time is on my side. It's like listening to the recording on the sound system for a big stadium concert and the sound reinforcement isn't time aligned.

It's not studio accurate audiophile reproduction, but it's interesting most of the time. The closest thing I can compare it to is if you like listening to music loud on speakers that don't totally suck, and you don't like headphones that much, you might really dig it. If you have a lot of classical recordings that are older, you may really like it in general. Much like a significant EQ, it's not universally applicable to all songs.
 
raz-0 said:
I'm not into the cult of audiophile but I like my music and have opinions about what I put in my earholes, unlike a lot of people. I also enjoy careful listening.

At the start I was 90% with Zarathustra's initial assessment. It worked with a few things but made most things sound tinny and thin, some stuff it made sound beyond tinny to shrill. Just another spatializer that was less crappy than most, but still pretty crappy. Following the posted instructions in here (and note, the thing came with NOTHING, thanks for posting everyone) improved things somewhat, but still kind of crap. It did nice things for some stuff, and absolutely ruined other stuff. Universally, even when it was doing good stuff, it was pretty fatiguing to listen to. Very overstimulating, and good for maybe 20 minutes max. One thing it was quite good at was environmental stuff. In games? It made the environments sound neat, especially weather sounds, but it totally ruined positional audio for bad guys in games.

Then I got pictures of my ears. Better, but can still totally be a mixed bag without picking headphones. I went through my favorite cans and IEMs, and running through the list until you find something you like is WAY, WAY better than sticking with "unknown IEM" or "unknown headphone". Like lots. this improved things greatly.

My main computer headphones are cheapie superlux HD 681 pair because they sound decent and are light and breath. (PS when they are down around $40 on amazon, they are a great value). Too bad they aren't on the list of headphones. But they are more or less clones of the old AKG K240 cans as far as I can tell. And this has the AKG K240 MKII on this list. So I went with that.

For me, it definitely expands the sound field beyond that "in your skull" feeling. It is more pronounced with IEMs or closed backs than with open backs or semi-open, and really does it's best with closed backs IMO.

I have some of my favorite classical stuff ripped to my machine, but not a lot and the recordings aren't great. Notably this really improves this one album of native American songs recorded WAY back when. The stuff is more anthropologist archive than artistic recording, and it shows. With this it's still not amazing, but the drums sound like drums and a lot of the noise is gone. With me meze 99 cans and set to the same AKG K240 setting, most of my classical stuff sounds AMAZING compared to the original recordings. Positional stuff that's not there can't be recreated, but you can do a lot to it. What it did to it helped fairly mediocre recordings sound like pretty damn good recordings. It's not a hig bit rate 7.1 recording, but pretty impressive.
Click to expand...

I've spent some more time with it.

It seems like there is some inherent loss of fullness of the sound in order to achieve the surround effect, which really threw me off at first, especially because I am so used to playing games on stero headphones (essentially th eonly way I have done it for 30 years). Given some time to get used to the less "close' and less "full" sound. I think I have been able to start appreciating it a bit in games.

I haven't really played through a modern title, so I am still reserving judgment until I do, but I am currently playing 2009's Borderlands. I can actually tell front from rear. I've tried closing my eyes and listening and I think I can confirm it, but it is tough to know for sure whether or not it is placebo, as I can't completely blind myself.


raz-0 said:
I have my suspicions on what it is doing, here's my guess:

For 7.1 stuff, I think it is doing virtual speakers in a virtual space with echo and reverb models, then HRTF type math on that to offer up the spatialized presentation. You get better HRTF with the ear data and sound curves for individual cans.

For 2.1 stuff I think it is dropping out a lot of the 7.1 math and basically muting everything but left, center, right and sub. I think the center is a mono mixdown of the left and right channel, and the sub channel is pulled out via frequency, processed, and placed into the mix non-positionally unlike 7.1 sources where someone involved with the media itself pulled out the sub bass channel info.

Regardless, whatever they do, the HRTF math results in the "rear" channel coming from below and the "front" from above. Beyond that, the space being modeled for the positioning is not small. This can make some things sound great, and some things sound weird. It does not make live concerts sound live for most genres because it is trying to shove the "band" up front. The reality is a live show has sound reinforcement, and it doesn't generally sound like that unless it is classical music or something along those lines. In those cases, if they do sound reinforcement, it's usually all around the stage opening and not dispersed through the venue.
Click to expand...


I use mine with my Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro's for which there luckily was a profile in the software.

I also have a set of Massdrop HD6xx's I wanted to try it with, but I modified the cable on those to fit an XLR connector for "balanced" audio and no longer have a 3.5mm jack on them, so I can't.

My understanding from reading about the technology is that they try to emulate how the human brain has evolved to make sense of what is front and rear sound despite only having two ears.

Depending on the shape of your head ((both soft tissue and bone) it will absorb sound that passes through it, so they emulate this by frequency filtering through a DSP using some sort of predetermined formula based on ear photos.

There is also a minute time difference between soundwaves that are passing through the head and those that are going around and entering the ear from the other side.

From their descriptions it sounds like they combine these two things. Take a sound source, split it into two parts, apply frequency filtering (mostly custom curved low pass?) on one (emulating sound going through head) and present the other naturally with a minute (milliseconds?) time delay between the two.

So it presents itself to the OS as a 7.1 system, and then processes the sound from each virtual speaker per the above algorithm and techniques to try to trick the brain into thinking the sound is positional.

Its never going to be perfect based on such rough estimates of our heads based on face and ear pictures.

I remember reading back when it first launched (CES 2018?) that in their booth Creative had a demonstration setup including some specialty microphone you insert into your ears that created much better profiles than can be done with the app and pictures, that resulted in even better surround sound. It would be neat if there were somewhere you could go and have one of those done.

Or maybe a complete 3D head MRI. That would be pretty cool.


raz-0 said:
It also tends to have a chorus effect on vocals. It also does weird things to bass. IT makes it huge, but I like bass, so... BUT... it makes it non positional which can mess up it's mix in the sound for 2 channel stuff.

So some subjective examples.

Movies mostly sound really good, but the 3d audio is constrained, so sometimes it doesn't work. For example the omaha beach scene in saving private ryan is nothing like a theater, and not very good on the bits where sounds transit form in front to behind. The scene with the beans and scarves in crouching tiger hidden dragon is decent but not great. Some things are good though, like blade runner final cut, wall-e, and some others. All of it is arguably better than plain 2 channel headphones for watching movies.

As I stated classical stuff sounds good. As do most old recording done with care but without good technology. For example I have the album louis armstrong - sings back through the years. It's a good remaster. It sounds much better with x-fi on. I have some little richard that sounds like total ass on anything but speaker turned up loud. Similarly Chuck Berry stuff is largely a win. Then it just sounds kind of ass. IT actually sounds decent with x-fi on. The bad-religion 80-85 album has a lot of crappy old bad religion recordings. Most of them sound better with x-fi. Like all along the way sounds great. Frogger just sounds differently fucked. Charles manson's Lie album is just a pile of shit. It is a new kind of pile of shit with x-fi. It seems to want to make all the pops really positional. The chorus effect on vocals is in full force on it too, which makes his voice less ass.

Like kodo drummers stuff is a mixed bag. The drums sound better, but the recording goes low enough it says this is sub bass.. put it in the all present, not directional sub channel. So it feels like you are sitting at a live show but right in front of a sub0bass sound reinforcement monitor. Which kodo doesn't do at live shows. Also kodo are freaks and will do things like put 30 dudes on stage making flange and chorus and weird positional effects by altering the timing of how they synchronize, and it comes off really weird. Granted, plain 2 channel doesn't nail the real sound either. It is in my experience a live only thing unless they have put out a good 7.1 atmos recording, which would be cool to hear.

Niel young & crazy horse my, my, hey hey sounds awesome.

NIN another version of the truth (live officially given away "bootleg") is not awesome, but it's improved. The broken album just sounds louder (there's a lot of channel manipulation fuckery on that album, hence it shipping with a warning it may damage mono gear). Lots of NIN stuff is supposed to sound close, and this makes it sound big and massive. Which you may like, but it ruins some of the stuff. The various bootlegs sound... interesting. They still sound like ass, but now they often sound like you are standing in the back of a crowd at a show.

Nirvana bleach album generally sounds decent with it on.

Anything with a lot of synth and recorded to sound big and spacious pretty much works. Like KMFDM's a drug against war. The original recording is kind of fucked. x-fi does a lot to unfuck it.

Heck anything recorded to sound spacious mostly works. The lumineers ho-hey is recorded to sound like a large space. x-fi makes it sound really good. Sweet Home Alabama does as well.

Most things recorded after the loudness wars went into full effect that are meant to be "quieter" tend to sound pretty good. An example is KT tunstall's black horse and the cherry tree. Things recorded to sound like a massive wall of sound may fall apart. Like most OK go stuff. Coal Chamber's Chamber Music album is pretty much unbearable with it turned on unless you turn the volume way down. Then it's just a pile of overprocessed mud.

Leonard Cohen's everybody knows sounds like you turned it up louder except that his voice doesn't get as much louder as everything else. Both ways sound good.

Lou Reed's walk on the wild side sounds really good with it on. Like you are in a small club. It's one of the weird songs that x-fi doesn't make sound like it is in a small venue. Lots of black flag stuff is like that.

The beastie boys' what you want goes from bassy lo-fi sounding to sounding absolutely massive and crushingly bassy. You may or may not like that. But it IS kind of what it sounds like when they do it live.

The MC5's live kick out the jams album sounds like a new kind of ass. I prefer the old kind of ass on big speakers. Not all live recordings are improved by this.

Christian Death's live iconologia album sounds more live. Some tracks are a bit much to listen too, and I doubt real shows were as bass heavy as x-fi makes them, but it's a pretty good live recording, and it doesn't lose much without x-fi either. The studio albums (rozz williams era) don't work well with x-fi. They put a LOT of reverb on the guitars and mix them front and center and x-fi is jsut too much.

Some stuff just sounds weird. Like the Ramones. The Cat Powers Dark end of the street EP sounds like a lot more of what it is to the point it is very rapidly fatiguing. Faith No More's The real thing sounds like you are listening to it played by the DJ between bands in a small club. Filter's Hey Man Nice Shot without EQ or anything sounds a bit thin with the vocals kind of band passed but front and center. With x-fi it sounds bigger and the vocals seem mixed down a bit compared to the music. Satisfaction by Benny Benassi & the Biz sounds like someone put a DJ booth in a conference room. it's just weird and loud. The stone roses titerope just sounds like it's louder with different EQ.

David Bowie's Space Oddity sounds good with x-fi. It really works. Ziggy Stardust not so much, that strummy guitar in the right channel gets REALLY focused on and made kind of harsh.

Death in Vegas's Aisha goes from grooving lo-fi stuff to total ass. It's unlistenable.

Deep purple's Machine head album is generally helped by it. It mostly unfucks a lot of the recording sins on the album.... mostly.

the hives' tick tick boom just comes out louder with the bass blown out.

Things recorded with tons of reverb/echo tend to get fucked by it. Like the Rolling Stones time is on my side. It's like listening to the recording on the sound system for a big stadium concert and the sound reinforcement isn't time aligned.

It's not studio accurate audiophile reproduction, but it's interesting most of the time. The closest thing I can compare it to is if you like listening to music loud on speakers that don't totally suck, and you don't like headphones that much, you might really dig it. If you have a lot of classical recordings that are older, you may really like it in general. Much like a significant EQ, it's not universally applicable to all songs.
Click to expand...

I don't watch movies on my computer (I have a home theater for that) but I hadn't even considered using the thing for that purpose, or for music.

For music I will continue to use my Gen 2 Schiit Bifrost DAC amplified with my Gen 1 Schiit Valhalla (connected with balanced cabling, not that it matters, but because I can :p ) and my HD6xx's

The X3 seems well suited to games, but I tend to be one of those people who like bitperfect sound, so I don't want their DSP's molesting it before it hits my ears. I know I can turn SuperXfi off, but then it just turns it into a cheap DAC. I feel I already have a better solution for normal listening.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
The X3 seems well suited to games, but I tend to be one of those people who like bitperfect sound, so I don't want their DSP's molesting it before it hits my ears. I know I can turn SuperXfi off, but then it just turns it into a cheap DAC. I feel I already have a better solution for normal listening.
Click to expand...

If you have any classical stuff in your collection that isn’t crystal clear, i seriously suggest giving that a spin. Even some 2 channel high bit rate samples i grabbed off the web were helped. Everything i have that’s a pre 1960 recording regardless of genre seems to have been helped a lot by it.
 
Thanks for the extensive music review, raz-0!

raz-0 said:
Niel young & crazy horse my, my, hey hey sounds awesome.

Heck anything recorded to sound spacious mostly works. The lumineers ho-hey is recorded to sound like a large space. x-fi makes it sound really good. Sweet Home Alabama does as well.
Click to expand...
These definitely sound great with X-Fi on.

I've found it also does some really cool stuff with the soundstage on Tool's Fear Inoculum album.
 
Parja said:
Tool's Fear Inoculum album.
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MyMan.gif
 
raz-0 said:
If you have any classical stuff in your collection that isn’t crystal clear, i seriously suggest giving that a spin. Even some 2 channel high bit rate samples i grabbed off the web were helped. Everything i have that’s a pre 1960 recording regardless of genre seems to have been helped a lot by it.
Click to expand...

Deutsche Grammophon is ALWAYS crystal clear :p

1280px-Deutsche_Grammophon.svg.png
 
Has anyone seen a list of compatible devices for the SXFI app in order to create profiles?

It works on my Pixel, but I wonder if it will run on my stepsons iPad.

It's a pretty cool technology, but REALLY annoying that they tied it to using an app on a phone to get started. Ideally you should be able to take pictures of your ears and face yourself and processs them directly in the client on the computer it is being used, without requiring an account or an app on any other device.
 
Would this be much of an upgrade from my soundblaster z using the Mass Drop Sennheiser HD6xx?
 
equinox654 said:
Would this be much of an upgrade from my soundblaster z using the Mass Drop Sennheiser HD6xx?
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As far as overall sound quality? Probably not much different although the Super XFi mode is pretty awesome for most and having a volume, mute, speaker and headphone switching, etc. controls on your desk is pretty nice.
 
Bankie said:
As far as overall sound quality? Probably not much different although the Super XFi mode is pretty awesome for most and having a volume, mute, speaker and headphone switching, etc. controls on your desk is pretty nice.
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That's what I thought. Thanks.
 
Bankie said:
As far as overall sound quality? Probably not much different although the Super XFi mode is pretty awesome for most and having a volume, mute, speaker and headphone switching, etc. controls on your desk is pretty nice.
Click to expand...
equinox654 said:
That's what I thought. Thanks.
Click to expand...

I second Bankie's response.

Sound quality is probably pretty equivalent though if you are having noise issues (I used to be able to hear my mouse pointer move over my X-Fi Titanium HD in my old motherboard) using an external DAC can help.

The Super X-Fi effects are pretty cool though, and are the primary selling point of this thing.
 
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I missed the X3 refurb unfortunately but might get it if it shows up.

Questions:
  1. is the X3/X4 the same basic unit as the tiny headphone amp, just with more inputs/outputs (eg, discrete 7.1 outputs). Is there any downside to getting this unit over the tiny/OP unit?
  2. is x-fi just spatial processing, or does it do sound quality improvements, such as corrections for compressed audio (like sony's XM4 headphones do) ? Is that configurable?
  3. for the X4, for some reason they're using a combo 3.5mm + optical jack... any idea what that cable is called? I'd need to find a toslink <-> this thing adapter (also, wtf)
Thanks for any help.
 
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Might be time to rescan your heads everyone.

I bought an X4 for my stepson for his birthday, and when we scanned his he got a GEN3 profile instead of GEN2.

I don't think this is just an X4 thing, as it uses the same phone app for creating the profile as my X3.

Also noteworthy, the X4 uses different software than the X3. The X3 uses the "SB Command" program, but in order for the X4 to work, you need to install the Creative control suite, and use it to install an SXFI app off of the Windows store. The SB Command app will not detect the X4.

The SXFI control app from the Windows store it uses is also pretty buggy. It crashed several times trying to set the correct headphones and transfer the profile to the device. It was quite a disappointing experience.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Might be time to rescan your heads everyone.

The SXFI control app from the Windows store it uses is also pretty buggy. It crashed several times trying to set the correct headphones and transfer the profile to the device. It was quite a disappointing experience.
Click to expand...

I'll make an new profile to check it out when I get home. The Windows Store app being buggy doesn't surprise me; nearly everything I've ever used from there has been a crash prone mess.
 
Bankie said:
I'll make an new profile to check it out when I get home. The Windows Store app being buggy doesn't surprise me; nearly everything I've ever used from there has been a crash prone mess.
Click to expand...

I have no one handy to take ear pictures for me this evening, so I will have to test it another day.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Might be time to rescan your heads everyone.

I bought an X4 for my stepson for his birthday, and when we scanned his he got a GEN3 profile instead of GEN2.
Click to expand...
Profiles have been Gen 3 since at least late October.
 
Has anyone else had problems with these randomly changing the balance?

It's happened to me twice now on my X3

I thought my headphones were dying, but it turns out something randomly lowered the volume on the left, while leaving the right loud.

Took some digging to find where the hell Microsoft hid the balance settings these days, but but once I got there, it turns out something randomly changed them.

I changed it back, then it was fine again for a few weeks until it happened again.

It's not a big deal, but it is kind of weird.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Has anyone else had problems with these randomly changing the balance?

It's happened to me twice now on my X3

I thought my headphones were dying, but it turns out something randomly lowered the volume on the left, while leaving the right loud.

Took some digging to find where the hell Microsoft hid the balance settings these days, but but once I got there, it turns out something randomly changed them.

I changed it back, then it was fine again for a few weeks until it happened again.

It's not a big deal, but it is kind of weird.
Click to expand...


Nothing like that here but the first unit I ordered had to be replaced due to other audio issues. The 2nd has been flawless.
 
Does this work with onboard audio? Or do you need there x-fi cards along with the dongle?
 
Vengance_01 said:
Does this work with onboard audio? Or do you need there x-fi cards along with the dongle?
Click to expand...
It is a sound card. USB based. You don’t need anything else. Plug it into a USB port and plug your headphones into the super x-fi unit.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Has anyone else had problems with these randomly changing the balance?

It's happened to me twice now on my X3

I thought my headphones were dying, but it turns out something randomly lowered the volume on the left, while leaving the right loud.

Took some digging to find where the hell Microsoft hid the balance settings these days, but but once I got there, it turns out something randomly changed them.

I changed it back, then it was fine again for a few weeks until it happened again.

It's not a big deal, but it is kind of weird.
Click to expand...
No. I haven’t. I’ve had mine (and used it regularly) since original product launch.
 
Only issue I currently have is that the Creative software will sometimes say that it can't detect the device upon Windows boot. But I click ok and everything works perfectly fine.
 
Bankie said:
Only issue I currently have is that the Creative software will sometimes say that it can't detect the device upon Windows boot. But I click ok and everything works perfectly fine.
Click to expand...

I've had the same issue, the software seems to be a little flaky when it comes to how it communicates with the device.
 
Flaky software has long been a hallmark of Creative Labs unfortunately. I've had a ZxR card for quite a while now, would the X3 or X4 be a side-grade or a potential upgrade? My prior headset was a Sirus 5.1 analog, but now I have a plain stereo headset from Creative (Blaster X H5).
 
LodeRunner said:
Flaky software has long been a hallmark of Creative Labs unfortunately. I've had a ZxR card for quite a while now, would the X3 or X4 be a side-grade or a potential upgrade? My prior headset was a Sirus 5.1 analog, but now I have a plain stereo headset from Creative (Blaster X H5).
Click to expand...

Super X-Fi - if you set it up properly and have a headphone model with an existing profile - is a pretty cool feature.

Well worth it in my book.
 
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