https://www.techpowerup.com/262900/creative-at-ces-2020-super-x-fi-everything Creative had a positive impact on us at TechPowerUp who attended CES last year, with their retail demonstration of Super X-Fi headphone holography arguably being the most impressive product announcement at the trade show. Yours truly was especially taken aback with the hardware implementation of Super X-Fi, with the first product implementing it,
the SXFI Amp, earning a well-deserved recommendation too. Naturally, we were eager to see what the company was up to next, and met them at CES this year too where it was evident they were going all aboard the Super X-Fi train, and inviting everyone along for the ride.
There were definitely a lot of hardware products with the SXFI DSP built in, but the main announcement was in the form of the new Super X-Fi Gen 2 audio profile. Gen 1, from last year, garnered a lot of positive reviews, but also had mixed reception from the general populace who had to rely on head mapping and not also the microphone-based measurements the press got in person. Indeed, my own experience with higher end headphones was not as positive, with music losing detail in favor of a surround sound speaker setup experience that perhaps was not necessary. The worse the audio source was, the worse this discrepancy was as well. Creative had gathered tens of thousands of ear profiles and feedback this past year, and used it to train their Super X-Fi AI engine to develop a more accurate, personalized audio profile as part of Super X-Fi Gen 2. The company claims this free update to all existing Gen 1 profiles will improve also the preservation of audio detail, as well as better positional accuracy as well. We will put this to the test soon enough.
Our hardware tour began with a look at the recently launched Sound Blaster X3 sound card with hardware Super X-Fi. This came out in Q4 last year, and allowed the hardware-based SXFI DSP to work with all supported headphones, along with the better Amp/DAC here compared to the SXFI Amp, as covered before. The first new-to-CES 2020 product came in the form of the Creative SXFI GAMER headset, which has a custom gaming Gen 2 profile pre-configured in the integrated SXFI DSP. This is an analogous product to their SXFI Theater wireless headphones, which is meant to target movies and the living room experience, but uses USB connectivity to power and drive the headphones, as well as the RGB LEDs surrounding the earcups. The microphone has a pop filter for noise isolation, and Creative aims to launch the SXFI GAMER in Q2 2020 for a price point under $150 (not finalized yet, but they said they were looking at a number closer to $125 at the moment).
In my opinion Creative needs to do a far better job getting superior products into the marketplace.
