RSSCreative Xmod Claims to Improve Music
By Nate Mook | Published October 3, 2006, 12:50 PM
Creative has unveiled a new device called the Xmod, which is based upon the company's X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio platform and promises to improve the audio quality of compressed music, such as that purchased from Apple's iTunes or any MP3 files.
Shaped like a candy bar, the Xmod plugs in between an audio source and stereo speakers or pair of headphones. It works with any portable audio player including the iPod, along with plugging into a computer's USB port without requiring the use of software. Creative claims the result is "better than CD quality" sound.
Essentially, the Xmod up-converts the audio signal to 24-bit surround. The X-Fi Crystalizer identifies which areas of the audio file have been truncated or damaged during compression. Creative says the technology can "restore" the highs and lows of the music that otherwise would not have been audible.
The X-Fi CMSS-3D component of the Xmod, meanwhile, creates virtual surround sound through speakers or headphones. Because most digital audio included on movie and TV show downloads includes only two-channel stereo, Creative has designed the Xmod to emulate a multi-channel speaker setup. It can place specific voices in the virtual center channel while ambient noise is in the background.
"There are more than 100 million people who listen to MP3, WMA or AAC music on their PCs, Macs or iPod or ZEN players, but the quality of this compressed music is highly compromised. The Creative Xmod enables them to listen to their music with audio that sounds even better than CDs," remarked Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo. "All your music is instantly upconverted to the Xtreme Fidelity standard in real time through a simple and compact device."
The Xmod is scheduled to begin shipping this month at a retail price of $79.99 USD. An AC adapter is required when using the device with a portable audio player.
I feel sorry for the MP3 generation. If people really cared about sound quality they wouldn't be converting there CD collection into 'crapP3'. But I guess ignorance is bliss... and dumb...lol.
To think engineers like myself spend so much money on gear for 24bit 192kHz (ie f*^kin awesome sound) some that some d*ck can turn it to crap. Do the comparisions people! Lossless (PCM) is what you what.
But if you are burdened with crappy downloaded MP3s (you poor thing) then this probably does make it sound 'less crap'. Although there is no way of making it 'better' (subjective) than the real thing. IE If you really care about your sound...BUY THE CD!
Check my blog on www.myspace.com/damiansisland for info on MP3, or listen to some MP3s...oh if not for the convenience.
isLand out...
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|Leaving all the hype about "better then studio quality" aside - marketing slogans for anything are ridiculous these days.
This is a USB soundcard that seems also to work as a portable headphone amp. That's my guess. And for sure it offers dynamics processing.
It is not a bad thing alltogether for 80 bucks.
If it performs well in tests I might be getting one.
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|These comments are really aimed at Creative CEO "Sim Wong Hoo" or should I say CEO "Shame On You"
Stop making new hardware until you get your old hardware to work. Just a crazy thought...
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|I guess it's possible. Look what Jim Fosgate did in the '70's. He took a Stereo signal with less than 50db of separation and split it into 4 channels with greater than 50db of separation. We now call it Surround Sound, Dolby, THX... But then again he actually worked for a living and cared about the customer.
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|Maybe they are using some higher math calcs to predict the shape of the waveform to more accurately represent the "true" analog shape and maybe it uses telepathy to contact the original artist impression of the sound from thier brains and it recreates what the artist always wanted but could never achieve... SO WHAT!
Creative "Labs" should be spending their time getting the F@#%ing sound out of their sound cards first! They still don't have a Vista x64 driver. Oh, they only have had 7 years to work on it... Sorry.
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|Have you ever tried to "enhance" a low res picture in Photoshop... It don't work.
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|This is almost as good as the claim that Blu-Ray players will playback existing DVDs with better quality!!!
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|OK Creative Craps - now show us how to make a real bullsh**.
Oh. You already did! Thank you.
You're finished guys. Since Audigy 1 you didn't develop ANYTHING useful nor revolutionary. Stop counting on your marketing crew because since X-Fi lies, no support, horrible, bloated drivers and software you are done on this world. Stop making bullsh*** and leave the sound card market to the REAL vendors. Go and make your crappy speakers and awful Fatl1ty mice.
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|I guess that if you put 2 Xmod, the sounds get even better.
Does it still work if you just send a check to Creative ?
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|The most ridiculous thing to be said about this little snake oil gizmo is that some people WILL actually buy it, and some of them will end up believing that it works.
Let's not even bother to investigate completely FREE ways of truly upgrading the quality of our music, such as simply encoding it at higher bitrates or with better codecs. Let's just ante-up for an $80 placebo-effect generator, so we can convince ourselves that our 128kbs CBR MP3 and WMA files --- many of which we've already been told are "CD-quality" --- now actually sound even BETTER than CD's.
And while we're at it, we might as well buy the AC adapter this thing needs to make our portable audio devices not-so-portable.
You know, in a way, this may be as CREATIVE as Creative's ever been!
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|People believe this crap. There was someone recently that believe analog component connections, with D-A and A-D conversions was better quality than pure Digital signal paths, because he read it somewhere...
Common sense goes out the window for some people..
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|Hi there, does this device work with any mp3 player?
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|If only they would make a divx converter to restore these s***ty divx movies back to DVD quality, OR BETTER!
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|I'm waiting for the device that will upsample my videotapes of WKRP to HD.
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|creative upto guesswork again! what was missing in an audio file could never be the same no matter what!
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|"Better than CD quality"...
Great, another way to render the copy more acurate than the source!
Just like the over produced material of the late 80's and early 90's that used the horrendous Aphex aural exciters - synthesized enhancement, whether it is real or not!
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|creative said the x-fi would do the same except we all got the snap/crackle/pop with our music, must be the highs and lows that were taken out of our music
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|They're releasing a product that everyone knows will fail?!
It's useless to upconvert to 24-bit when it's already been converted to analog. What are they going to fill the rest of the 8 bits with? Zeros?
Upmixing to virtual speakers can be done in software.
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|"better than CD quality"?
It sound like a bools*** to me.
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|So if i made a song, you know some weird techno thing, with parts that i want to have that "truncated" sound, this is going to modify it?
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|It could mean the bits that were truncated in the 24-bit to 16-bit conversion (the least significant bits).
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|"'Creative claims the result is better than CD quality' sound. Creative says the technology can 'restore' the highs and lows of the music that otherwise would not have been audible."
LOL, funny stuff. Like all those similar dsp winamp plugins, this thing is nothing but a set of equalizer settings.
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|Oh my god ..... another round of "better than original" stuff.....
When do companies stop abusing stupid people who can't understand, that what compression cuts away is GONE, FOREVER.
No gadget/software/magic can undo lossy compression.
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|i agree with the first comment but i would bet that it is theoretically possible to restore lossy to lossless.
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|You can always make guesses. I guess Creative found a way to "guess" what used to be there. I'd like to read a review. Maybe it "guesses" pretty good. Even if it's not accurate, it can still make it sound better. It's all about your perception of the result.
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|I don't know, prooky. I suspect it's possible, using clever enough software, to mitigate the damage caused by clipping. Fire up Audacity some time and zoom way in on a clipped sound file and you can see that it's certainly possible to perform some kind of extrapolation of clipped samples.
Whether that kind of modification can actually make the music sound better, and whether this device is actually capable of the same will have to be left to the reviewers and customers.
It seems to me however, that this kind of functionality would first show up in software, because it is an algorithmic process on digital data. That I haven't heard of such software certainly doesn't rule out the validity of Creative's claims.
Certainly audio compression software have improved significantly since the says of ulaw, etc, so the idea that it is possible to improve horribly compressed sound (think
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|No. Then it wouldn't be called lossy. Data is irretrievably lost.
That is different from clipping which can occur even on lossless content.
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|"An AC adapter is required when using the device with a portable audio player."
ROTFLMAO
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|That was the point that most amused me too.
Perhaps they're aiming this product at people with portable generators, seeing as those people at home (where the plug sockets are) wouldn't have bothered with an mp3 player to play their 'choons' when they can have a hifi which plays CDs without all the highs and lows cut out of it, thus negating the use of the product.
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|heh that's great.
if it works i'd use it on my car's audio inputs with a 12v adapter. including a car plug seems a bit more reasonable.
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