2. From 16 Bit To 24 Bit Surround!

X-Fi brings a very surprising concept to music listening with speakers: a level of quality comparable to today's reference audio - 24 bit/96 kHz, like DVD-Audio - with any standard 16 bit/44.1 kHz (CD Audio) source. This is still by far the most prevalent, if not the only standard available in many cases. In addition, X-Fi can reportedly come close to achieving that level of quality with compressed sources like the popular and widespread MP3 format! While it may have looked as if the only solution for getting better musical quality was to rebuild your CD music library with albums remixed to a higher-performance medium from the original multi-track studio tapes, X-Fi promises to achieve it with a stroke of its magic wand. In addition, the new CMSS3D system gives you surround sound while promising to preserve all the qualities of traditional stereo sound and even improve it, while adding reproduction of the ambience of the original recordings. It's hard not to be tempted!

As with anything else, extended experience is needed to make a real evaluation of the process, but the demonstrations we've heard so far are truly astounding. The dynamic range of traditional recordings is spectacularly extended, and they take on a lifelike, even euphoric quality that traditional reproduction would have a hard time matching. Moving to surround mode via "upmixing" is no longer accompanied by the all-too-familiar (and variable, depending on the source) impreciseness induced by existing processes, including the classic version of CMSS3D from Creative that's available on Audigy sound cards, for example. Elements that are centered in the soundstage (very often the singer in a typical recording) stay there, but with more presence than with a traditional stereo system, thanks to the center channel.

In fact, the ideal listening area (the "sweet spot") is significantly extended. The reproduction of ambiences doesn't seem to take away from the original or modify its timbres - faults that are generally associated with existing processing systems - yet adds a new dimension to recordings. As you can probably guess, we can't wait to move from demonstrations to actual commercial products! You should be hearing about them soon here at Tom's Hardware Guide...