When we visited Creative at their suite at CES 2019, they sat us down for a private demo of their Super X-Fi technology. Now, they’ve been demonstrating this hardware for a couple of years now behind the scenes. It was merely a prototype at that point, a simple plastic box full of electronics that was large and unsightly. However, they ushered in 2019 with the final product, an ultra-sleek USB Type-C dongle that may very well change the audi0 world for the better.
“Imagine capturing the listening experience of a high-end multi-speaker system in a professional studio, and recreating the same expansive experience – with the original depth, detail, realism, and immersiveness – in your headphones.” say creative. This can be done in two ways. One would be using the Super X-Fi app to photograph your ears and face. It then uploads to the cloud, sends back a profile that ensures the audio is shaped to how your own ears hear. “By mapping the listener’s head and ear shape, and transforming audio based on those parameters via Super X-Fi technology, audio is experienced as though it is coming from outside of the headphones – and the headphones disappear.” they continue.
Using the synthesized map, Super X-Fi recreates the natural expansive audio soundstage, for headphones, to give a magical listening experience custom made to each individual’s unique physique.
It also has another more advanced more, which I was fortunate to get a copy of. Using microphones on your head, we sat in a 5.1.2 surround sound configuration. A fantastic Elac equipped home theatre setup that Creative had created for CES 2019. They then played a few minutes of test tones and saved that profile to our personal Super X-Fi mobile app. Now I can listen to music, movies and gaming on headphones, and it replicates that exact rooms sound system.
“Think of the magic of holography, but for audio, and for headphones. Super X-Fi Headphone Holography is real and is now. This is the holy grail of headphone audio.” added creative. We told them it was bloody witchcraft, and they somewhat seemed to agree.
Normal Headphones: Audio made for external speakers but unnaturally pumped directly into your ears.
“Do you know headphone audio has been deceiving you all this while? The vast majority of audio tracks created today are meant for external speakers. As headphone users, we listen to such tracks all the time. This means sound is pumped directly into our ears, creating a claustrophobic audio soundstage, where sound seems unnaturally trapped in our heads. Acoustically, this is wrong. Good headphone audio is a fallacy. It’s time for a change.” – Creative
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