Listen in X-Fi anywhere, at a price
22 Oct 2007 | 16:30 BST
First INQpressions Creative Aurvana X-Fi headphones
Product: Creative Aurvana X-Fi headphones
Price: $300, £180
creativelabs.com
WHILE WAITING FOR X-Fi PCI-Express cards to appear Creative has used the time to focus on high-end audio accessories.
Here we look at the newest and most expensive of them all: Aurvana X-Fi headphones.
Creative's ultimate headphone is meant to create 'uber' hi-fi sound - or X-Fi as they call it - from nearly any device, in any environment, be it on a train, a plane or in the middle of a crowd of screaming football fans.
To do all this, it needs to be big - and it is. Measuring three inches by four, the ear covers would envelope even the biggest lugs. The set, which weighs in at 245g, comes with a standard set of stereo plugs, as well as an airline adapter. Detachable cables make packing the unit very easy - simply disconnect the wires and stow them separately.
The headphones have three enhancement capabilities - noise cancellation, X-Fi crystalizer (for enhancing the sound quality) and X-Fi CMSS 3D (virtual surround). The idea here is to apply these capabilities to whatever you're using as a source, be it an Ipod, one of Creative's Zen players, or even an airline entertainment system. The set comes with two AAA batteries which can last up to two hours if you don't use the X-Fi sound effects.
We tested the headphones on three platforms: a test PC with an Asus Xonar D2 audio card; a Creative Zen media player, and an in-flight entertainment system.
The PC test was interesting as the Asus card has its own sound enhancement and surround features (Dolby and DTS), so there was no benefit from turning on the CMSS or crystalizer features - in fact, when both the Xonar and Aurvana features were activated, the sound felt distorted and unnatural, even a bit shrieky. But with just one set of enhancements activated, the sound quality was astounding.
On the Zen player, the difference was huge - turning an eardrum-popping noise into proper hi-fi quality sound, especially when in a noisy surrounding.
The benefits were best shown on the plane, where the -20 dB noise cancellation really seemed to work without affecting the sound. While it still won't match a true hi-fi surround speaker system, the sound quality was vastly superior to that normally found on airplane headphones - in terms of both clarity, dynamics and stress on the ears.
From a technical point of view, Creative has done a great job with the Aurvana X-Fi, the only question is whether it is worth nearly £200. If you travel frequently, whether by train or plane, and you like to listen to music, it may make sense - even at that price.
After all, it's about time we dropped the 1960s-quality sound so familiar to the Ipod generation and started really 'feeling' the music again - just like we did back in the 80s. µ
The Good: About as good as it gets from headphones
The Bad Size. It's not the most portable of accessories
The Ugly Price - what else?
Barboy's Verdict
© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007