[lekguan]

Hi everyone, haven't been active on this forum, but I'm lucky to have been able to pre-order the super x-fi and headed down for a demo session at Creative HQ in Singapore.

For those who haven't heard of it, it generated quite a bit of buzz back when it was demo-ed at CES 2018.
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/creative-super-xfi-holographic-sound,news-26441.html

Given the hype, I was excited to use it for stereo music but was disappointed that it didn't live up to my expectations and refunded. It seems like a device more geared towards creating ambience in movies but this is something not put forth in the marketing hype. Hence I would like to share my impressions about this device, hopefully it helps to manage expectations for use cases when it eventually launches more widely. My impressions were shared on another forum, which I copy and paste below (Note my impressions are with the SXFI effect on after taking a scan using the app of my ear and head to generate my personalised HRTF profile. For my very short impression of the DAC without the SXFI effect, refer 2 posts down):

Came back from a demo session. Spent quite a few hours there. In the end I refunded. Let me try to share my opinions below.

A) As others said, the (image) capture makes a difference. My first capture I realise some hair was covering part of my ear. After trying for a while, I tried to move my hair away and got the staff to do a recapture. It made a difference. I don't know how best to describe it other than that it sounds more "settled". Better definitely but it didn't alleviate my concern with the performance. More below.

B) for my experience, it worked best with IEMs, followed by closed headphones, and worst with open headphones. Perhaps because the open headphones accentuated the flaws in the sound by being more airy and with wider sound stage.

C) it didn't work for music for me. Especially vocals or other sound sources with very well defined image. Instead of sounding like a clear image in front of you, it sounded very phasey. It was outside of your head, somewhere in front perhaps, but poorly defined. To me it totally screws up studio vocals. Because I originally intended to use it for music, and I listen to a lot of vocals, it was a deal breaker for me. To me this lack of definition was worse than having a sharp image, although in-head.

D) Imaging was bad. I'm not sure if this is the effect of being unable to get a good HRTF because of the photo scanner instead of using proper mic capture, or because the algorithm is not good enough, but either way, it was not helped by the excessive reverb in the sound.

E) Sound is somewhat phasey. If you have done speaker test to check for phase before, you probably know what I mean. It sounds somewhat like out of phase sounds. In some cases it manifests itself as very strong ambience, like in the case of the movie demos, once the effects or music kicks in, it surrounds you everywhere. It's kind of like taking the surround channels extracted through dolby prologic and amplifying them to the brink of being overboard. In some cases it may not be a bad thing, and can be very involving. But the way it is done takes away other things like imaging. You know things are moving around a lot, but from where to where, it is not so clear.

In the case of music, it manifests itself as being hollow or echoey sounding as others have pointed out.

Which is also why the mono demo, to me was the most impressive. If you listen exclusively to mono music, this is awesome. It takes a flat 1 channel sound, and instead of creating that boring 1 speaker in front of you, it sounds like its somewhat in front, but also at the same time, somewhat all around.

F) it performs better with live content. Because the recording environment already has some reverb, which somehow makes SXFI reverb less jarring an experience.

G) some comments on the demo content. I notice that there was no demo of things like movie dialogue and stuff and I didn't try those things out, but I suspect they might be similar to music vocals, sounding hollow and stuff. The demo content were mostly chosen to be live and ambient stuff to try to wow you because this is what the SXFI does best. In all the demos, including the house of flying daggers, i found the imaging bad. I felt that visual trickery was used to anchor the sound to certain locations, like the TV screen and the presence of the speakers. I confirmed this by turning my head when I felt sound coming from a certain speaker. Because my eyes still saw the speaker at the original location, my brain still tells me the sound is coming from there even though I moved my head like 10-15 degrees away already. A friend I went also commented that when he closed his eye, he realise he had difficultly placing the location of the sounds.

Another thing I note in the demo is that the sound thats supposed to be stereo ended up sounding like surround. Another testament to the phasey nature of the sound and poor imaging.

H) unlike a few others here, I didn't feel like the highs were reduced or details disappeared. It just sounded less in-your-face.


All in all I felt that the amp didn't suit my needs, but if you're someone who watches a lot of action movies with no way to do a proper HT setup, I can see how at some $200 only this can be an easy buy. Or if you listen to a lot of mono music. Other than that I feel in other scenarios the amp screws up the sound more than whatever improvement it provides.

I feel that the phasey reverb effect might have been something done on purpose to create euphoria when watching movies, and also perhaps to help cover up the poor imaging, possibly due to lack of accuracy of the hrtf. But I feel that it generally creates more artifacts than the improvements it provides.

That said if you're not in a rush, there might be other more serious products from other brands that look to be ready to get to market somewhere in the not too far future. Though I doubt these products will launch at such low prices.

TLDR;
Achieved:
Out of head sound
Strong, enveloping ambiance in movie effects

Not achieved:
Imaging was short of decent
Phasey/echoey sound pervasive in all content but most obvious in vocals. Feels like excessive reverb.
A speaker-like experience not experienced as promised. (by this i mean when playing stereo content you should hear stereo and not "surround-like" sound due to poor imaging and excessive reverb)

Although some had issues with the sound like me, there are numerous others who've had a more positive experience at the Hardwarezone forum which has become a very long thread. Not sure if I can link to other forums over here. If not allowed, let me know and I will remove it. https://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/...y-creative-super-x-fi-amp-6-34pm-5908001.html

If there are people here who are into movies, it might be something might want look forward to trying when it becomes more widely launched.

Cheers.

 

[gr8soundz]

Thanks for the impressions (and for creating this thread).

I've been looking forward to the sxfi but no U.S. orders being taken yet. Obviously haven't heard it and am skeptical of Creative's Super-X tech (due to most 'simulated' surround DSPs not sounding so great in the past).

However, the AKM4377 chip and tiny form factor got my interest. Disappointed to hear the sxfi's stereo performance may not live up to the hardware.

BTW, what headphones did you try with the sxfi?

 

[lekguan]

Thanks for the impressions (and for creating this thread).

I've been looking forward to the sxfi but no U.S. orders being taken yet. Obviously haven't heard it and am skeptical of Creative's Super-X tech (due to most 'simulated' surround DSPs not sounding so great in the past).

However, the AKM4377 chip and tiny form factor got my interest. Disappointed to hear the sxfi's stereo performance may not live up to the hardware.

BTW, what headphones did you try with the sxfi?

For the demo, they had a specially modified Emu Teak to make it more open (a cut out made on the wood) sounding. I also tried it with music on several headphones that were available there including the Aurvana Trio, Emu Teak(a very fine sounding headphones), Aurvana SE, and my own, which are Beyer DT860, PSB m4u 2, and Ety MK5 with comply tips.

I have to highlight though that you can bypass the sxfi effect leaving it running as a normal DAC, which I didn't test extensively but the sound signature didn't particularly thrill me as the highs were somewhat rolled off and the lower midbass was boosted, to me a consumer-ish type of sound, while I preferred a brighter more detailed sound (as you can tell from my choice of beyer and ety). At the price though, I believe the dragonfly sounds way better (some of the cost has to go into the SXFI tech anyway). Also it does run slightly warm, not sure how it affects battery life if plugged into a phone.

That said based on what I gathered from the local forum, the reviews were quite mixed, but it seems that audiophiles who care about imaging do not generally like it for music for but the less concerned, some of the mass market users are thrilled by the reverb provided.

 

[musicphotolife]

I have actively followed the Singapore local forum thread (now past 3000 posts) and read a lot of comments, criticisms, improvement tips, etc.

The SXFI Amp is not a magic pill to transform every known audio source into a perfect holographic audio to match every person's listening profile. It’s primary purpose is to make headphones audio sound like it’s coming from a natural room environment.

What SXFI Amp does is to make the headphone audio sound like it’s coming from a pair of speakers in front of you. And for my case, it achieves this effect rather convincingly. As far as I know, none of the casual “room effect” software manipulation in the market – studio room mode, concert hall mode, and all that crap – could achieve this “external speakers” result as good as SXFI Amp.

With standard stereo mode, the songs that you listen over headphones have distinct instrumental placement and intimate details, but essentially the sound staging comes from inside the head, near your face, or at the sides of your ears. not exactly how they are engineered to sound (unless recorded with binaural recording method). Say, if you listen to a symphonic performance in a concert hall, the instruments should sound like they come from a few metres in front of your face, not surrounding you.

With the SXFI Amp, the exact same songs will appear to come from a pair of speakers in front of your face. In the best case scenario, you can achieve the holy grail moment where you can hear musical sources from the front plane delivering cohesive audio imagery, just like listening through loudspeakers. In some less-than-perfect audio tracks, the audio can sound a little hazy, a little excessive room reverb, frequency balance a little off. In the worse case scenario, this sound staging could sound flat, as if played through a lousy mono speaker. During my initial setup, I was dismayed with the loss of audio details. But when I tried other headphone profiles, I found that the “Sennheiser HD650” profile works better than the “E-MU Teak” profile with greater treble clarity and less bloomy midrange.

After listening music over SXFI Amp for a few minutes, my ears would grow accustomed to the new audio experience which feels more natural and less claustrophobic. Then when I switch back to the normal stereo mode, it felt as if I was woken up from my dream and back to “reality”. The reality might not be all that bad, actually. In some cases, when I switch back and forth, I thought I prefer the clarity and details of the standard stereo version, but I definitely prefer the sound staging of SXFI Amp. Tracks with a more neutral frequency mix (i.e. not too bright treble and not too boomy bass) and less lossy compression will work better.

I got a feeling that after this "trial launch" in Singapore, Creative may re-strategise on how to roll out worldwide. It needs to be able to handle all the queries from normal consumers as well as audiophiles. It might need to conduct roadshows to offer personalised profile mapping, not unlike CIEMs.

Reference: https://musicphotolife.com/2018/10/creative-sxfi-amp-review/

 

[froes]

Why did you open a new thread? Use search 1st. plz.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/creative-super-x-fi-headphone-holography.869663