Creative Labs just came out with a hot little box for 5.1 digital surround sound for any laptop or PC. What Creative did with this new Sound Blaster is rather than make a card out of it, the Sound Blaster is a USB based external device. The X-Fi, as they call it, operates over a USB interface and will provide full cinematic digital surround sound in hi-fidelity with a 1 second connection.
Two Creative technologies are embedded into the USB Sound Blaster which are X-Fi Crystalizer and X-Fi CMSS-3D. I’ve talked about these technologies before which are the key components to Creative’s solution.
Not to leave any stone unturned, here are the list of features for the USB Sound Blaster:
Supports USB 2.0 for high quality 5.1 audio
USB bus-powered
Gold plated RCA front outputs and mini-jack surround outputs for maximum fidelity
Optical Output for connectivity to surround sound systems
24-bit Playback and Recording ADC, DAC
X-Fi audio enhancement technology
Easily accessible Headphone out and Mic In for connecting headsets
Convenient Volume Control with push to mute feature
Line-in monitoring
Host-based EAX advanced HD 4.0 and OpenAL support
Creative Alchemy software that restores DS3D Games’ 3D audio in Windows Vista
The Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround Sound 5.1 system will retail for $60 – a great price for the package (available now).
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