Creative x-fi hd usb đánh giá năm 2024
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When it comes to configuring that new notebook computer, you have a lot of options to choose from. Everything from the screen size, processor, graphics, memory and hard drive can be optimized to fit your needs and your budget. Unfortunately there are still some standard components that don't fully lend themselves to upgrades, such as the audio system. Desktop owners have been enjoying high quality audio via 3rd party add-in sound cards for years, so why must notebook users be forced to go without? Granted, there are ExpressCard sound cards available but not all notebooks have an ExpressCard slot. Creative recently released a USB sound card, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Go!, that can be used on all notebooks and desktops using a spare USB port. As the name suggests, the Go! brings X-Fi quality audio and EAX HD support to your notebook via a small USB dongle. The small device also doubles as a 1GB flash drive, allowing you to transport game profiles, music or any other files. The X-Fi Go! is almost the same size as a standard flash drive but about twice as wide. The front of the unit is glossy black and features the X-Fi inscription which lights up white when plugged into your computer. There are also icons for the mic and headphone jacks but these are not illuminated. A write-protect slider switch prevents files on the device from being deleted or overwritten is also present. The removable cover that protects the USB connector is tethered to the unit which eliminates the possibility of misplacing it. Besides the device itself inside the box you will find a fold-out user manual, a set of headphones with mic, and an USB extension cable. The fold-out manual was a bit of a hassle as I felt like a lost tourist trying to consult a map when it was fully expanded. What is wrong with the traditional booklet style manual anyway? Testing was conducted using my HP Pavilion TX1119 notebook with a 1.8 GHz Turion 64 X2 processor, 2GB of memory, 160GB hard drive, GeForce Go 6150 graphics and Realtek audio, all under Windows XP. When you first plug the X-Fi Go! into your computer, you are greeted with a prompt which you can follow to install the unit. You can actually use the sound card right away without any driver installation, but to get the full effects of the card, driver and software installation is required. Installation itself didn't take terribly long but after rebooting you will need to run the AutoUpdate software to get the most current versions of drivers and various software. I only elected to install the key software components which came out to around 160 MB. Download and installing all of this did take some time. I didn't measure the entire process from start to finish but if I had to venture a guess, I would estimate around 20-30 minutes total, which is very long. The X-Fi HD is something of an oddity. It's a USB-powered external soundcard designed for laptops—and when it comes to delivering awesome audio, it exceeds expectations. However, the features of the card leave you wondering who Creative had in mind when designing it. The X-Fi HD USB is based on the same architecture as the X-Fi Titanium HD, and you can expect the same kind of sound out of it, including striking Dolby Digital support and THX certification (meaning it passes rigid sound standards set by Lucasfilm Ltd.). You'll have no issues getting lost in deep soundscapes that'll sweep you across Azeroth or have you diving into the trenches of Germany—tweaked just how you like it thanks to great drivers and software like Creative's ALchemy and EAX Studio. Unfortunately, due mainly to the higher noise and interference you get from running power and input signals through the same USB cable, and the lack of ASIO support (which helps prevent lag in sound signals), the overall quality isn't quite that of the Titanium HD. Oddly lacking on the X-Fi HD are any 3.5mm audio jacks—instead there's a .25 inch jack. This means that with most headsets, you'll need a .25 inch to 3.5mm adapter, which is annoyingly not included in the box. Just as odd: included on the card is a phonograph ground—you know, for all your portable record-playing needs. That said, there are top-notch RCA and optical inputs and outputs, and converting from RCA to 3.5mm is easily done with an included patch cable, so finding a solution that works for your particular setup shouldn't be too difficult. As portable soundcards go, it's tough to find anything better, especially at $100. However, if you've got a tower instead of a notebook, look to the Titanium HD for better (although a little more expensive) results. Please note that the following review is a major rewrite of the original article where I ended up recommending this soundcard. I cannot do so anymore - to find out why you have to read it again. There´s an alternative for the X-Fi HD USB: the FiiO E07K 'Andes'. It doesn´t feature an RIAA amp and cannot record - but it´s equipped with true 44.1 kHz playback and it sounds just perfect with headphones from 16-150 Ohm. Since originally posting this article on January 6, 2012 exactly one year has passed and in the meantime I haven´t been inactive when it comes to research concerning the X-Fi HD USB / Digital Music Premium HD. Why would I alter an already written article siginificantly? You know, bloggers consider this to be bad form because it´s not exactly an example of transparency. Secondly it´s unfair to people who might´ve bought this card because of myself recommending it. Point is, during the year that has passed I´ve accumulated some additional information and experience I cannot ignore which will lead me to alter my conclusion considerably. My original conclusion was like this: "...especially for this price - this is a well designed and very good sounding interface with a lot of available connections and features (...) Recording quality is good, playback quality even better, the headphone output is strong enough for most available headphones with impedances from 16-150 Ohms on every system, build quality is well done, design is nice... I cannot wish to have more for the money. Guys, this thing is ridiculously cheap considering its price, it´s a true bargain. I never liked my X-Fi eXtreme Music... but oh, I love this one!" In the end of this now rewritten review you will bear witness to a changed opinion of mine. Yes, I´m ashamed to admit that I seem to have been wrong about many things with this card - I could have gone the easy route and kept my mouth shut. Instead I wanted to be as honest with you as I can be, I would not be able to forgive myself for keeping the truth from you. BTW, this occasion also provided the opportunity to make new and hopefully improved photos. YAY!! I acquired this little inexpensive gadget only because I´d found out with my then new Sennheiser HD-448 that the headphone output of my Lenovo SL-510 sucks. While this wasn´t obvious with my Superlux it became irritating soon with the very balanced Sennheiser because of missing treble and flat stageing. In the end I decided to buy another soundcard which turned out to be the X-Fi HD USB. True, I could have used my E-MU 0202 USB instead but its headphone output has a high output impedance (22 Ohms) and is pretty weak. Since the new Soundblaster was intended to be used soleley at our second appartement with one of my headphones it was of vital importance for it to contain a strong enough headphone output with low output impedance. For amplifying headphones the card uses the 4556 op-amp by JRC, this amp has been on the market for almost 30 years and it´s still a decent thing considering its price because it has a low output impedance (of just 1 Ohm) in combination with low distortions... that is if it´s treated right. For communication via USB the external card uses the CA0189 from Creative, the high quality D/A-converter is an AK4396VF from Asahi-Kasei while the CS5351 from Cirrus-Logic is responsible for A/D-conversion. But this card has something that distinguishes it from many other USB interfaces: it contains an RIAA amp, enabling you to connect your turntable to this interface directly without the need of an additional pre-amp. I thought that this particular feature might come in handy should I have the desire to capture vinyl. As it turned out during the last year I have not captured one single LP yet (except for testing); it probably has something to do with my strong dislike for this obnoxious and dreaded medium. Well, it doesn´t matter since this feature will not disappear suddenly, won´t it? To my own surprise I have instead used another aspect of this card quite extensively: its digital optical output made it possible to record music onto MiniDisc in high quality. The inside of the Sound Blaster X-Fi HD USB. Not "audiophile" but high quality. Copyright by Creative Labs. I assume that you might have some reservations towards Creative cards; I´m aware that many people experienced problems with them - I myself never did though, every Creative card I´ve owned has been behaving as it should. Manufacturing quality and finish are decent considering the used materials (plastic). It posesses gold-plated connectors (it´s pointless for audio quality; it only avoids corrosion) and its outer shell feels nice to the touch. I especially love how smooth the volume button turns. But it´s very light and that could create problems: imagine plugging in a headphone - the card will simply slip if you don´t hold it in your hand. Setting up the card was easy, installing and upgrading didn´t produce any errors no matter where and on which PC I did it. BTW, I chose not to install the bloated software suite Creative offers, I picked the driver and the audio panel only. Fans of the DSPs typical for Creative (EAX 4.0, THX Studio Pro Crystalizer, Surround etc.) will be happy 'cause the card is equipped with them. Nonetheless they should be aware that all DSP functions are done in software and not in hardware like on the internal X-Fi cards which creates additional computing stress for an older PC or one of those low-power PCs. If you´re willing to experiment a bit, if you want to avoid installing issues or if you´d like to have the newest drivers (Creative is a bit lazy there) I can recommend a fully updated package conceived by the famous Daniel K.; get it here. The DSPs also provide an indication who the target audience for this card is: your average Joe with an interest in good sound quality for every day tasks or gaming, a lot of features and some toys to play around with. Music Professionals? This card lacks routing options, ASIO inputs for multitrack recording or XLR ports so it isn´t suited for professional music production. On the whole it feels like a small gadget able to be connected to your stereo system - that´s actually OK, Creative doesn´t hide this. Several people all around the web have reported that this card can be used as a DAC - I haven´t used it that way yet. Furthermore it still needs a running PC (in order to be powered). Well, it´s nice to have that feature. So far I´ve talked about its relative advantages and the features it offers. What about shortcomings, are there any? Indeed there are! Creative claims that this card offers an audiophile headphone amp. To determine if the JRC 4556 really is of audiophile quality we first have to make clear what the expression 'audiophile' actually means. If it means using anything out of the ordinary then this card isn´t audiophile because it uses readily available, not too costly parts. But as I´ve shown this isn´t an issue because something extremely well sounding can be produced using cheap and simple parts only. Should 'audiophile' mean engineering prowess, then the answer would be Yes/No. Recording and especially playback quality is very decent - but only if you use the line-in / line-out. The headphone output on the other hand seems to be a good example of botched engineering: Creative managed to turn a decent part with perfectly low output impedance into something with an output impedance too high for many headphones the card is actually suited for considering available voltage levels provided by the USB connection. The PCI-Express counterpart for this card, the Titanium HD, uses the same JRC 4556 IC and on that card it has a reported output impedance of 36 Ohms - way too much for IEMs, my HD-448 or my Superlux. I have to make it clear that this isn´t the fault of the IC itself; Creative seems to have added parts to save on engineering and it shows. To find out why that could create problems look at an example from an ancient portable player below: The frequency reading of this exemplary unit above should ideally be a straight line - instead the high impedance of the MZ-R 55 headphone output creates severe frequency deviations with IEMs which WILL be audible. Since the PCB circuitry for the headphone amplifier looks similar on both Creative cards (according to others) we can safely assume that both will behave in a similar way, meaning that the X-Fi HD USB would have an equally high headphone output impedance creating the same or even stronger deviations like the ones pictured above. Yes, you´d have to say "Bye bye" to balanced sound quality. So in essence with the X-Fi HD USB you´ll have lovely audio quality using its line-out - but the headphone output will produce sonic crap should you be using it with low impedance cans susceptible to high impedance outputs. As a basic rule the headphone impedance should be 8 times higher than the output impedance of the amplifier the headphone is connected to. For the X-Fi HD USB you therefore would need a headphone with an impedance of at least 288 Ohms in order to reach balanced sound. Enter my Sennheiser HD-600 which boasts 300 Ohms... but wait, why is this gorgeous headphone so soft in volume? Because the X-Fi HD USB doesn´t offer enough power for such a demanding and power hungry creature (even though Creative advertises it that way). Which means that for the Creative Labs Soundblaster X-Fi HD USB you´d need a seperate headphone amp to unleash its full potential. Kind of defeats the purpose, don´t you think? The disadvantages don´t stop with the dreaded headphone out. Are you planning to play 44.1 / 88.2 kHz material with this card NOT using any resampling? Forget it then. The analogue in-/outputs only offer 48 / 96 kHz sampling rates. This card lacks a seperate crystal needed for 44.1 kHz-based samplerates even though the CA0189 used for USB communication is actually able to handle one of them (44.1). Which creates the second problem: the optical S/PDIF connectors can only process 44.1, 48 & 96 kHz - but they ignore 88.2. Why does all of this pose a problem? Because the good old CD uses a samplerate of 44.1 kHz, a standard the X-Fi HD USB cannot handle with its analogue outputs and inputs. Therefore a CD will always be resampled to 48 kHz or to 96 kHz (depending on what is configured in the Windows WASAPI control panel). Using 88.2 kHz files from for example HDTracks.com with the digital output of this Creative is not possible, at least not without resampling. Digital recording of 88.2 kHz material with its digital input? Don´t even think about it, the card won´t recognize it (I´ve tried). This 'fine' example of engineering seems to have been constructed 15 years ago when those samplerates indeed weren´t very common on PCs. Is this audiophile? I think you can now answer this question yourself. But now to measurments with RMAA. The first measurment I did for the original review was the commonly employed loopback from the output to the input of the same card via an RCA cable. Many computer magazines do this kind of measurment although it´s unsuitable for finding out if a soundcard behaves well. Using a loopback you for instance don´t know if it´s the output that´s noisy or the input because noise or distortions exhibited by the output are masking the possibly noise- or distortionfree input or vice versa. Therefore I´ve removed it for this updated article. Much more precise than the loopback are seperate testruns done seperately for the line-in and the line-out. So I connected the output of the Soundblaster to the input of the ASUS Xonar Essence ST and the other way round, both times using the same RCA cable. While a PC is inadequate for measuring a soundcard because of grounding issues I knew for certain that my ASUS behaves exceptionally well on it´s in/outputs (noise level of -115 dB for the output and -114 dB for the input, no distortions or jitter). To make it short I was fairly positive that it would be good enough for the purpose of exposing possible flaws of the X-Fi HD USB. My latest article about USB cables made it clear that the playback part of this soundcard is perfectly engineered. During the tests for that article it transpired that I indeed had been measuring the effect of a ground loop a year ago. The result was that the old measurments did not show the possible performance of the Creative so I replaced them with the ones I did for the third article about USB cables. To the measurments: the DAC AK4396V is rated at having a noisefloor of -114 dB (min.) - Creative manages the feet of achieving fantastic -113 dB. Every measurment was done in 24/96 using 0 dB fs for both cards - except on the input of the Sound Blaster: its volume slider produced a perfect 0 dB fs input signal only at 50 % of the available recording level. Setting a recording level of 100 % I experienced severe distortions from an overloading input. That behaviour is caused by the line-in also used as an input for vinyl - the amplifier inside this card is always active. With vinyl records there also is a very noticeable gain of frequencies from 7.000 to 12.000 kHz, beyond those frequencies the band decreases sharply. This indicates capacity problems of the input when receiving vinyl signals but it isn´t a serious issue since 85% of commonly available RIAA amps behave exactly like that. Another thing: either the same line-in/vinyl amplifier of this card is used for the microphone input on the front - or a (possible) seperate microphone amplifier produces noise leaking into the line-in. The latter would demonstrate engineering errors: The left channel is noisier on lower frequencies than the right channel; I assume the left stereo channel of the line-in probably doubles as the monaural microphone input. This is complaining on a high level because this noisefloor is OK for such a low-priced soundinterface. However, a few months ago I´ve stumbled upon an additional row of measurments on another site which revealed strong distortions. Since the loopback method was used I can´t tell if the input or the output distorts, I can only say that I myself haven´t witnessed distortions using the same method. EDIT 05.08.13: Hmm, that blog is now gone. My seperate testruns for recording and playback revealed that they are indeed higher for the input than for the output but non-threatening at all. My unit is practically distortion free though two different units of the same card measuring differently using a loopback might suggest poor quality control on Creatives' side, changed specs or measurments done wrong (happened to me too). Another typical flaw of cheap USB soundcards are high levels of jitter. Not with this card as you can see on the two pictures below: The performance is excellent, playback as well as recording are virtually free of jitter. Because I was using a samplerate of 96 kHz for the Creative and 192 kHz for the ASUS I have effectively measured the jitter performance for both cards combined - even more impressive, isn´t it? It wasn´t that surprising since this soundcard employs the asynchronous USB transfer: instead of the PC pushing the data towards it the interface itself demands the data only when needed, it therefore is in complete control of the connection and its data transfer. On earlier USB interfaces the theoretically inferior synchronous or adaptive modes were used, occasionally prompting high jitter levels. I should however mention that asynchronous USB doesn´t automatically guarantees perfect audio, the engineers still need to be skilled to avoid jitter. Are you curious to find out for yourself which USB mode your own USB soundcard uses? In that case I can recommend the USB Decriptor Dumper from Thesycon. Before I´ll tell you about audio quality I have to mention that I´ve used the X-Fi HD only in combination with the Audioquest Forest USB cable during the last year. I have written three articles about this and other (supposedly) High End cables: "Hot Vodoo: Audio differences between USB cables - yes, they do exist!" and "More USB cables - more differences", articles that proved to be highly controversial. The third and last article about USB cables "Vodoo continued: my final Statement on USB cables" mainly deals with the effects of a ground loop I have been measuring in the older articles. Also, please note that I´m able to apply my testing methodology only to the line-out but not the headphone output. It goes without saying that I did every single test not using any of the DSPs the card offers. |
