Surround Sound in Headphones Comes of Age with Creative's X-Fi Audio Solution

A friend of mine was raving over the demo DVD which came with the lastest issue of Computer Gaming World today. In it were demos of tracks from Creative's X-Fi audio solutions which shows how surround sound, game audio, movie soundtracks and the like would sound on headphones after they are processed with Creative's new audio technologies such as CMSS 3D and the 24-bit Crystalizer found on their X-Fi audio solutions.

The demo is nothing short of amazing. I've heard other technologies including Dolby Headphone, binaural, etc which claim to emulate surround sound but nothing comes close. There was a demo which positions an applause in the various places in a 7.1 soundfield (i.e. Left, Center, Right, Side Left, Side Right, Surround Left, Surround Right), and the virtualisation of the various positions is truly amazing.

Unlike other technologies where the soundstage still remain somewhat "in your head", the X-Fi's CMSS 3D rendition actually places sounds in a large soundfield outside your head. So front left really is front left, and rear right sounds like it's really from your rear right. The other demos showcases gaming and movie audio, and just as convincingly spatializes the sound and get it "out of your head", giving you a much better listening experience much like listening to true surround speakers.

This being so good, I think it gives the surround headphones like the Sennheiser Lucas and iRock 5.1 a run for their money.