So Creative is at it again – they obviously have had rosier days behind them for sure; add-on audio cards for the PC aren’t what they used to be (I wouldn’t be surprised if many people, myself included, stopped buying Creative audio cards for the simple reason that the software “suite” Creative installs on your computer is less of anything audio related and more bloat, bug and Swiss cheese, eating up valuable cpu and RAM resources); most of Creative’s mp3 players failed to gain any relevant traction and thus the need to look for outside business was at hand.

Some time ago Creative launched a much hyped audio card that promised to “add sparkle and resolution” to your favorite music files and even your CD’s. In about a month or so, you will be able to purchase Creative’s new X-Mod X-Fi module as a simple pass through white box for your mac / pc, which promises to do the following amongst other things such as cleaning your laundry, taking your dog for a walk, …. (from their press release):

• Restore the details and vibrance that your music lost during mp3 compression
• Enjoy all your music and movies in surround sound on any stereo speaker system or headphones
• Connect in seconds to your notebook, PC or Mac to create an Xtreme Fidelity sound system

This lovely graph / bar paralysis shows us how evil mp3 files and even your CD’s really are. Naturally, X-Fi is to the rescue to improve upon this treachery and (gasp!) bring the sound quality up to surpass studio quality sound, dare I say MASTERTAPE?! If true, this sensational new technology would sell for gazillions and would be most welcome, hell, I’d take up a mortgage just to buy it! The reality of course is revealed moments later when the usual marketing BS takes over – some excerpts from the website:

• Imagine being in the studio as your favorite artist records a new album. The sound is real and live the way it was meant to be heard.
• When that album gets mass-produced on CD, it is compressed to fit the format. And the sound quality of that original performance suffers.
• When you further compress the songs into MP3, you'll notice an even greater loss of sound quality. Your favorite album now sounds flat and lifeless.
• X-Fi technology breathes life back into the songs. It restores the details, expands the music to surround sound and creates an experience that goes beyond studio quality.

Ok – lets analyze this a bit further to quickly reveal all the BS that’s fit to print:
First, while the individual takes and session tapes *may* sound “alive and real” the old trigger finger, aka, digital compressor and maximizer FOR NICE LOUD VOLUME kicks in pretty much at the moment of the mastertapes conception. Those MAXIMIZED tapes are then used to cut the CD’s you then are able to purchase in your favorite record store, though not at Tower any longer.

Somewhere along the way, starting around the beginning of the 90’s, really clever record executives, whose job titles had changed from offering a platform for true artists to be heard to making sure every Boy Band CD was tied in with a McDonald’s Big Mac blitz marketing campaign, began instructing recording / mastering engineers to maximize all levels on any work they do, so that the tracks sound nice and LOUD, LOUDER, LOUDEST! when consumer Teenie Bopper plugs his & her newly purchased master piece (with Mom and Dad’s cash) into his/her disc player. The idea, as with so many of them, was that much like when you walk onto a showroom floor full of TV’s, the ones that have their contrast & color maximized to Ludicrous, get the most attention. Hence, discs mastered this way would gain more traction due to perceived higher volumes then those that were mastered to represent actual musical information but then Boy Bands weren’t really about music anyway – true music stays on forever; Boy Bands are merely the flavor of the month.

Needless to say when a kick drum sounds equally loud compared to a whisper / jingle / soft piano, the latest science reveals that we indeed have a problem – no wait, your BRAIN has a problem! The environments we inhabit are rather dynamic in nature – we hear whispers, jet plane take-offs, birds chirping, dogs barking, aquarium air pumps blurbing away, etc, all in their respective sound pressure levels, aka volume. When suddenly all these noises and sounds all sound equally loud, your brain begins to shut down processing these sounds and actually sends impulses to your hands and fingers to turn the volume down, or probably even off, as it becomes too irritated to the persistent and equally loud noise levels. No kidding? It took some highly paid scientist to actually figure this one out.
They say that even ad moderate volume levels of say 90db, your brain’s threshold for this LOUD, SQUASHED SOUND is all of about 15 minutes, max. I guess these super smart record executives, err McDonald’s & Burger King operatives, figured that since most of the “music” found on discs was crap to begin with, 15 minutes is more than enough and really all you need for your aural convulsions, err wall of sound treatment. Like I said, most of the stuff being sold today is crap and really not music in the sense that Beethoven created music, or Led Zepplin, or say Kraftwerk.

We thus come full circle: what Creative is attempting to combat with high-tech glitz & glamour is really an impossible task AFTER THE FACT. Once the music is squashed of its natural dynamic range, there is nothing left to make the sound feel “live” and “real” again, except if the creative folks feel that in some perverted way FURTHER maximizing, distorting and adding Bass & Treble to the music will make it sound better – NOT (more on this most excellent subject right here: http://www.austin360.com/arts/content/music/stories/xl/2006/09/28cover.html ) Thus I am at a loss for words attempting to inform you as to what exactly Creative does in that regard.

About two years or so ago, Dick Burwen, Daniel Hertz and Mark Levinson (the man) released to market the “Burwen Bobcat” digital playback system consisting of a software plugin for Windows Media Player and an accompanying USB DAC, which when all working in tandem, is supposed to make even 128k mp3 files sound like “analog mastertape”. To date, I have not heard this system, nor have any of my peers and friends, thus I really can’t comment on the success of this mission. It seems to me that either Creative somehow copied and replicated what Burwen/Hertz/Levinson created, or (much more likely), Creative’s solution is just that: creative marketing.

Further analyzing Creative’s marketing hyperbolae, I would like to point out that all mp3 files aren’t created equal. Indeed, you’d be surprised at what a Lame encoded mp3 file at 320k sounds like (if I told you how they really sounded, I’d probably be banned forever from the deep depths, err high’s of audio nirvana) – but then I doubt that a) Creative ever bothered to check themselves, b) they really even care what it sounds like if it helps them move a few million of these under $100 gadgets. As Warren G said: “it’s all about the dough”.

Lastly, X-Fi turns your everyday stereo sound into “true” surround sound – hopefully it wont sound as bad as the famous fake stereo “injected” records of the 50’s and 60’s when they added stereo processing to mono tracks. No doubt modern day digital processing can accomplish many things, from scanning for ET’s, to analyzing DNA sequences, so I guess turning stereo tracks into surround sound ought to be possible too. In reality, I do know that you can actually mathematically decode surround sound information from a two channel source, however the source has to be recorded in Blumlein technique, meaning to figure eight cardioids microphones are placed within a few millimeters from each other, the top mic sitting inverted at a 90 degree angle on top of the bottom mic.

A few classical SACD’s I own, recorded by the great Kavi Alexander of WaterLilyAcoustics, are presented in exactly that fashion in true 5 channel surround sound or perfect Stereo if you don’t have surround sound capabilities. At any event, I am fully aware of the fact that we have had perverted semi-surround sound techniques around for some time – hell, my $45 M-Audio Revolution 7.1 PCI card (a very good one btw!) has the capability to create a 7 channel surround mix from virtually any source. Is it realistic? No – well, its certainly not realistic in the sense that a well mastered 5 channel movie soundtrack or music piece is acoustically authentic. No doubt, mom, pop, sunny and cher would be ignorant to the difference and thus assume that this surround sound mis-creation is the real McCoy.

In the end, X-Fi is nothing more than further marketing action created to further move the truth from consumers – maximized, dynamically limited and squashed modern day music recordings are not the fault of the compact disc, now approaching close to 30 years of age (!) nor are the necessarily the result of the mp3 codec; no, this deathbed of lies, distortion and aural mayhem lies squarely at those record executives who are forcing mastering engineers to make wrong choices when it comes to the final master and release of the studio album. Here at SonicFlare, we take these issues seriously and will soon begin to combat this madness with effective consumer awareness.