Impressions of Super X-Fi Holography

There will be a lot on this page as I go over the various use cases tested for Creative's Super X-Fi technology with the SXFI amp, and so I figured I should begin with the provided headphones themselves. The Creative Aurvana SE comes certified for Super X-Fi, has a profile on the android app that gets loaded on to the amp when connected, and is theoretically one of the best experiences possible, which it unfortunately is not in practice. Perhaps, it is because of my experience with Super X-Fi headphone holography at CES with arguably much better headphones, but the Aurvana Live is not a very good set of headphones to begin with—at least for my preference of sound signature and tuning. There were some instances where the sound was muddy even when Super X-Fi was off and some crackling interference took place, which all are objective issues, so it may be a case of this particular sample being affected as I packed it into my luggage or just something about it being off straight from the factory. Checking out other opinions of this with the amp from others whom I met at CES, including Mark from AVSForum, it does appear that the general consensus is that Creative should have bundled a better pair of headphones with the amp.

Now, I realized that this impression could have been tainted by my CES experience in a more controlled environment, so I had a friend come along for a test as well. I created an account for him so he could access his profiles at any time, did two separate head mappings, and had him listen to some of my audio samples with the Aurvana SE and amp connected to my phone, and he was most definitely able to discern the difference. To complete the test, I had him do the same with another set of headphones, the beyerdynamic DT990, which is also certified and with a profile in the app, and the effect was even more pronounced here for both him and me. I feel confident in saying now that the choice of headphones, even if they are certified, matters a lot in not only how pronounced the Super X-Fi effect is, but how good. I understand that Creative can't just ship out more expensive headphones with the amp, especially for free, but keep this in mind if you don't have another pair to use and were going to use the Aurvana SE.


The Aurvana Trio with the SXFI amp and respective profile fared much better to me personally. It is subjectively a better set of headphones for audio, so that surely contributes to the overall effect, and of course, Creative made sure to generate good profiles for it as well. My experience with the Aurvana Trio effectively came close to the CES demo using the $1000 E-MU Teak reference headphones, which says a lot.

So let's get to it then—imagine you have invested the time and resources to set up an excellent 7.1 surround sound speaker setup and made sure to support that with videos and audio supporting true 7.1 output. You sit down on your couch or recliner, turn up the volume, close the blinds, and get ready for an in-home theater experience. Footsteps from behind the camera on screen are heard behind you, and perhaps there is a war scene with bullets fired from guns at different angles, which you can hear and track as they fly across the screen. Imagine being able to replicate this sound experience with your headphones now. Dolby Atmos and other such virtual-surround sound experiences come close in some scenarios, but Creative's Super X-Fi is a distinct form of virtual surround sound. It is a true innovation in effectively telling your mind to interpret headphone audio that you would normally associate as originating from inside your head as sound from outside and all over a hypothetical 7.1 speaker set. It does its best to replicate the soundstage, if I may use that term here, of the speaker setup, and provides for an audio experience akin to you listening to a band playing around you.

Indeed, the demo sessions at CES were so convincing that many of us were left astounded. Creative played movie clips, including from Avatar, and had us not only switch Super X-Fi on and off at random on the amp, but also take on or off the headphones to compare the audio to the speakers that would be playing it at the same time. This is the closest to a virtual surround sound experience I have ever had, be it in controlled environments or simply at home. Another demo station had Red Dead Redemption 2 available to play on the Sony PS4 Pro, and that was a real treat to play and listen to with specific sections marked to have the game sound track come on for us to test Super X-Fi. I am not really an online multiplayer gamer, but I did try out some Battlefield 4 for the heck of it—trying out Dolby Atmos for virtual surround sound on some of my headsets first and then then using the Creative SXFI amp with the same headset to be consistent. The headset had no specific profile in the app, which no doubt matters, especially with devices tuned differently, and yet I was absolutely immersed in this experience compared to virtual surround sound that came off as fake and disappointing in retrospective. Gaming, especially with VR and surround sound-encoded audio, will be fantastic with a good set of certified headphones and the SXFI amp. The most impressive demo for me, however, was testing out stereo FLAC and WAV files, as well as old school mono tracks, which all still sounded better, making me feel as though I was right there in the studio because of Super X-Fi.

Things are not all perfect, however. As mentioned above, the choice of headset does impact the experience a lot even if it is certified. The unlisted profiles are actually pretty decent, especially if paired with well-tuned headphones, but the fact that there is no one standard experience to be had across the customer base will effect how people report their experience with this technology. Head-mapped profiles are also just not as personalized and subject to more variation depending on the camera on your phone, the software processing done, and the environment and lighting for the mapping session. Given there is such an extent of variation in the impact of said effect, I do wish Creative would have enabled some form of control over the extent of the "headphone holography", as they put it. With so much emphasis on personalization, I do wonder what could have been with something more flexible than on or off alone.

The choice of audio matters as well, especially if it has been mixed to already account for some form of spatial effect, in which case this added effect from Super X-Fi can cause a lot of confusion. Indeed, I was having some difficulty in trying to figure out whether a certain sound in a specific song was coming from front-left, back-left or both at the same time. This can potentially be nauseating, and I can only imagine the effect for those with synesthesia. Closing your eyes and visually being in an open space will definitely help here.

For those of you wanting to experience some form of the Super X-FI technology, the app is free and provides some software processing of the effect. It is not as good as the hardware effect from the amp, which supersedes the software processing when connected, and is more susceptible to the variations discussed above. But as a free app to try out, I can't really complain!

On a different note, the amp is rated for a max 5 V and 500 mA of consumption, and ends up actually taking more like 100 mA in operation. So this means that it takes about 0.5 W in operation which, while not a big drain on your battery, is still more than what a typical Type-C to 3.5 mm jack adapter dongle these days will take. The overall effect, however, is vastly superior to my Google and Essential-branded dongles, even when Super X-Fi is turned off and I have to resort to "just" the on-board DAC and amp.