Introduction

In my opinion, the most impressive showing at CES 2019 came from Creative, when they unveiled their retail release of the Super X-Fi headphone holography technology for a 7.1 surround sound speaker experience in a pair of headphones. The first product out at the time was the SXFI Amp combining their Super X-Fi DSP with a mobile DAC/amp for portable use across a variety of supported headphones. The media attending in person got an in-ear measurement profile done, which arguably made the experience superior than with SXFI app head-mapping-generated profiles, one of the complaints from our readers and the audio community as a whole. At CES 2020, the company took this feedback in stride and introduced Super X-Fi Gen 2 with support for 9.1 channel profiles, and all multi-channel profiles that were better-optimized with the much larger sample size over the past year.


Super X-Fi Gen 2 was automatically rolled out to everyone who already had a Gen 1 profile the week of CES, which meant testing it could have been as simple as using the SXFI Amp with the sample headphones they had provided last year, but Creative mentioned that they were just done giving a face-lift to their previously released SXFI AIR headphones, which worked out well in allowing us to cover both products simultaneously. Indeed, the face-lifted SXFI AIR is still not found on their website, with product images showing the older version as of the date this was written. There are minor cosmetic changes only, however, and our article here should be representative for all versions of the SXFI AIR. Thanks again to Creative for sending a review sample to TechPowerUp!

Specifications