Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2703 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Creative Labs
• Model: 70SB109000002
• Released on: 2008-06-03
• Dimensions: 2.36" h x 6.30" w x 9.06" l, 1.10 pounds

Manufacturer's Description

Better music and movie sound, made easy
Why settle for basic, built-in sound? Your music and movies deserve Xtreme Fidelity. Simply connect the Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 sound card to your PC or notebook and turn your downloaded music into your very own personal concert.

Upgrade your PC or notebook to an Xtreme Fidelity Entertainment System with Creative's USB Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Easy to install, it replaces low-quality on-board audio with high-quality connectivity and remote control of your music, videos and pictures. A convenient volume control and Headphone and Microphone inputs for a headset are close to hand. X-Fi audio enhancements restore vibrance to compressed MP3 music and movies, upgrading them to surround sound even over headphones. PowerDVD (free download) with Dolby and DTS support turns your PC into a home cinema, while EAX and X-Fi CMSS-3D headphone surround give great results for gaming even under Windows Vista.

Revitalise your downloaded music and movies
Make all your music sound better with Xtreme Fidelity audio technology which restores the detail and clarity to compressed music files like MP3s. Most downloadable music and movies are compressed, making downloads fast, and storage and portability convenient. However, the quality and fullness of these songs and soundtracks are diminished - resulting in flat and lifeless audio. The X-Fi Crystalizer technology restores the detail and vibrancy to your compressed music and movies. All the highs and lows are intelligently enhanced, ensuring you hear everything in crystal clear clarity.

Surround sound from your stereo music and movies
Expand your stereo music and movies into stellar surround sound. Voices are centered in front of you. Ambient sound appears all around you... just like in a live performance. Take it all in from a pair of desktop speakers or a full 5.1 speaker system.

Headphone surround that sounds like multi-channel speakers
Slip on your headphones and let the X-Fi CMSS-3D technology move the sound away from your ears into the space around you. You'll feel like you're sitting with your favorite band or in the best seat in the movie theater. Games sound better too with positional audio that's so accurate you can locate enemies through mere sound.

X-Fi - The sound of gaming
Bullets whizzing past your head. Explosions virtually shaking the room. Take your games to the next level with EAX® ADVANCED HD™ sound effects.

Creative ALchemy
Creative ALchemy restores X-Fi enhanced surround sound effects for great gaming. It provides multi-channel audio for legacy game titles running on Windows Vista™. Vista deals with audio in a different way to XP, and as a result certain legacy game titles, that use EAX or DirectSound3D (DS3D), can result in stereo output without any effects. Creative ALchemy is a powerful tool that restores the audio for a DirectSound3D game running on Windows Vista to its former glory - in full surround sound with hardware accelerated audio mixing, sampling rate conversion and EAX effects.

Cinematic surround sound from DVD movies
Watch your DVDs in cinematic surround sound with PowerDVD software featuring DTS™ and Dolby Digital® decoding (free download with purchase). You can also send Dolby pass through audio directly to your home theater receiver using the optical output.

Ease of installation
Installation is a breeze with the USB interface. Simply connect to a PC or laptop with a USB cable.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Recommended sound card for laptops!
I bought this sound card from Amazon to use with my Logitech Z5500 5.1 surround speakers and my HP laptop. I am using the system mostly for high-quality (lossless) music and movies, but never tried with games. At the moment, the sound card simply works with all functions it is advertised for.

The only lie on the advert of this product is the EASE to set it up. Yes, I agree that it is pretty easy to get analog sound from this sound card (taking about 10 minutes or so). But it took me a week to pass "true" digital 5.1 DTS/Dolby sound through TOSLINK optical port of this card from the laptop to the speakers. (For those who care about tackling this SPDIF issue, the trick I figured out is so simple: go to Creative support site, download and install ALL updates available.)

I see some users complain about the CMSS 5.1 sound simulation of the card. Yes, most of the time it works quite okay, but sometime it provides distorted and unbalanced sound when used to upmix stereo to 5.1. But I really don't care much about this CMSS function, as I don't need "fake" 5.1 sound coming from low-quality stereo MP3s but always use high bitrate .dts files or DVDs.

So, if you have a good 5.1 sound system and a laptop, just buy this sound card. It is really cheap though, for the price of about £35.

Ignore the "it doesn't work on vista" reviews!!
Make sure you look at the dates of the 1 star reviews, autumn 2008, Creative have obviously fixed the problems these people were having back then, because mine sounds great!

Using it with some creative T6100 speakers and it sounds fantastic. The crystalizer and the CMSS3D are very effective and noticeable.

In case anyone was unsure, a 3.5mm jack to phono plugs convertor is supplied.

Well chuffed !
Great product,very sleek and stylish.Had external Creative Soundbaster Audigy 2 NX until i poured apple juice over it - Doh ! which was very similar. However when i tried to use it with Vista ran into problems as no support for Audigy 2 .
The beauty of the X-FI is that i have used it with both Vista and XP and works flawlessly with both operating systems . Joy to install and sat on desktop makes it so easy to connect or disconnect from external sources . Use mine in front room ,connected into my Amp so i can play films in my pc ,signal sent via projector and 5.1 sound to amp and quality is excellent . Remote unit seems to work well and has an excellent range from all angles . Overall would recommend this product in every respect , very satisfied !