Creative introduces Zen X-Fi music players

Posted at: 11:27am 16th July 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

New Zen music players offer built-in WiFi and Creative’s Crystallizer technology found in its X-Fi sound cards

Many owners of Creative’s X-Fi sound cards have been wondering when Creative would finally integrate the Sound Blaster X-Fi’s Crystallizer technology into an MP3 player, but the Zen X-Fi is finally here.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the Crystallizer, it basically brings life back to dead-sounding compressed recordings, with an algorithm that accentuates certain frequencies that often get lost during compression, such as percussive sounds.  The Zen X-Fi starts at £109.99 for an 8GB version, while the 16GB and 32GB versions cost £139.99 and £199.99 respectively. The 16GB and 32GB versions also come with wireless LAN, enabling you to stream your PC’s music collection to the Zen X-Fi and use the music player’s Crystallizer.

Creative’s president, Craig McHugh, explained that one of the reasons for the development of the X-Fi equipped music player was pressure from musicians and the recording industry. ‘Some of the top recording artists in the music industry are very outspoken about the poor quality of digital music,’ said McHugh, ‘we addressed this issue by inventing X-Fi technology, which restores the quality of music that is lost during the digital ripping process. Now for the first time ever we’ve been able to implement this technology in a Zen.’

Among the Zen X-Fi’s other features are a built in speaker, which allows users ‘to share favourite songs with friends,’ although we can also see this being used to irk fellow passengers on buses and trains. The players also feature an SD slot for expanding the storage capacity, a 2.5in TFT and an FM radio on the 16GB and 32GB versions. Meanwhile, the WiFi connection on the 16GB and 32GB models also allows the players to use instant messenger apps, including Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live! Messenger. The music players support MP3, WMA and AAC file formats.