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Creative introduces Zen X-Fi music players
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.
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The finishing of the player looks quite sleek. It seems to come with pretty good quality inear earphones. For the x-fi, earphones and wi-fi, the player is rather affordable but I will try my luck for the contest to see if I can win one :P see http://www.creative.com/products/mp3/zenxfi/?pageLink=game
Comment by JenXster at 7:15am 28th July 2008
I'm not sure if this is a pre-release cash in on the part of Play.com, but they're selling the Zen X-fi for £99, £149 and a whopping £239 for the 32 Gb version.
Comment by apoca1ypso at 1:47pm 18th July 2008
I'm not sure if this is a pre-release cash in on the part of Play.com, but they're selling the Zen X-fi for £99, £149 and a whopping £239 for the 32 Gb version.
Comment by apoca1ypso at 1:47pm 18th July 2008
ogg is free and better subjective quality than MP3. Why no support for it?
Comment by lord_alan at 2:33pm 18th July 2008
I'm not sure if this is a pre-release cash in on the part of Play.com, but they're selling the Zen X-fi for £99, £149 and a whopping £239 for the 32 Gb version.
Comment by apoca1ypso at 1:47pm 18th July 2008
If anyone is kind enough to "share their music on the train" I think I may have to throw it out the window.
Comment by MIPhantom at 2:08pm 17th July 2008
My Vision M's crashing was fixed with a firmware update. As someone with ears and a soul, the ipod has never really appealed to me, so I'll have to have a look at this when my current Vision M expires!
Comment by gavomatic57 at 11:42am 17th July 2008
I wonder if the X-Fi tech will harm battery life?
Comment by NickMC07121989 at 1:25pm 16th July 2008
according to creative's site it comes with good headphones (I've owned a pair of those it ships with, and surprisingly they are pretty good, not shure quality, but still a good £30 worth of 'phones). The old vision M (which I currently have) does seem to crash quite a bit, but it seems mainly to be a hard drive issue; withthe new one being solid state based I expect that issue won't rear its ugly head. I never did use the software to transfer my music, either winamp or media player work perfectly fine.
Comment by NewParadigm at 12:10pm 16th July 2008
God dammit, and I've just recently got my 4GB Creative Zen. They should do a part exchange thing, :D
Comment by Cerberus_xiii at 12:08pm 16th July 2008
I recommend updating this to the latest firmwarwe - I have one too, and the new firmware largley sorted out most of the stability problems. However, the Creative software for transferring music to the player is still pretty broken, and crashes if you try to transfer a large amount of files in one go.
Comment by hardwidge at 12:00pm 16th July 2008
But I hope it doesnt have the problems which caused the old model to crash all the time or just not work at all. And there arent any mp3 players which are sold with good headphones, you're an idiot if you don't realise that you can go to a shop and buy some headphones separately
Comment by Cogwulf at 11:56am 16th July 2008
It had better come with decent head phones, else no-one will notice the crystallizer tech. It's come just as I was thinking of getting a new mp3 player to replace my aging zen vision m, which is frankly a bit large and buggy nowadays
Comment by NewParadigm at 11:47am 16th July 2008
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