Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD

Installation

Installation of the card itself was about as uneventful as you might imagine: open case, remove dummy-plate from expansion slot, insert card, anchor with screw, close case. I elected not to hook up the front panel audio to my case, as the unshielded header cable causes irritatingly loud whines, clicks and pops to intrude on both incoming and outgoing signals. I wish I could blame the case manufacturer for this, but, as with the infamous “short gigabyte” con game with hard drives and SSDs, this is a case of “everybody does it equally wrong”.

Installation of the drivers was a very atypical experience for a Creative card, and positively so. Where in the past they presented a quick-and-dirty launcher app that ran you through 5-8 separate installers, the X-Fi Titanium HD’s driver disc does everything with a single, streamlined installer. It asks you the bare minimum of questions—which optional programs do you want, where should everything go—and it sets to work, installing everything and launching the unified updater program at the end of it to make sure everything is current. It seems that Creative has finally gotten their act together on drivers, and we commend them for it.

Testing

Test System

Testing was done on the following system:

Test System
CPU	AMD Athlon II X4 645 @ 3.1GHz
Heatsink	GlacialTech Igloo 5760
Motherboard	Jetway Hummer HA-09
Chipset	AMD 890GX
Graphics card	Sparkle GeForce GTX 465
RAM	2x4GB SuperTalent DDR3-2000 @ 1600MT/s, CL9
Sound	Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD
Speakers	Klipsch Promedia 2.1
Headphones	Klipsch Image S4
SSD	Crucial RealSSD 256GB SATA 6Gb/s
HDD 1	Seagate 7200.10 500GB
HDD 2	Western Digital Caviar Green 5900RPM 500GB
Optical Drive	Plextor PX-B120U BD-ROM
Power Supply	Sparkle Gold Class SCC-850AF
Case	Silverstone Fortress FT-02
OS	Windows 7 Ultimate
Drivers	Forceware 258.96

Speaker System Audio Test Clips

As this is a card aimed at music lovers, I naturally ran it through a wide variety of music. Clarity and frequency response were excellent, with volume levels being perceptually flat across the board. Some sound cards will tend to over-emphasize certain frequencies in an attempt to compensate for low-quality speakers—especially cheap on-board sound chips. The X-Fi Titanium HD makes no such assumptions, driving out the sounds as pure and even as it can. Dynamics were spectacular; pianissimo and fortissimo sections both came in with perfect fidelity. (That’s very quiet and very loud, for the Italian-impaired.) Additionally, I tested the high-bit-rate playback capabilities with the high-resolution version of the Nine Inch Nails album, The Slip, which is available in 24-bit/96khz FLAC for free from their website. While this studio-produced album does not benefit as much from the higher resoulution as a live concert recording would, it still came through with incredible clarity and fidelity.

For gaming, I tested it with an old personal favorite, Unreal Tournament 3. Positional audio was excellent, with footsteps, weapons fire and voice chat all coming in crystal clear.

For movies, I tested it with the Blu-Ray release of the 2010 version of Alice in Wonderland. Dialogue was crisp and clear, and sound effects came in clearly with good positioning and no muddiness. The CMSS stereo expander came into play here, providing a fair simulation of surround sound with just two speakers and a hard-paneled back wall.

Conclusion

So, is this card worth the investment? With a list price of $179.99, it is certainly not cheap. For that price however, you’re getting a card which is quite possibly the best of both worlds: EAX and post-processing for games, RCA outputs and up to 24-bit/96khz playback capability for high resolution audio. If you’re a gamer who spends as much time rocking out as you do piling up the frags, then this is probably the best card on the market for you right now.