Introduction

Creative Technology Ltd., known also as Creative Labs or simply Creative, is an audio company that many readers of TechPowerUp are no doubt familiar with. Creative has been putting out PC-centric sound cards—both internal and external—for several decades now, and we have plenty of reviews of Creative products for nearly a decade ourselves. Yet if you were to ask me what I think of when Creative comes to mind it would have to be the company’s Super X-Fi headphone holography DSP, introduced alongside the aptly named SXFI Amp. It is a portable DAC/amp released in 2019 that has just got better an year later with SXFI Gen 2 and I was eagerly awaiting what’s next from Creative accordingly.

Super X-Fi have made its way into most of Creative’s new products since and yet the SXFI Amp remained unchanged. The original used an AKM AK4377 DAC paired with Ti/Burr-Brown INA1620 op-amps and the Super X-Fi DSP chip itself, and went from Type-C input to put out analog sound via its 3.5 mm output. I quite liked the form factor too, making it an extremely portable device and I still have it to this day as shall be seen below. Imagine my surprise then when Creative announced the “all-new” Sound Blaster X1 that adopts a very similar, if not identical, form factor and promised desktop compatibility with the company’s Sound Blaster USB audio drivers and the Creative App itself. I was yearning to see what else was new under the hood and, thanks to Creative having provided a test sample for TechPowerUp, we are now able to proceed with this quick look article.

Packaging and Closer Look

Creative enjoys decent retail sales on top of online purchases so it makes sense that the packaging for the Sound Blaster X1 caters to this, with a simple and petite product box that has an integrated hook on the top. The company logo and product name are seen on the front along with a render of the portable DAC/amp, and salient marketing features. This continues on the back and sides in multiple languages and the box opens from the top or bottom. Out comes a thick foam sheet pasted onto a cardboard layer with paperwork underneath, in the form of a handy quick start guide (online copy here) going over the setup and functionality of the Sound Blaster X1. Creative continues to support Type-C connectivity here clearly with a short Type-C to Type-C male-male cable and that’s it as far as the unboxing experience goes. Those on iOS would need to supply their own Lightning to Type-C cable at this time.

The Creative Sound Blaster X1 is a highly portable device at all of 67 x 17.5 x 9.7 mm, essentially putting it on par in volume with most other portable DAC/amps I’ve tested in the past if not slightly under. It is longer than average to accommodate all the onboard controls and I would take this trade any day of the week. Indeed, coupled with the premium look and feel, the Sound Blaster X1 leaves a strong first impression. The casing is black aluminium with a finely textured finish, and there is a chrome-finished ring at each end for some extra flair. On the front, we see a toggle button to turn Super X-Fi on or off, volume controls, and a play/pause button, which effectively makes this useful for media control, as well as markings in orange that contrast nicely with the black. On one end is the USB Type-C port for input, and on the other is a 3.5 mm jack for output. At this point I had to dig out the older SXFI amp, because surely this was the exact same chassis! Indeed, having the two alongside, it would be impossible to tell apart from the front or sides and requires you to flip them over as seen above.

At this point I had already read the Sound Blaster X1’s specs and realized it uses the exact same DAC and amplifier stage but the different THD+N ratings made me think perhaps something was different after all. This was the case until I took a closer look at the back and realized there was actually a sticker applied here. Peel it off and… I’ll let the photo above speak for itself. Yes, the Sound Blaster X1 is exactly the same as the 3-4 year old SXFI Amp! I immediately shot off an email to Creative, via the PR rep I was talking to, and was told that the “(Sound Blaster) X1 is an improved version of SXFI AMP. Both are the same inside out, except that X1 has software access to Sound Blaster audio processing technologies.” as well as that “By improving the SXFI AMP, Creative took the opportunity to give it a ‘refresh’ by rebranding it as a Sound Blaster product.” I acknowledge that this rebranding exercise maintains the status quo on Creative’s Sound Blaster and SXFI lines, but this is a stance that I can’t really agree with.

Essentially you are being made to pay for a whole new product simply for desktop software support even though the SXFI Amp—which shares the same model number even and has had some people mod in Sound Blaster support for—could have easily got this as a free update too. Right now both the SXFI AMP and Sound Blaster X1 sell and co-exist, so I also don’t buy the part where Creative thought blurring the lines—which has already happened now—might “raise confusion between the two brands” for customers as the company put it. At the same time I also realize that SXFI Amp customers were never promised desktop support and it continues to operate in its own niche. So it’s more a case where having the feature set provided as an update to the SXFI Amp would have been nice but there’s not much else I can do about it, except to make sure people know the difference between the two as of September 2022. To put it simply, buy the SXFI Amp that sells for $10 less if you only care about mobile usage and buy the Sound Blaster X1 for both mobile and desktop use. Creative also says the X1 is best used on a desktop setup with its drivers so let’s talk about how the product fares in use and testing now.

Usage and Audio Performance

There is nothing preventing you from using the Sound Blaster X1 with your phone given what we now know, and indeed the provided cable helped easily establish a connection to my Android phone. At this point you will notice the small indicator LED to the top left of the Super X-Fi toggle button. This lights up in a solid green when Super X-Fi is on, a solid orange when it is off, and blinks red under activity; such as when a new profile is being loaded on to the amp.

I will also simply link this page on my SXFI Amp review given there is nothing different here. Mobile support comes in the form of Creative’s SXFI app, so read that page for more on how setup of Super X-Fi works, including taking a photo of your ear and generating one of several profiles. Super X-Fi Gen 2 is an improvement over the original though, with more profile groups available and even more rigorous model training done, and you can see more about it on this page if interested.

There is also a desktop version that is unfortunately only available on the Windows store and gets a complaint from me simply for using one of the worst app/program stores today. I still recommend using the mobile app to set everything up, before logging onto your profile here and even this program works fine—and identically—on both the Sound Blaster X1 and the SXFI Amp.

Now we finally get to the exclusive desktop features the Sound Blaster X1 gets over the SXFI Amp, in the form of Creative’s Sound Blaster USB drivers as well as the Creative App that you can find more information about here and here. Seen above is a video going over the Creative App as it pertains to the Sound Blaster X1 connected to my PC using a longer USB cable, albeit the shorter one works fine with laptops. The user interface isn’t the most polished in terms of visual elements, spacing, and widgets available, but Creative does offer a plethora of options when it comes to treating the Sound Blaster X1 as a sound card with separate volume out and microphone in controls, various audio effects including several EQ presets for not only music, movies, and gaming, but also via game-specific profiles that are quite novel. I am not sure how exactly these came about given it’s not like video game soundtracks and sound clips are similar, and some of those profiles didn’t make much sense to me either. There is also a 10-band equalizer along with simpler preamp/bass/treble sliders to set your own preferences.

I had already spent a long time using the Creative SXFI Amp with various IEMs and headphones, so please read that review for more on how well it drives them. Indeed, there is enough power to handle the vast majority of dynamic driver headphones and some planar sets too, although gain settings would have been handy when it comes to sensitive IEMs. The DAC isn’t the best measuring unit given its age and more budget-friendly design, so purely in terms of sound signature the Sound Blaster X1 gets bested by more modern portable DAC/amps when it comes to detail retrieval and layering. I also thought the same set powered off the Sound Blaster X1 came off slightly more compact in staging compared to the likes of the Qudelix-5K even, let alone more impressive units such as the Questyle M5 that I am also testing alongside the X1. There’s hint of warmth with more analytical monitors but not enough to be a distinctive sound signature. It’s certainly an improvement over typical onboard audio on laptops and even some motherboards however. Seen above are also two of the EQ presets tested and you can compare my findings to the depictions in the video above to see they match up fairly well.

By now I hope you have a better idea of what to expect from the Creative Sound Blaster X1. If you are in the market for a portable DAC/amp that doesn’t necessarily have the newest hardware, but aims to make up for it with nicely integrated controls and a unique onboard DSP with specific mobile and desktop drivers then you will find this quite appealing. The Sound Blaster X1 costs $69.99 from the Creative web store for customers in the US as of the date of this article.