Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD

Touted by Creative as “the audiophile’s choice”, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD is certainly decked out (and priced) as such.

If the last time you handled a sound card was 1990-something, this card isn’t going to appear the least bit familiar. Encased in its own plastic shell, it looks more like a high-end graphics card than the sound cards of yore. This is actually quite a fitting analogy in today’s terms: with pretty much every motherboard on the market shipping with audio capability – often full surround-sound – dedicated sound cards have really become the niche item that 3D cards once were.

The X-Fi Titanium HD drops into a PCI Express slot, with the drivers and support software supplied on disc. As long as you can get your PC’s case open, you shouldn’t have trouble with this one: it’s about as simple as hardware upgrades get.

So, why have a dedicated sound card? Quality. The basic sound features of your motherboard are pretty pathetic compared to a dedicated sound card: why do you think you can hear a gentle hiss in the background when your headphones aren’t playing anything, or little random electrical noises when your machine gets busy?

The X-Fi Titanium HD does away with this noise and interference, leaving you with beautifully clear audio. The Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) on the speaker output is particularly high at 122dB – the best on any Creative sound card to date. The headphone output is also impressively noise free, with an SNR of up to 117dB.

Unlike motherboard-based sound and cheaper soundcards on the market, the X-Fi Titanium HD doesn’t fall into the shared-connections trap: the usual clutter of cheap plastic 3.5mm sockets that serve as headphone outputs, microphone inputs and surround-sound outputs all in one. The card instead features high-quality 3.5mm headphone and microphone sockets, with a dedicated RCA speaker output. A stereo line-in is also provided via RCA sockets for your hi-fi equipment: this does double-up with the card’s optical input and outputs, though
at least there’s no potential for interference there.