I can’t wait to try out the Creative ZEN X-Fi, a series of portable media players with all the usual features but it is the built in Wi-Fi and sound manipulation features which have sparked the biggest interest. The Wi-fi in particular will open up the way into the future of potable media player. Read on to find out more.

X-Fi settings

OK, so I am slightly geeky, but I like the idea of being able to change sound in such a way that it appears to be coming from different locations, that’s why the X-Fi Expand particularly appeals to me. But I am not completely ignoring the other X-Fi setting, the X-Fi Crystalizer.

Starting with X-Fi Expand, this makes the sound seem to move away from your ears so it is no longer coming from the headphones but is in fact coming from in front of you. The official line is “X-Fi Expand gives audio a realistic and natural feel”, but it just sounds like a gimmick to me, a very neat gimmick that I like, but not sure how much it will be used after the novelty dies away. X-Fi Crystalizer on the other hand appears to be slightly more useful. Depending on the compression methods used details in the audio files can be lost, X-Fi Crystalizer tries to combat this by “intelligently” restoring those details, it claims to deliver sound closer to the original quality.

Creative Centrale

Now this is a nice piece of software and is tied in with an online application called Public Home Server. Creative Central will enable you to handle all your multi media, so your music, movies and photos, then you can publish them to Public Home Server that will give you remote access to your media files from any where you can get a connection! This is definitly the trend at the moment, access your media where ever and when ever you like, if you get the right software it won’t even limit you on what device you use to access that media. It is becoming less and less a matter of how big is your hard drive in your device but how fast is your contection to your home PC.

No release date or price or anything particularly useful right now. That would be expecting far too much.

[Source: episenter]