CES 2019 Showstoppers, the Show Floor, and Some Neat Stuff

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

As a no-compromise audiophile, I have two brands of headsets that I use often—one being the wireless Audio-Technica set, and the other being my BOSE Quiet Comfort. As I sit here switching between them, I find the sound quality of both to be excellent.

The absolutely best audio enhancement for headphone use I have seen in years was introduced by Creative Labs, the company that first brought high-end audio to the early computers with their Sound Blaster line. There are many excellent headphones available with the wireless ones seeing great improvement to the point where they sound almost as good as the best of the wired ones. Still, headphones do not match live sound, nor do they match listening to a good set of multichannel speakers. When you put on headphones, the sound direction is stereo. Yes, I realize that there have been efforts to introduce multichannel headphones—some quad channel, some 5.1, and even a few 7.1—but the more channels they try to squeeze into a headphone, it seems to me, the lower the sound quality (still good but not quite the same).

What Creative Labs has done is invent and introduce Super X-Fi. Super X-Fi captures the listening experience of a high-end multispeaker system in a professional studio and recreates the same expansive experience in your headphones using complex algorithms and computationally intensive techniques to custom fit audio for every individual through a sophisticated head and ear-mapping process. Essentially, SXFI makes your headphones sound like being at a live concert or sitting in the middle of a high-end studio multichannel speaker setup. You are surrounded by the sound, and it seems to come from not just left and right, but from a 360-degree sphere. It works with its own optimized high-end headphones, but there is an app that you can download that will optimize the setup for use with a number of popular headphones connected to your smartphone, computer, or audio system. I could write more trying to describe the amazing sound quality and directional accuracy, but you really have to hear it for yourself.

In the next article, I will provide my forecast regarding what we will see in the coming year. I will also review more neat stuff we saw on the show floor including advances in 3D printing, retro gaming using new technology (Space Invaders using new hardware, anyone?), significant evolutionary advances in smartwatches (finally moving from Timex to Rolex in the smartwatch category), XR advances from gaming to valuable real-life uses, DIY computer components, and of course, transportation as the automotive industry takes its place as the key driver (no pun intended) in electronics.

Speaking of automotive, for those of you interested in the latest on this topic provided by industry experts, be sure to attend the IPC Executive Forum for Advancing Automotive Electronics at IPC APEX EXPO 2019 in San Diego, California, on Monday, January 28. For further information on this event, contact Forum Chairman Gene Weiner at gene@weiner-intl.com or Tracy Riggan, senior director of IPC member support, at TracyRiggan@ipc.org.

Stay tuned.

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