Items tagged with Creative
Today we're looking at the Sound Blaster ZxR, Creative's flagship audio solution for PC power users. It's also one of three available cards in Creative's ultra high-performance Z-Series of sound cards, the ZxR being the top-end solution. It boasts a signal-to-noise (SNR) of 124dB that Creative claims is 89.1 times better than your motherboard's integrated audio solution. It also features a built-in headphone amplifier, beamforming microphone, a multi-core Sound Core3D audio processor, and various proprietary audio technologies. We'll examine the Sound Blaster ZxR in detail and figure out what kind...
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Back in the day (which, for you youngsters, is a scientific measurement of time reserved for anyone who used to walk to school during snowstorms, uphill, both ways), integrated audio solutions had trouble earning respect. Many enthusiasts considered a sound card an essential piece to the PC building puzzle. Depending on how far your PC gaming roots go back, you may recall fierce competition in the discrete audio space between AdLib and Sound Blaster, two heavy hitters that pretty much pioneered the category. While AdLib would eventually end up as a footnote in the history of PC audio, the Sound...
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Photoshop might well be the most recognized design software this planet has ever seen, and when a new version hits, the Internet pays attention. In fact, Adobe has just launched an entirely new Creative Suite altogether, with CS6 officially going on sale today. The new bundle includes tools like Photoshop, InDesign, lllustrator, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro, After Effects and Flash Professional with new programs such as Prelude and SpeedGrade. Looking for new features? We're promised new levels of performance with tools that take advantage of Adobe Mercury Graphics functionality, allowing users to...
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They're not quite the odd couple, but truth be told, we wouldn't have figured ASRock and Creative for BFFs. That's exactly what they've become, however, with the release of the Game Blaster sound card for gamers. Not just any ordinary sound card, mind you, but according to ASRock, it's the first one to combine Creative's 7.1 channel HD Sound Core3D Audio technology with a Broadcom Gigabit LAN port, the latter of which supports the "teaming" function, which lets gamers combine two GbE LAN ports for double the bandwidth. It's a PCI Express x1 card with a 102 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for its...
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100 cores in a processor? Evidently that's a thing. ZiiLABS, a media processor and platforms company that's also a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative Technology), has just unveiled a 100-core ZMS-40 StemCell Media processor optimized for Android. You read that correctly. The ZMS-40 combines 96 of ZiiLABS' StemCell media processing cores with four 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPUs to deliver stunning multi-tasking application and media processing performance. By doubling the number of StemCell Media processors compared to the previous ZMS-20, the ZMS-40 delivers twice the peak media performance, while...
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Turtle Beach, Razer and a few others may be jockeying for position in the crowded gaming headset game, but Creative -- a company best known for their Sound Blaster heyday -- is giving them some real competition. The company just revealed a new range of Sound Blaster gaming headsets at the IFA 2011 conference in Berlin, with a full line of options suitable for Xbox 360 / PS3 gamers as well as those using PC or Mac platforms. The new Sound Blaster Tactic3D Sigma gaming headset (designed for Xbox 360) features a steel core headband design with 50mm audio drivers, and there's also a powered headset...
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The world is still trying to figure out what it thinks about Skyping on their TV, but if you're willing to give it a try, Creative has a new device to do just that. The company has just announced the Live! Cam inPerson HD, an HD video/voice webcam that's specifically designed to handle Skype HD video calling. It's a rather large device, meant to perch atop a larger display (like a TV!) and enable HD-quality videochatting. It's equipped with an H.264 video encoding processor, a quad-mic array, noise-canceling technology and a pretty steep price tag. $149.99 is what it'll cost, so maybe those free...
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More new gear from Creative? Yep! The company has gone quite some time without really introducing any new equipment in the consumer universe, but that all changed over the past week. Perhaps the most interesting of the new additions is the ZEN Style M300, which is a music, photo and video player with Bluetooth wireless audio playback. It measures 55x44x12mm in size, has an open microSD card slot and a 1.45" TFT screen with Touch Buttons. It looks somewhat similar to an iPod nano, but unlike Apple's unit, the M300 starts at just $49.99. For that price, you can probably spring for one just for gym-use....
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Creative is on a serious roll this week. First, the D80 Bluetooth speaker, and now a line of new BT headphones. The new WP series is comprised of the 450, 350, and 250, ANC all three feature support for Bluetooth calling and music listening. The company is really playing up the invisible mic angle, and they're insinuating that these were specifically designed to work with mobile devices. You'll find a degree of noise killing powers throughout, with the 450 able to last around 8 or 9 hours when listening to music. Pricing on the trio ranges from $60 right on up to $129, with the 350 on sale this...
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Wireless speakers are a dime a dozen these days, and even Bluetooth versions have grown increasingly popular of late. Creative, which has made a name for themselves in audio, is joining the fray this week with the introduction of the D80 Bluetooth one-piece speaker. The company calls this their most affordable Bluetooth speaker ever in this form factor, and the $50 price tag is indeed very inticing. Creative is hoping that the rampant adoption of Bluetooth enabled devices such as phones, PMPs and tablets will product a huge market for something like this, and given the portable nature of the D80,...
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Creative really hasn't had a huge splash in the audio business (at least in relation to the PC audio business) since the early days of the Sound Blaster audio cards, but with such great audio cards being integrated into motherboards now, that business seems to be on the decline. But the company is still kicking, and they're still greatly involved with PC audio. This week, the Sound Blast Tactic 3D Omega Wireless Gaming Headset was introduced, and the company is calling it the first wireless, cross-platform gaming headset to work with the PS3, Xbox 360, Mac and PC. That's a fairly big selling point....
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Creative announced the new Live! Cam Socialize HD 1080 HD, Live! Cam Socialize HD AF, and Live! Cam Chat HD web cameras. The Live! Cam Socialize HD 1080 HD features a full HD sensor with 1080p resolution, an auto focus wide-angle glass lens, and built-in dual adaptive array microphones with noise cancellation. The Live! Cam Socialize HD AF offers an auto focus lens with the ability to play back video at 30 frames per second at 720p HD resolution. This camera has a single noise-canceling microphone. The Live! Cam Chat HD offers 720p video chatting and recording capabilities and a noise-canceling...
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Tablets, tablets and more tablets. When will the flood end? We have all ideas we're just at the beginning, honestly, and more will come as Windows 7 gets pushed out onto even more touch panel devices. Today, Creative has introduced two new tablets of their own: the ZiiO 7" and ZiiO 10". We shouldn't have to point out the major difference: it's simply size. One is a smaller 7" unit, while the other is closer to the iPad in size with a 10" touch panel. The Creative ZiiO touch tablets both run on Android, and both are designed for high-quality audio output. They also have Bluetooth, X-Fi audio enhancements,...
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For PC gamers, the gear we use to play can provide a tangible edge in our games. Although much noise is made about backlit keyboards boasting gamer oriented layouts and fancy mice with odd shapes, the most important considerations for gaming are still the guts of the gaming machine, a comfortable desk layout, a good monitor and a quality sound reproduction device. While most gamers understand the need for a capable system and a quality monitor, they don't often appreciate that last bit about sound. Any old speaker will provide the most basic audio cues, but you'll need something better if you want...
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