Creative Xmod

So in my search for a way to listen to my music and watch movies on my laptop through speakers, I decided to look in the realm of USB audio adapters.  While there's lots of little cheap-o things that look like thumb-drives with an audio jack, I came across something at Circuit City that really caught my eye.  

The Creative Xmod plugs in to a USB port and has three audio ports; one for speakers, one for headphones (that over-ride the speakers when plugged in), and one for input (microphone or other external source such as MP3 player, gaming system, etc).  It has a built in volume and mute control via a slick brushed metal jog dial too.  But the greatest thing (besides true plug-and-play with Macs) is the "X-Fi" enhancements that are built in and controllable.  One, the Crystalizer, "cleans the sound to studio quality" by enhancing the lows and highs and cleaning out artifacts on highly compressed sound.  I was fairly skeptical at first, but it makes a huge impact.  I really didn't know what I was missing before this; as cheesy as that sounds, it is leaps and bounds past what it sounds like without it turned on.  This makes is noticeably better than the on-board sound the laptop has (even if there was some way to enable the audio out to work with my Hacintosh install; I am comparing it to the sound out of the jacks using Windows).  The second enhancement is the CMSS-3D enhancement.  It basically simulates surround-sound with two speakers.  It does add depth to the sound, but I'm not sure I'd call it surround-sound.  Where it really shines, though, is with headphones.  It really transforms a stereo sound into something much, much deeper.  Both of these enhancements are user-customizable through a mouse-like click button on the controller itself in conjunction with the jog-dial.

Not only am I excited to have real speakers again for my music and movie library (the on-board speakers, like all laptop speakers, are tinny and too quite for this), I was highly, highly impressed with the Xmod's sound enhancements.  Add to that, a slick, on-control customization system (which allows the enhancements to be controlled when using the Xmod with something other than a computer), and Creative put out a great little USB audio adapter.  Now for the good and bad news:  Circuit City has it on clearance.  This makes it a great deal, but it also spells doom for this wonderful little device.  Creative has taken the Xmod name and turned it into a wireless sound system solution.  If you're in the market for a great USB audio adapter, don't pass up this deal.  It is far and beyond what the on-board audio sounds like on my laptop, and I'm willing to bet it will sound better than most soundcards, short of more expensive high-end cards.