The Sound Blaster Recon 3D is a sound card for Xbox 360 or PS3, and PC or Mac. It features THX TruStudio Pro, Dolby Digital 5.1, Sound Core3D, Quartet DSP with four independent processor cores, controls for instant access to volume, Mic Boost, and THX TruStudio Pro audio enhancements.
The Creative X-Fi Surround Pro is a USB sound card featuring gold-plated RCA stereo and optical digital out at 24-bit/96kHz.
I have to admit, when I first saw the Creative Xmod I thought it was just another gimmick. I thought to myself how you would take an existing file and make it sound better, let alone claim to make it sound “studio quality”. Compressed music takes a lot out of the music in order to achieve smaller file sizes. Compression has gotten a lot better over the years but even the best loss-less files result in about 50MB files for 4 minutes of music. Most compression such as MP3 and AAC formats use lossy compression, meaning you will compromise sound quality for smaller file size. I figured for $60 I would give the Creative Xmod a shot and see if it offers what it claims.
