It'd be fair to say that Creative have been fairly quiet with regards to sound card releases over the past few years. The most recent sound card being the X-Fi Fatal1ty series, For audiophiles the X-Fi Extreme product-line has been a popular choice, so in one sense you can understand why Creative haven't needed to be concerned - this range has been very successful.

In September Creative announced the release of a brand new series of sound card coming under the HD classification, because Creative have been fairly dormant in this division this makes for very interesting news. It's good to see them launching new audio products onto the market, and in particular sound cards. So today, I will be taking a look at the X-Fi HD. There are two versions of this sound card, one is installed onto the motherboard and the other resides on your desk being USB. I will be reviewing the latter.