When you rip songs from CDs into MP3 files, some audio quality is inevitably lost during compression. Creative's X-Fi is an audio-processing chip that identifies the specific sound patterns that are typically damaged
in music-file conversion. Then it enhances them, restoring audiophile quality to the digital file without adding to its size. The X-Fi chip will first appear in new Sound Blaster X-Fi audio products for PCs, such as the
X-Fi Elite Pro [below], but the company also plans to use it in its portable players and license it to other manufacturers for use in any product that plays back or processes digital audio files, including MP3 players and receivers. $130-$400
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Inside NASA's astronaut bootcamp and the grueling new training regimen for deep space. Plus, ten young geniuses shaking up science today, one writer's quest to analyze every man-made chemical in her body and more.
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