Creative's Super X-Fi Headphone Audio Holography Demo Blew My Mind

If the shipping product is as good as what the company is demoing at CES, it will forever change your perception of headphones.

- Michael Brown

Creative had the demo to beat at this year’s CES. The company showed an early prototype of a product it calls Super X-Fi Headphone Audio. And it blew my mind.

Done right, object-based audio such as Dolby Atmos can be the next best thing to being at a live performance. The only problem is that the cost of the equipment to reproduce it at home can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Creative says its Super X-Fi Headphone Audio Holography (how’s that for a mouthful?) can replicate the experience—positioning audio events in 3D space around your head—with headphones.

But Creative’s technology isn’t limited to decoding object-based audio, it also works with stereo recordings. The technology relies on a smartphone app that captures a picture of each of your ears, so that it can essentially contour map your outer ear. Once you’ve digitized your ears, you take a photo of your face so the app can map the bone structure of your head for the same reason.