The Creative Xmod is a small adapter which you connect between the audio source and audio output to help improve sound quality of compressed audio files. They claim to improve the quality to sound better than CDs. Before getting started, I used various songs like Ne-Yo Closer, Rihanna Take a Bow, Mariah Carey Touch my Body, to name a few, in different levels of compression from 320kbps to 20kbps to test this. This was done to see how much improvement there is in different compression levels and how effective the Xmod is.

My first impression when using the the X-Fi Crystalizer is that the audio files sounded better. However, I cannot warrant the claim from Creative in improving sound quality so much to be better than CD quality. To sum it up, what the X-Mod did was increase the sound levels of low and high frequencies, the bass and tweeters. The middle remained as is. Though it would sound better, any problems the original file had due to compression or bad recording was only accentuated.

Music that had a weaker or softer bass, the crystalizer enhanced this and balanced the song. The vocals would become less muddy and clearer as the mids wouldn’t be too overbearing. It is good that the middle doesn't rise as there would have been no improvement in sound, only louder, possibly causing distortions.
Testing this on high quality files, the improvement was quite clear and the songs sounded more vibrant. As the quality dropped in files, the improvements grew less; presumably the Xmod had fewer resources to work with. The amount of improvement was around the same. High quality files can only sound so good, and low quality files can only increase so much. However, the increase in quality was more proportional to an equaliser than uncompressing or recompressing to a higher format. Music sounded better because frequencies were tweaked up to balance the sound, which users can do with an equaliser and a good sound card, although the Xmod does a very good job for its price in comparison and also convenience.
On this fact, I cannot say it improves the quality higher than CDs because this can be applied to the CD also, and it depends on the original recording as equalisers are only tweaking tools, where music that do not require tweaking, equalisers can make it sound worse as it pushes the frequency beyond limit.

The Xmod also comes with X-Fi CMSS-3D Virtual which is a surround sound emulator which works very well. On music, it widens the frequencies and the audio sounds like its coming from a wider source than being very central. However, this causes some sounds to clip off, especially when the crystalizer is used and the frequency becomes too wide. Fortunately the clippings are very marginal and hardly noticeable, and using the surround sound can also help balance some sound out, reducing distortion, but also causing some effects in other areas.
One thing noticed is that there was a slight echo towards the end of Sam Sparro Black and Gold as his voice is accentuated too much, but a very rare occurance in music.

When using the Xmod with games, sound becomes more profound and the surround sound works; but doesn't give the true feeling. Left, right, front, and back are more distinguishable, but there is no smooth transition between the the directions, where front and back sound almost identical. The lack of in betweens was expected but the Xmod does a very good job emulating the sides without problems. Small things such as footsteps and such had greater effect, whereas explosions only gained a small improvement. Though there was no true surround sound, it will give users a boost in quality and enjoyment.

The great thing about the Xmod is because it is extreme light as it runs off USB and requires no batteries, making it very portable, given you have a spare USB port. For a portable sound equaliser which does the job very well on par with higher end sound cards, the Xmod is a bargain, and because its plug and play, you can use it wherever and whenever you want. Overall, the claim of higher quality the CD music is sketchy, but improvement on sound is a definite.

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