Xitel SoundAround Review Wichita KS

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Originally published at Internet.com

Hollywood Sound, Indie Price

Wed 3/23/05 -- Judging by the TV and magazine ads, we've all moved forward from DVD players and LCD and plasma televisions to create lavish home-theater systems, with the latest, greatest, and largest in displays and surround-sound speakers.

Here in reality, however, it's a different story: While high-tech TVs are dropping in price, the same can't be said of audio. To anyone living in a cramped apartment or lacking thousands of dollars in disposable income, luxurious 5.1 and 7.1 speaker setups often take a back seat to space and cost considerations.

That's where Australia's Xitel Pty Ltd. hopes to make a difference. Best known for hi-fi USB adapters that connect PCs to stereo systems, the company has introduced a gadget called SoundAround that promises to emulate a full surround-sound audio setup using only a two-speaker stereo system.

At $100 -- half the price of even the cheapest "home theater in a box" setups -- it seems too good to be true. Indeed, Xitel's marketing claims, which compare the SoundAround to professionally installed multispeaker systems, may make you suspect a scam. But I'm happy to report that the device, though no miracle worker, is no con: It delivers richer sound with a measure of three-dimensionality lacking in conventional stereo systems.

Fool Your Ears

The tiny (about 5 by 6-inch) box achieves this feat thanks to what Xitel calls psychoacoustics, or tricking the brain into perceiving 3D sound where none exists -- a sort of aural equivalent to "magic eye" visual stereograms. The company adds that its technology produces a "sweet spot" nearly as large as the room itself, giving you a synchronized surround-sound effect wherever you put your DVD-watching or game-playing chair, instead of obliging you to carefully aim speakers at a relatively small listening area.

With just two -- left and right -- RCA input jacks and two output jacks (plus a headphone jack), installing the SoundAround between your entertainment system and your speakers is a no-brainer. If you're connecting the device to a PC, you'll need to purchase a 1/8-inch stereo jack to RCA stereo Y-adapter for your sound card's line-out jack.

Its simple design lets the SoundAround work with a variety of audio sources, including DVD players, Xbox or PlayStation2 game consoles, cable or satellite set-top boxes, and high-definition video or radio. (Just make sure the output is in stereo, rather than already subdivided into 5.1 surround.) On the output side, you can plug the device into a stereo TV, stereo rack or component system, powered speakers, or even headphones.

A switch at the rear lets you configure the unit for the size of your speakers -- small, medium, or large (over 100 watts). A supplied remote lets you switch between normal, stereo, and surround-sound modes or toggle the SoundAround's dialog and bass

Testing Day

According to Xitel, the SoundAround takes multichannel audio data and converts it into two channels while keeping the surround-sound information of the original. This data is used for computing the locations of sounds, which are faked using SoundAround's psychoacoustics.

More than a little skeptical about Xitel's claims, I decided to put the SoundAround to the test with the 2001 DVD movie release Training Day, which supports Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. Having heard the film in both unenhanced stereo and 5.1, I've got to hand it to the SoundAround: Off-camera action and ambient sounds were disturbingly lifelike, while gunshots and slammed car doors had a surprising amount of low-end resonance.

Switching to the NCAA March Madness tourney -- several networks broadcast in Circle Surround, which is compatible with SoundAround -- I was similarly immersed in the roar of the crowd. Had I only known sooner, I could have invited some friends over to watch basketball and charged them for the privilege.

The Xitel-enhanced output lacked the crystal-clear quality of a higher-end 5.1 surround setup, but it won points by delivering a surround-seeming experience regardless of my position in the room -- a feat that even the best surround-sound arrangement can't achieve.

Impressed, I plugged the SoundAround into my Xbox and fired up Halo 2, which supports Dolby 7.1 and DTS. The results here were not quite as remarkable: I could detect the impact the SoundAround was having as it attempted to sketch my alien-killing exploits in 3D space, but the overall effect was simply less immersive than with multispeaker systems.

In part, that's because the rear channel generated by the device doesn't feel "real" enough. For instance, a collision occurring a distance behind my character certainly sounded different than action taking place left, right, or (to a lesser extent) ahead of me, but if I'd had my eyes closed, I wouldn't have been able to pinpoint its location -- was that grenade behind me? In front? At my feet?

Therein lies SoundAround's shortcoming: To an extent, hearing a sound coming from "behind" you requires you to believe it's there. Despite trying to imagine the presence of rear speakers, it proved difficult to determine whether a sound was coming from the rear of the room or from somewhere in a spatially undefined center. In fact, listening with my eyes closed was somewhat disconcerting -- some sounds appeared to be in 3D space, while others didn't.

Side Effects

In addition to its pseudo-surround sound, Xitel promises, SoundAround improves dialog clarity and increases bass without using a subwoofer. As long as you're not expecting Denzel Washington to sound as if he's sitting beside you on the couch, I discovered, the unit does offer a marginal improvement in speech quality -- SoundAround funnels ambient and action sounds to the left, right, and virtual rear channels, leaving dialog in the center. Consequently, it's a bit easier to make out nuances in speech, despite what seems to be an overall decrease in dialog volume.

Similarly, I detected a slight but noticeable improvement in richer, tighter low-end sound without using a dedicated subwoofer. The company attributes this to harmonic enrichment -- tweaking the second- and higher-order harmonics of lower frequencies to fool your mind into hearing deeper bass.

The advertised benefit that I'd rate lowest was SoundAround's enhancement of listening through headphones. When I plugged my headset into the front of the device, CDs and MP3s sounded perhaps a bit richer and deeper, but playing games -- or listening to an immersive-relaxation DVD with 3D sound effects -- again seemed a bit disorienting without some sort of visual clue as to where sounds were supposed to originnate.

Overall, I doubt many listeners would confuse the SoundAround's output for the crystal-clear delivery of a true multichannel surround system. Audiophiles will appreciate the gadget's ability to deliver fairly immersive movie audio regardless of where viewers are seated, and find that lower-end tones are punched up noticeably.

But while there's no mistaking sounds thrown to the left or right, the middle channel sounds muddy when compared to discrete speaker setups. This means that sound supposed to boom from the back of the room seems only as if it might be coming from there, giving an unconvincing effect to 3D games -- though the overall quality of the experience will vary from game to game or from DVD to DVD.

On the other hand, few would confuse the SoundAround's $100 price for the cost of a deluxe speaker setup. For the money, in fact, I'd recommend its sleight-of-ear over a discounted or entry-level home-theater-in-a-box bundle; its low-end boost is strong where those penny-pinching systems are weak, making its mock-3D effect seem like an added bonus instead of the main attraction.

Christopher Saunders is managing editor of SysOpt.com.