We made measurements at these settings because they correspond to the CD Audio digital format, which is the one most of your music will be in. Obviously, 16-bit quantification limits the performance of a modern sound card, especially high-performance cards like the X-Fi. The parameters that suffer most are obviously signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range. On the other hand, with an X-Fi, the parasitic waves that hurt the response of earlier Creative models are gone.

• Frequency response (40 Hz - 15 kHz) : +0.01, -0.07 dB
• Weighted signal-to-noise ratio : 94.6 dB(A)
• Distortion : 0.0008%
• Stereo separation : 94.9 dB

Frequency response : Response was perfectly linear over the entire audio spectrum!

Noise level : Noise level was very low and perfectly regular

Dynamic range : A perfect score given the quantification settings!

Distortion : Distortion was extremely low (H3 around -110 dB!); you can't ask for much better...

Intermodulation : Intermodulation distortion won't cause you any problems!

Stereo separation : Stereo crosstalk increases slightly in the upper part of the spectrum but is still low enough not to be perceptible