I've always been a big fan of Creative's Zen MP3 players. Back in the early 2000's, the NOMAD Jukebox range of Zen players were setting the bar in a very youthful MP3 player market.

However, since the brilliant Creative Zen vision M was released in 2005, the company seems to have lost its way somewhat. The new ZEN player hasn't been the roaring success Creative hoped it would be – it's just not as good as the iPod nano.

Extreme audio

However, I think (or more accurately, I hope) that things are about to change. Because while looks, interface and build quality are all important factors for an MP3 player, there's one feature which often gets overlooked… sound quality.

A lot of MP3 players produce a far from inspiring sound. In fact I'll stick my neck out and say that most of those products sound absolutely terrible. That's partly because MP3's are, by their very nature, mutilated versions of formerly awesome-sounding uncompressed audio.

Battery problems

But it's also because the audio chips inside a lot of the players aren't up to the job. They can't decode the music properly, and often you get a muddy, yucky mess clogging up your ears instead of wonderfully smooth, soothing soundwaves. For some people this doesn't matter – they use the terrible earphones that usually come bundled with the players.

But for those people with a more refined ear, and who like to listen with some quality headphones/earphones – a higher standard of audio is needed. And that's where the Creative Zen X-Fi will step in.

Equipped with Creative's awesome new X-Fi (extreme fidelity) chip, the new Creative MP3 player will be able to 'upscale' the bitrate of MP3 music files by restoring the highs (e.g. cymbal crashes) and lows (e.g. bass) that are eliminated when music is compressed.

Creative calls it X-Fi crystallisation. The rumour is that to go with this vastly improved audio quality, the player will come with a pair of decent earphones so you'll really be able to hear the difference.

A bright future?

The reason it's taken so long to develop this tech for portable devices is simple: the processing power involved uses lots of power. So over the last few years, Creative has been trying to work around these battery life issues – it would appear as though it's finally cracked it.

And suddenly, in the blink of an eye, Creative has a unique selling point which gives it a chance to claw back some marketshare from Apple. If you want the best looking MP3 player, you'll still buy an iPod.

But when this new player launches, if you want the best sounding one (and remember, most of the time the player just sits out of sight in your pocket) the new Creative Zen X-Fi might well be the one to get.