The thing one should understand about Creative speakers, if you haven’t already, is that they love to color their sound heavily. For those lost in Jargon-land, it means that the speaker produces a sound different from what the signal is supposed to be. Granted, no speaker in the world is able to produce tit-for-tat what the audio signal feeds it, but in Creative’s case, they color their speakers to produce quite a characteristic Creative sound – unbelievably thick and rich midtones, highs that aren’t piercing even at louder partying volumes, and a discreet yet firm and distinct bass.

At this point, I should clarify that I am sensitive to higher frequencies, so if you have a more “accurate” or bass-inclined ear, you may find the D5 (well, most Creative speakers in general) too muddy for your liking.

Because of its relatively shallow form factor, the D5′s bass lacks the all-important oomph when projecting distinct bass beats, especially kick-drums. The speaker has an air-vent at the rear, another of Creative’s characteristics, and while such limited space can only move so much air, it is more than enough to fill the lower mids and higher basses (contra basses or electric basses) with spirit and body, creating a solid foundation to its music.

While it is hard to relate the idea of speed to audio output, some speakers (and/or circuits) are not well-constructed enough to handle complex or fast music properly, giving rise to the notion of it being “slow” and being unable to keep up with the music it is supposed to be projecting. As should be expected of any premium audio product, the D5 handles such situations with ease, and a full 50-member orchestra, 40-strong chorus, and legendary soprano, all at full volume, soars through the speaker, united yet almost individually distinguishable. Because of its nature as a long block of wood, stereo separation is severely limited, but the sheer definition of every instrument or voice present might just be able to make up for that.

Presumably because of the aforementioned coloring, vocals seem to tend to be thrown to the forefront of your listening experience. You can almost feel the singer being separated from the band and brought forward to sing in front of your nose. And while we are still on these two topics, the D5 certainly can handle most musical genres above market expectations, but its sound signature seems particularly inclined towards the classical, vocal, acoustic, pop, and rock genres. Heavier metal styles (anything with harder distortion than Linkin Park) lose out because the musical depth and weight of higher distortion levels are all but lost in the lack of a proper bass system. The more extreme high frequencies produced by sitar string whines or sliding across guitar strings are still, as said, well-defined without becoming painfully shrill, and adds a great depth to one’s music. Most excitingly and importantly for me, the D5 picks up on the sighs of piano sustain pedals, which for some reason audiophiles (including me) lust for, along with lever clicks and bow scratches. The downside of all this wonderful sensitivity is that for older recordings, especially those recorded and engineered on tapes, hiss is very easily picked up. Still, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, since these inadvertent productions aren’t so loud that they distract the listener from their beloved music.

Along with the very convenient and detachable Bluetooth transmitter, the apt-X codec makes it possible to not only play music via Bluetooth, but high fidelity music, and even games on your iDevice, since transmitting lag time is drastically reduced to a barely noticeable lag.

Creative is asking SGD399 for this baby, and that is in the lower range of the prices of premium stereo iPod sound systems, but hefty nevertheless. Is it worth the burn on your pocket? If you aren’t fussy about bass, or are searching for a more compact speaker, this may well be the product for you. If you are an audiophile however looking to hear music the way the sound engineer meant it to be heard, you should stay away from this, and I daresay just about the whole Creative lineup. You get great music from this nifty device, but what you are definitely not getting is audiophile-grade accuracy.

Creative has finally begun shipping the D100 after its launch a month ago. It’s a very simple speaker but it’s always good to take a look at what it’s capable of. This pair of wireless speakers can be used as a desktop speaker or a portable speaker, and pairs with any Bluetooth A2DP device, as you can see in this episode.

Link: Creative D100

DK, Farinelli, Justin & Justin

Stories this week

[1:40] StarHub to offer iPhone
[7:55] Google investing in a mobile future with AdMob
[10:00] Google Has Acquired Gizmo5
[15:00] Google’s Go: A New Programming Language That’s Python Meets C++
[23:10] ZiiLABS ZMS-08 offers Cortex A8-powered Full HD and Flash acceleration for netbooks
[30:20] Xbox 360 Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm hit Nov. 17
[36:10] Tech65 website was hacked on monday night
[38:00] HackerSpace.SG

[43:20] Byte of the week: Prezi

And we are recording at our new found home, 8 Shenton Way Starbucks. (Formally Temasek Tower) So pop by every Saturday at around 10am if you want to join us. (Check out our twitter account in case there is any change in time/venue)

Daniel & Daniel, DK, Justin & Justin, Nicole and NTT (via Skype)

Stories this week

[1:40] Creative Zii MediaBook
[10:45] Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad still not available, maybe never will be?
[17:00] Motorola DRIOD
[24:50] BarCamp Singapore 4: 21 Nov 09, Suntec Tower 3, 14th Floor

[29:00] Byte of the week: Orb

DK, Farinelli, Justin

Stories this week:

[1:42] Tech21 iBand is the MUST Protection for Your iPhone, iPod Touch with d30 Technology
[5:28] M1 buys Qala for $14.9m
[11:04] Free 1mbps wireless@sg from September 1st
[16:37] Google Sells Company Merchandise Online
[21:57] Creative announces first touchscreen player
[27:42] HTC Hero First Look (HD Video)

Farinelli, Justin, Nicole, Daniel

Stories this week:

[1:50] Opera 10 will be released on September 1st
[4:13] 360 Elite’s price cut; Pro model to be phased out
[12:57] Creative Zii EGG orders shipped
[17:16] Microsoft OneApp releases for featurephones
[20:08] Apple ships Snow Leopard on 28th August

[24:30] Byte of the week: Personas | Metropath(ologies)

-NTT, DK, SuYuen

Annoucement : Daniel will be in Bejing covering the HP Future Now event. Watch out for updates on our twitter feed.

Refresh!
[2:00]Palm Pre – June 6th; US$200 with plans; US$549 w/o plans.
[4:25]Nokia N97 will be launched in KL on 5 June.
[7:40]Wolfram|Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine
[11:15]Facebook Opens Up to OpenID
[13:20]Creative Commons Releases Facebook App
[16:25]Intel’s Virtual Annual Shareholder Meeting
[19:55]Gothere Maps releases API
[22:30] More tips for the code::ExtremeApps
[27:15]Creative debuts the low cost Zen MX, Zen Mozaic EZ300.

Discussions
[30:05] Building a Touch Table ala Microsoft Surface 101

[42:25]Byte of the Week: Twitter Business Cards.

But wait, call now within the next 24 hours and get “Samsung first Android phone finally announced” for absolutely free! That’s right! And there’s more! Mention the code word “More Palm WebOS device rumours” when you order, and get “Google FluTrends” and “Apple In-sources everything” at an amazing 50% off!! That’s a total $53 Billion value at just $0.00!!

Order now! Our operators are standing by!!

Daniel, Farinelli, DK and Hisham

*For more craziness, be sure to listen all the way!!*

Stories this week:

Refresh
[02:30] Samsung’s new LED TVs
[07:50] Fujitsu’s M2010 netbook (Links to their previous model, the 1010)
[10:25] Toshiba’s NB200 netbook
[12:25] Samsung’s long awaited i7500 Android smartphone
[14:10] CodeXtremeApps 2009
[15:20] Rumour of next Palm WebOS device leaked even before their first device begins sale

[17:30] Bonus! The difference between Capacitive Touch and Resistive Touch

[21:35] Google’s FluTrends – The future of disease detection?
[25:40] In Major Shift, Apple Builds Its Own Team to Design Chips – In-sourcing the way to go?
- By The Way… [37:50] Creative’s Zen MX, the original Zen, stripped down and relaunched. (Correction: It’s 8 and 16GBs, not 2GB, but does loses codecs)

[39:35] Byte Of The Week: PrintWhatYouLike.com

[44:55] Wait! There’s more!

The last time we saw the Mino Flip camera, this week we're taking a look at Creative's answer: The Creative Vado HD. Even though the Vado HD is supposed to be a really simple camera, watch as we discover extra features in the camera that might actually make it even more convenient for users to quickly take videos and distribute them with ease.

Read on for a sample HD video filmed from the episode itself!

It’s that time of the year again! CES + Macworld combo! It is therefore only appropriete for us that we should record the longest episode this week too! Have no fear!! Check out our shownotes, and use the time-stamps to listen to just the stories that you’re interested in! We’ve carefully picked only the best stories just for your listening pleasure.

The beginning of the year is an interesting one for the tech industry. First Apple surprises us (well, not really) by announcing minor products, while Microsoft over promises in their keynote by having their servers crash hours they released Windows 7′s public beta. And who would have guessed that the company that was going to steal all the thunder last week was going to be Palm? And interesting year, this is, indeed…

Daniel, NTT, DK, featuring our special guest, Willy Foo of LiveStudios.sg

P.S.: Apologies for the delay this week. Our producer fell ill, and was unable to produce this episode. Thanks for your patience!

Stories this week:

[02:05] Apple’s last keynote at Macworld 2009 (Keynote transcript | video)
- [02:35] iLife ’09
- [10:40] iWorks ’09
- [12:10] Updated 17 inch Macbook Pro with Unibody and integrated 8-hour battery
- [13:55] iTunes turns DRM free by end of 1st Quarter 2009

[16:55] Windows 7 Public Beta announced at CES09 Keynote
- [18:25] ZDNet compares Windows 7 with Vista and XP

[23:45] Sony reveals Vaio P “not-a-netbook” netbook

[34:20] Creative reveals what Zii is all about, turns out NTT was right after all

[38:45] Palm steals CES09 thunder with the Palm Pre and the Palm WebOS (Announcement transcript | Video)

[49:45] For more CES coverage, we recommend Engadget.com

[50:20] Byte of the week: Mozilla Prism (also mentioned is Fluid)

Read on for the official press release.

Update: The Zii.com website is not up yet. I’m guessing it will be up by tomorrow morning

Creative Forms ZiiLABS and Ushers in the Era of StemCell Computing™ Where
Nano-Sized Super Computing Will Be Available in Our Daily Lives through
Flexible, Tiny, Powerful and Scalable SoC

SINGAPORE – 8 January 2009 – Creative Technology Ltd. today announced the formation of
ZiiLABS (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative), with the combination of 3DLABS — which
has a 25-year history as a leading innovator in programmable graphics, media and applications
processing — and resources drawn from the largest product group in Creative, the Personal
Digital Entertainment group.

The formation of ZiiLABS, the launch of the new ZiiLABS ZMS-05 SoC (System-On-Chip) and
the new Zii™ Platform today usher in the new era of StemCell Computing™. The new ZiiLABS
ZMS-05 SoC (System-On-Chip) will be unveiled and demonstrated from 8-11 January 2009 at
the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in the Creative exhibit #30651 in the South Hall of
the Las Vegas Convention Center.

“We have invested a billion dollars and 10,000 man years of R&D effort over the last 25 years in
platform solutions,” said Sim Wong Hoo, Chairman and CEO of Creative Technology Ltd. “The
combination of the technology from 3DLABS and the product development prowess of our
Personal Digital Entertainment group delivers a complete, powerful and energy efficient
platform with a very rapid time-to-market for our partners – the Zii Platform.”

“We now look to shaping the future of computing with the introduction of the integrated ZMS-
05 media-rich processor, and ushering in the new era of StemCell Computing where we will
bring the incredible benefits of nano-sized super computing right into our daily lives,” said Hock
Leow, President of ZiiLABS.

This StemCell approach has benefits in terms of:

• Flexibility — Utilising a breakthrough technology comprising of programmable Processing Elements (PEs) which are basically Software Defined Silicon
• Scalability — 10Gigaflops to Petaflops (1015 floating point operation per second)
• Energy Efficiency — Huge processing power of the ZMS-05 SoC enables it to perform more in less time, equating to low power consumption
• Complete Solution — Ready-for-Market Zii Platform Solutions Unlimited Flexibility

Stem cells are the basic building blocks of life, possessing the unique ability to develop into the
specialised cells and tissues required by organisms to function effectively. Inspired by this
concept, the ZMS architecture uses an array of media-optimised Processing Elements (PE) as its
stem cells that can instantly develop into any of the specialised acceleration functions required of
today’s media rich devices and offering advantages in terms of flexibility, performance and
features when compared to the fixed function silicon blocks traditionally used in SoC designs.
Incredible Scalability

The scalability of the ZMS architecture is highlighted in the first Teraflop Accelerator with the
footprint of an A4-sized sheet of paper, consuming less power than a desktop PC. By utilising
the virtually unlimited chaining capability of the ZMS chips, a state-of-the- art ‘hypercomputer’
with many Petaflops of processing power can be realised, which can be 100 times smaller, 100
times greener and 100 times lower cost than conventional super computers.

High Energy Efficiency

Due to the compute density of each Processing Element, the ZMS-05 SoC is able to do an
immense amount of media processing in far less time — and with far less energy — than taken
by standard processors; which translates into longer battery life. Intelligent power control means
the speed and power consumption of the processor can be matched to the task in hand and
unused features can be turned off completely, put in deep stand-by and reactivated instantly after
weeks of shut down, helping to lengthen battery life even further.

Complete Zii Platform Solutions

The ZMS-05 processor combines the media processing array, dual ARM cores and a rich set of
integrated peripheral controllers with hardware platforms and advanced SDK and middleware.
This will enable Software Developers, OEMs, ODMs and System Integrators to create unlimited
possibilities and develop a broad range of highly innovative products.

ZiiLABS Launch Partners

With the excitement about the ZiiLABS platform now public and the ZMS-05 in production, the
Company is pleased to be working with many OEM partners worldwide announcing products
based on ZMS including: MicroStar International, Perception digital, F&S Electronic, MediaNet,
ASTAK, PowerLinux and Grandeye.

For more information, please visit Zii.com.

There were a few more details/speculation which floated around the internet. The first was an email update from Creative, which states..

Drawing our inspiration from the intelligence of Mother Nature – who through over a billion years of evolution has designed the basic building block of life: the stem cell – we have created a stem cell-like silicon that is able to grow and multiply into different solutions and ecosystems.

With an investment that spans over 10 years, over a billion dollars and over 10,000 man-years, the world is poised to experience a breakthrough that will better lives beyond our imagination.Even in the midst of these turbulent times, you will discover incredible recession-friendly business opportunities that enable you to thrive and prosper.

To find out more about Zii and how it can change your life, visit our booth (booth #30651) at CES 2009, or go to Zii.com from 8 January 2009 for updates.

And the next was a US Trademark Office search for the term “Zii”, which seemed to be registered under Creative for a very generic usage. It listed almost all the various fields which Creative has every dabbled with.

So what is this Zii??

Knowing Creative’s love of playing with words, especially during their “viral marketing” campaigns, I looked at the big picture, to look for more clues with regards to what they were actually doing.

The HW geek in me caught on to “a stem cell-like silicon that is able to grow and multiply into different solutions“. It reminds me of dynamically reconfigurable SoCs or ECAs.

The idea is very simple.. Instead of have 1 super-fast and super-powerful core in a PC.. We can have 1000 not-so-fast and not-so-powerful cores such that, working together the 1000 will be the same at the 1 super core. But, if we can have the connections between them made dynamically reconfigurable; which is, they can be changed by the software, while the software is running; these 1000 cores can be used very efficiently.

Power savings aside (because you can individually turn off any of the 1000 cores), we can now configure (wire up) these small cores to execute the specific logic that we want.. And that suddenly opens up the possibility of many many interesting applications. Our current notions of limitations of speed and performance are totally irrelevant in such architectures.

For eg. let’s say we want to watch a video, we can configure the cores to form a H.264 decoder, and suddenly the H.264 decoding becomes a very fast process, since it’s being done automatically by the HW (Hardware), and not by SW (Software) as it is done in most cases today. If we can drasctically speed up such processor intestive tasks, like Multimedia rendering, and complex calculations, we will start seeing many more interesting advances in computing technology, including the efficiency which Creative has promised.

But why would Creative do something like this?? Which brings me to the part of the email ” 10 years, over a billion dollars and over 10,000 man-years“. 10 years is a long time. And something that Creative has been ignoring about the same amount of time is their IC Design business. Yes we’ve had the X-Fi, but that was just one, and it probably was designed much earlier. What else??

And also if Creative has really been doing this for 10 years, they must have taxed the rest of the company by drawing loads of funds and skilled manpower. Which, we have seen happening as Creative has had some financial troubles in the recent years, and also they’ve had a lack-luster product line-up following the X-Fi.

While my analysis is surely not sound, it’s something that would be really be fun to see from Creative. The concept has been looked at by various companies all over the world, but no one has put such a system into commercial applications. With Creative’s reach into the Sound Card market, it might be able to launch this technology into the Commercial market.

Well.. we can never really tell. All we can do is to wait and wander around booth #30651 at CES 2009.

Mooooooooooving swiftly along,

Daniel, NTT, Farinelli and Hisham

P.S.: We’ll be right back to our normal program next Saturday at Geek Terminal!

Spoiler alert!!
The articles mentioned on the show can be found on Engadget and Epizenter.

Also, we just can’t get enough of Mobile tech news, as shown in this week’s episode where we explore Firefox’s mobile browser that just got released as an alpha, and talk about Android some more. What’s that? The “we-waited-so-long-until-we-didn’t-care-anymore” Palm OS 6 that they promised to release in 2004 (!?) is finally launched as ALP? Right. And moving swiftly along…

Brought to you by Daniel, Farinelli and Hisham

We will not be recording episode 95 of 65bits on the 1st of November 2008 due to Podcamp 2008, although we might have special content releasing that day, so keep checking the site for details! 65bits will be back on the 8th of November! Oh, and do join us at Podcamp Singapore 2008, it’s free!

Stories in this episode:

[00:55] No usual 65bits next week due to Podcamp Singapore 2008

[02:10] X08 at Marina Square and the new Xbox 360 software

[09:25] Mobile FireFox Fennec M9 Alpha, released for all to see how it works

[15:00] Android now TRULY open-source, and code released is downloadable and compilable.

[18:45] Android removed applications just before G1 launch, but puts them back in. They’re not Apple after all…

[20:15] Access debuts ALP 3.0 and ALP mini way overdue. Remember Palm OS 6? Yea, neither do we.

[25:00] Mac Mini stops shipping. Is this good bye, or signs of a new Mac Mini?

[27:00] Byte of the week: XNJB – a graphical user interface for Mac OS X for the Creative Nomad range of portable MP3 players and newer MTP players

Thanks and with Love
Platter 1,2,3 and 4 of your 1 Terabyte soon to be extinct hard drive.

Stories this week:

[1:30]Tech65 will conduct a Podcasting workshop at Science Center as a part of “A Month of Science”

[2:55]Creative Zen X-Fi Review

[9:08]ISPs, Internet Speed, and Net Neutrality in Singapore

[19:05]RAZORTV

[21:00]Will freedom ring on LiMo’s Linux-based mobile platform?

[24:30]Intel’s “mainstream” 80GB and 160GB SSDs ready to launch with mainstream price?

[26:55]Palm’s Treo 850 is really the Treo Pro?

[28:17]Byte of the Week: DownThemAll