Why do we compare two products every now and then? Mostly due to the fact that boredom hits us pretty often, and sometimes for reasons of pure debate. Today it turned out that Siddharth (who suffers from what we call "4 o'clock syndrome", when effervescence takes over his otherwise quiet self) wanted to pit his blah against my Bose QC3. Also, if you are an audiophile with some extra dough to spend, here's a reason why you should pick a winner.

Design and Comfort
First of all, more for our pleasure than yours, we will compare the two aesthetically. Sennheiser has always been one to ensure good-looking products, and we are not in the least bit surprised to see the PXC 350 win hands down. You may think otherwise, but right now it’s what we say that matters. But we don’t mind elaborating a bit.Sennheiser has adhered to ‘black is elegant’ theme throughout, with a hard plastic outer covering for the drivers and headphone, though soft black cushions line the inner surface of the band and act as comfortable ear pads for the large oval cans.Bose on the other hand has kept the blacks limited to the headband, while the cans have metallic silver and a brushed aluminum finish. For your information, in design the PXC 350 is circumaural and the QC3 is supra-aural. Surprisingly, the problem with the QC3 is that it weighs down heavily on the ears after a while, something we didn’t experience with the PXC 350.

The Sennheiser sits nicely around the ears, and doesn’t make its presence felt unless the active noise cancellation is on (more on this later). Aesthetically, the Sennheiser looks more appealing, but frankly the QC is not far behind.

When the original X-Fi came out it was the first major new architectural change for Creative and for sound cards in years. It really was a great day for gamers and music lovers. The X-Fi offered so many improvements over the Audigy series, it wasn’t funny, new EAX, new Crystallizer, new driver model, new black PCB. I mean, I still laughed, but that was about the XRAM. There were also major improvements in the architecture too, including a nearly flawless sample-rate conversion engine, and seemingly limitless processing power. It blew the DAC’s off the Audigy series, hands down.

A case in point is today’s specimen, the X-Fi PCIe XtremeAudio. Creative showed this X-Fi at last years’ CES (that's 2006) sporting the PCI Express. The delays from then until now, about 12 months, were officially acknowledged as ’technical’ issues relating to the PCI Express bus itself.

And it’s their most inexpensive X-Fi.This X-Fi also has the same basic set of features that you’ll find in all other X-Fi’s, namely the 24-bit, 96KHz record and playback, the Crystalizer, 7.1 surround sound, and the CMSS3D. It just strikes me a bit odd that Creative would rev the APU and not make such a big deal about it. At least stick PCIe on their top of the line Fatal1ty boards?

Perhaps there’s something wrong with it? Well, don't let the skillfully androgynous chick on the box fool you. Let’s read on and find out what's really under the, er, hood.