Hands-on: Creative's Sound BlasterX Katana slices the competition and then some

Note: This article was first published on 13th January 2017 and updated on 31st January with details on headphones support.

Creative's conjures up the Katana and it looks the part

It's not often we come across a product and think that it could be a game changer. Creative's new Sound BlasterX Katana actually comes close to fitting that bill.

While it may look like yet another sound bar, now made for the PC gamers market - hence the Sound BlasterX naming convention - there's really a lot more going behind the scenes to deliver this product.

Not only that, for the first time, a sound bar of this size and price point actually delivers an audio experience that we can safely say that rivals a larger, more complex and costlier audio systems. Hearing is believing, so allow me to detail some of the finer points of this S$419 sound bar in my brief hands-on session at Creative's headquarters. Brief highlights of the product are as follows:-

• Sleek and modern design
• Sophisticated tri-amplified 5-driver design and proprietary audio processing
• Unrivaled connectivity and control
• Aurora reactive lighting system

At this juncture, I would like to point out that the Katana is squarely going up against a much earlier product introduced by Razer - the Leviathan. While their specs and price point are a little different, it's what Creative can offer for just under S$100 more than its competitor that makes it a really interesting comparison point (the Leviathan retails for S$330). Here's a brief video overview to get you started:-

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Design and Positioning

First and foremost, Creative’s official product literature stays clear from using the term “sound bar”. The company is clearly not impressed with other solutions in the market and has decided to market this class of products under their own naming scheme – similar to the US$5,000 Sonic Carrier that is essentially a high-end sound bar and will soon be hitting retail like the Sound BlasterX Katana. For the latter, Creative expressly classifies it as an Under Monitor Audio System or UMAS for short. Call it whatever you want, but it still looks like a sound bar and so we shall just stick to normal convention for ease of referencing.

Probably one reason they decided to forge ahead with the UMAS marketing is because sound bars have traditionally been catered for living room use that pander to far field listening. The Sound BlaserX Katana is made for PC gamers in mind and thus is designed for near field listening. That’s just its primary audience, but thanks to clever sound system design, engineering and audio processing smarts, the speaker is equally adept at delivering room filling audio in small and medium sized halls for far field listing too.

Finished with a brushed aluminum top, the Sound BlasterX Katana perfectly blends in with the latest 4K TVs or your high refresh rate capable curved screen gaming monitor. It’s so thin that it will have no trouble fitting under monitors and TVs. For added measure, the already sleek looking system has removable speaker feet to help fit into tighter spaces like a TV console or wall shelf.

As you can see from the specs comparison table pertaining to physical design, the Sound BlasterX Katana's sound bar unit is wider, but more importantly, it's also slimmer than Razer's Leviathan to allow housing it in more tricky spots. Surprisingly, Creative's main speaker unit is also lighter than its competition.

The subwoofer design is where both products differ quite a bit in size and weight. The Leviathan's 30W passive subwoofer with a 5.25-inch driver is just a little over 2kg and is shaped like a giant key cap or a cube with chamfered corners. Katana's passive subwoofer takes on a different approach with a slim and tall wooden enclosure that houses the long-throw 5.25-inch long-throw driver. Perhaps due the wooden enclosure build, the Creative 30W subwoofer is actually beefier in weight at 4kg. Nevertheless, the slim profile makes it easy to position in narrow confines or other places such as under the desk or next to the center console area in the hall.

Audio engineering

With the subwoofer being a passive wired model, that means all the audio processing and amplification takes place within the main sound bar unit itself. Here’s a quick peek underneath to see how Creative has designed it:-

Like its Razer counterpart, the Sound BlasterX Katana is also a penta-driver sound system that consists of quad drivers within the sound bar unit and the fifth being the passive subwoofer. However, the driver properties, placement, amplification and more are totally different on the Creative solution.

For starters, the twin midbass 2.5-inch drivers are oriented to fire up, which reduces the main speaker unit's height and helps to better recreate environmental audio since there's more height projection. These drivers are driven by neodymium magnets and deliver 15W RMS of power each.

Located towards the both ends of the sound bar, Creative has placed their high-excursion 1.34-inch inverted aluminum dome tweeters that are rated for 7.5W RMS of power each. Apparently, they’ve been separately chambered with very low resonant frequency and our informal audio listening session does corroborate with this. The wide placement of these tweeters naturally lend themselves well to a wide soundstage and as we pointed out earlier, despite such a placement, the Sound BlasterX Katana is able to perform at both near and far-field listening. At less than a ruler’s distance away from the main sound bar speaker unit, you would be hard pressed to figure out that there aren’t any speakers in the center portion of the sound bar while listening to dialog; that’s quite a feat of positional audio engineering. This quality bodes well if you place your gaming notebooks in front of the Katana – you will still get unobstructed audio performance since there aren’t any speakers in the center of the unit.

So what is behind the center portion of the Katana? That’s where all the audio processing, amplification and more take place. Unlike most audio equipment and sound bars of this class that employ a single amplifier to drive the entire frequency range, the Sound BlasterX Katana employs three amplifiers – each dedicated to solely driving the low, mid and high frequencies respectively.

This tri-amplification design in theory should allow the Katana to produce clear, precise and well-balanced audio at low or high volumes, across both low frequency rumbles to the high frequency shrill of an alarm. Indeed in our audio trials, the Katana excelled in various usage scenarios that’s only possible because of the audio engineering decisions made. Here’s a quote from Creative’s literature:-

The Sound BlasterX boasts a sophisticated fully active 5-driver where each driver is individually powered by a DSP-controlled amplifier. Audio signals are split into individual frequency bands by the DSP before the right frequencies are fed to the individual amps and drivers accordingly. This results in distinct, accurate audio reproduction at every part of the spectrum with very low distortion.

Working hand in hand with the Katana’s tri-amplification design is a powerful proprietary multi-core DSP for all the intelligent processing to deliver the customizable audio enhancements that its control panel allows. With a Dolby Digital 5.1-channel decoder, hardware powered audio restoration, voice processing, 7.1-channel virtual surround sound, audio enhancements for games, movies and music, this all sounds very much like Creative’s very own audio processor. In fact, close sources have confirmed that the Sound BlasterX Katana is in fact using a SB Axx1 audio processor – the very same one that’s used in Creative’s top audio products and sound cards. That figures why the suite of capabilities sound so familiar.

In any case, you would be glad to know that this powerful proprietary DSP is more than alive and it has the audio chops to prove it. The BlasterX Acoustic Engine is at its finest in the Katana and its audio presets works perfectly to deliver the resulting intended experience. Normally, such DSP audio presets hardly make a difference in audio quality or they sound artificial. Not on the Katana and we insist that you use the 4 key presets to improve your auditory experience – Gaming, Concert, Cinema and Night mode.

You could also add and shuffle around other presets from the pre-configured profiles offered, downloaded from Creative or self-configured with the Sound Blaster Connect for PC control panel.

Connectivity and Control

Controlling the Sound BlasterX Katana is a piece of cake. More so that its volume control – be it on the speaker itself, the remote or the control panel – is in sync with the PC’s master volume control in the Windows OS. This is really takes the guess work of the sound levels regardless of where you are and what you are doing.

On the Katana sound bar itself, you’ll find the following buttons from left to right (in line with the above photo): a Power/Bluetooth button (press and hold for 3 seconds to engage Bluetooth pairing), volume controls, source button to cycle through inputs and a SBX button which is essentially the BlasterX Acoustic Engine audio presets that you can cycle through – the default is Gaming, Concert, Cinema and Night mode.

Connectivity options are what you need to know next and all the connectors are nestled at the rear center of the Katana sound bar:-

We’ll list each port and its function from left to right in accordance to the photo above:-

• Power input: The Sound BlasterX Katana uses an external supplied power adapter to get it going.
• Subwoofer out jack: This is a wired connection to the Katana’s passive subwoofer unit.
• Microphone input jack: Connect to headset microphone connector or a standalone microphone with a 3.5mm plug for voice recording.
• Headphones jack: Amplified output to connect to headphones. When in plugged in, the Katana speaker will be silenced.
• Line input jack (Aux): Connect an external source to use with the Katana speaker; e.g., your mobile device, portable media player, etc.
• Optical input jack: To transmit a digital audio connection from your TV or console to the Katana speaker via S/PDIF optical cable. This is the best option to use and if there are Dolby Digital audio streams, the Katana’s built-in Dolby Digital 5.1-channel audio decoder can kick in to deliver the best possible audio as it was meant to be heard.
• USB flash drive: The Katana can act as your MP3 player; simply plug in a USB drive and the Katana can play music directly from it.
• USB computer port: Using a digital USB connection to your PC will allow you to listen to high resolution 24-bit/96kHz digital audio playback.
• Bluetooth: This isn’t a port, but a connectivity option for your mobile devices via Bluetooth 4.2 standard to stream high quality audio without latency.

You’ll also be glad to know that the Creative Sound BlasterX Katana fairs much more favorably to the Razer Leviathan in the connectivity department. We compare them for you:-

Headphones Support

The Katana has a built-in amplifier that is optimized for 32-ohm impedance gaming headsets as the sound system is first and foremost designed for gaming. These headsets require higher current at lower output voltages. 

That being said, there is enough voltage output to drive higher impedance/lower sensitivity headphones. For example, one of the Creative product managers we spoke to had a pair of Sennheiser HD6XX modeled after the HD650 from Massdrop and he was able to get satisfactory volume when the Katana is set to the highest volume even though it’s a 300-ohm headphone.

Here's a good gauge whether the Katana can drive a particular headset as shared by Creative:-

In general, the Katana has similar output voltage swing as your iPhone, and would drive high impedance headphones to similar volume. So it really depends on the individual’s headphones he/she is using as well. If it works fine on the iPhone, then it’s definitely not an issue for the Katana.

Aurora Reactive lighting system

One of the most attractive aspects of the Sound BlasterX Katana has got to be its distinctive and perhaps even iconic fully programmable LED lighting system that runs the length of the sound bar. I mean, have you actually seen such on a speaker system, and on a sound bar to be specific? Fitted with 49 LEDs underneath the Katana’s front face, it can recreate any of the 16.8 million colors in the spectrum with ease using the Sound Blaster Connect for PC control panel. And unlike most other RGB lighting enabled product, believe us when we say this isn’t another one screaming for your attention. In fact, Creative has pulled this off very tastefully as the LED’s shine down on your desk and oozes just the right amount of appeal to make it both attractive and classy. Dubbed the Aurora Reactive lighting system, this is RGB LED lighting done right.

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While we're not quite sure if you would like to have the lights on all the time, you can configure the hell out of it to suit your every whim and fancy - choose between various effects such as wave, pulsate, color morph, solid color and combine that with color variations of your choice and even speed to control the rhythm and flow! You can save your color pattern of choice with the BlasterX Acoustic Engine's four audio presets to create the right mood for gaming, watching movies or more. Would it ruin your movie? Not at all, as there are much more subtle variations that you can apply and you are in the driver's seat to fully control it. You can of course choose to turn off Aurora Reactive lighting, but we think the prospective buyer is unlikely to do that once he/she has meddled with the options ;)

Audio Performance

We’ve shared quite a lot of details on what the Sound BlasterX Katana is all about, so does it really rock like a sledgehammer? Totally.

Music playback

First off, we listened to a few music tracks from a paid Spotify account (read high quality, ad-free audio), so that should give us a typical representation of everyday use on how people consume music these days.

While Creative lined up several audio tracks for listening, I focused on a set of tracks we frequently use to audition speakers back in our lab – music from the Eagles group. First off was Hotel California and we were colored happy as we noted all the percussion instruments were well represented. Audio in general was fine (for a sound bar of its price point), but note that this was in Neutral audio preset. Creative recommended to use the Concert audio preset to best feel what the Katana was capable when reproducing music. Besides, the recordings we've chosen were originally from a live concert.

Engaging Concert mode elevated the Sound BlasterX Katana to another level with a very wide sound presence – so much so if you closed your eyes, you might even think the audio was from floor standing speakers set apart as opposed to a little sound bar like the Katana. And it even felt as if there was a center speaker to go along with the floor standing speakers – that is the level of audio reproduction that the Katana is capable of.

It wasn’t perfect though as we felt the vocals could have been clearer – perhaps some fine tuning with the BlasterX Acoustic Engine’s parameters might have helped it better. Bass was strong and relatively well controlled, though we did notice a slight tinge of clouding of the mid-range at times. As critical as I might sound, if you reconsider the Katana’s S$400-odd price point and form factor, it is already punching well about its class. So you might even say I’m nitpicking.

We tried one more track from the Eagles, this time it was Desperado. In this track, the Katana delivered this piece quite well and we noted a good balance of mids and tight bass notes. Engaging Concert mode to let the DSP do its magic, once more it provided a good uplift in audio presence, making the track even more enjoyable.

At this point of time, we’re a little hooked on to the Katana’s audio presets. For once, we can gladly recommend these audio presets as it brings about a significant positive improvement to the audio performance. There’s nothing fake or artificial about the resultant audio and we trust that you’ll enjoy what you’ll hear.

Movie playback

Sound bars like the Katana are often used for multi-purpose deployment and with the speaker’s design and its ability to cater to near and far-field listening, movie playback is a must on our to-do list while auditioning it.

As you might have guessed, Creative catered to this with a Blu-ray copy of the Star Wars: Episode1 – The Phantom Menace movie. We plunged straight to the heart of the movie, the pod race scene. It is without doubt a hallmark scene of the movie, as well as a favorite with home theater shops. Very few movie scenes have the dynamics of this scene, both in sound and visuals. Having experienced the Katana’s impressive audio presets, we engaged the Cinema mode before firing up the pod racers.

The Sound BlasterX Katana didn’t let us down with excellent all-round performance. Positional audio was great and let’s not forget the wonderfully wide and accurate sound stage. We cannot stress the fact that it sounds far more impressive than it would have you believe. If we were to do a blindfold test, the Katana would easily be mistaken for a full-fledged five-piece speaker system, with floor standing speakers no less. So yes, the S$419 speaker sounds more like it would have in certain S$2,000 system(s).

You might think the Katana might end up having difficulty reproducing such a dynamic scene with very fast transitions, high pitch mechanical whining, powerful engine rumbles and much more happening all at once (or in short succession), but Creative's newest speaker handled it all with ease. We reckon the tri-amplified, DSP-driven audio system design that we shared earlier has a big part to play in the speaker’s excellent performance.

For night listening, you could always engage the Night sound mode preset that suppresses the low frequency to be tighter and enhances the dialog. This allows you to enjoy your shows at lower volumes but not missing out on the full audio body. If you prefer to hook up headphones, no worries, the speaker output jack from the speaker will still allow you to keep the Katana as the hub for audio processing, so you get all the Sound Blaster tweaking goodness.

Gaming

Lastly, we can’t end this hands-on article without immersing in a game or two; especially since the Katana was aimed at the all-round gamer who would indulge in all of the above usage scenarios as well. Our choice was the current hit game Overwatch, a team-based multiplayer FPS that has taken the online scene by storm.

By default, the Sound BlasterX was already a decent gaming speaker system as we belted bullets while we moved/strafed around.  But how about when engaging the Gaming sound preset on the speaker system? Boom! Once more we were treated with an expanded sound envelope and better audio cues to what’s taking place around our environment. We also noted Katana was able to better reproduce audio effects interaction with better presence and positional audio within internal or external environments respectively. In total, a more enjoyable gaming session and reacting quicker from the heightened senses we were able to perceive thanks to Katana engaged in Gaming mode.

Next up, Battlefield 1 and Creative even had a specific audio profile that we could engage within their Sound Blaster Connect PC control panel. Activating it was definitely a bonus as the game had greater clarity in the cacophony of noises that was present early in the battle scene. This audio profile certainly nailed things as we experienced an ultra-wide immersion in-game; kudos for Creative on further enhancing selective top games that they feel are worth the extra effort to engineer specific game profiles.

Our Verdict...

Creative's Sound BlasterX Katana is the most power packed miniature sound bar we've ever experienced to-date and their audio engineering decisions have certainly paid off. We were truly awed by the Katana’s larger than life audio performance – something that can only be rivaled by much more complete and pricier audio systems.

Couple the impressive audio performance with an attractive sleek design that can be used just about anywhere in your home - the PC in your room, your TV in the hall or just to flood a room with audio - the Katana has you covered. And don't forget its impressive Aurora Reactive lighting system that's just icing on an already great package, Creative has a solid winner on its hands. This could just be the best S$419 you might spend and it's available immediately. And that's just the suggested retail price; we all know that Creative generally sells it lower than the SRP during shows, events and special promotions, which happen regularly throughout the year.

For PC-bound gamers, sure, there are better options that probably get the job done for less and is as impactful (Klipsch Promedia series, etc.), but for all-rounded usage in any room size, seating style (near-field, far-field) and in sound bar form factor - there's really no better option in the market. Razer's Leviathan might have arrived a whole lot earlier to the market, but it was never going to get a satisfactory seal from us at HardwareZone because of its ho-hum performance. The Creative Sound BlasterX might seem like another attempt of the same, but it is anything but that.

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