Introduction

Creative is going strong with their USB sound card game. Not long after my Sound Blaster GC7 review was published, I was sent another USB sound card from the company's portfolio. It's the slightly less expensive Sound Blaster X4 ($140/€150), a direct successor to the Sound Blaster X3, which I've reviewed and very much liked back in 2020. First and foremost, the Sound Blaster X4 isn't an extensive overhaul of its predecessor, but an incremental update, bringing a slightly different color scheme, one extra port (optical input), and, most notably, the so-called SmartComms Kit—a software solution for Windows and macOS users, it aims to improve our voice-chatting experiences.



SmartComms Kit includes a VoiceDetect feature that automatically mutes and unmutes the microphone depending on whether you're talking, as well as noise filtering for incoming and outgoing comms. This is an obvious attempt to make the Sound Blaster X4 attractive to everyone's current work-from-home lifestyles. Windows users can also tap into its Dolby Digital Live encoding capabilities. The Sound Blaster X4 is macOS compatible, and you can connect it to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch consoles too, while being able to access most of its features through a smartphone (Android/iOS) app. Like its predecessor, the Sound Blaster X4 can be combined with headphones, gaming headsets, or active speakers; 2.0, 2.1, 5.1, and 7.1 speaker configurations are supported. Connecting it to any AV receiver, stereo amplifier, or active speakers with a TOSLINK input is also possible. Of course, Creative didn't mess with the intuitive physical buttons on the device itself, nor did they change the massive volume knob, which can still be used to adjust sound and microphone volume, as well as balance the volume between two sources.

Specifications