Last year, I reviewed the Creative Roar 2 portable wireless speaker which has quickly become my favorite Bluetooth speaker of all time. Along with great sound quality, the Creative Roar 2 is portable, has a long battery life, is an extremely good looking speaker, and is a good value for the price. Since then, Creative has released the next generation of their Roar speakers, the first of which is the Creative iRoar launched early last year.

Following up on the iRoar, Creative also launched a miniaturized version of the iRoar, creatively titled the Creative iRoar Go. The new Creative iRoar Go promises the same powerful [...]

When it comes to premium desktop computer speakers, few manufacturers on the market match the level of Audioengine when it comes to sound quality. Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to review the Audioengine A2+ and the Audioengine A5+ which were outstanding speakers that are simply unmatched by other computer speaker manufacturers.

Recently, Audioengine launched their latest Audioengine HD3 speaker which is similar to their popular Audioengine A2+ with several improvements including magnetic speaker grilles, Bluetooth support, an improved internal DAC and more. Given how impressed we were with the Audioengine A2+, we jumped at the [...]

Several years ago, Amazon unveiled the Echo, a smart speaker designed to use Amazon’s Alexa AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform to help make life easier for its customers. While the Amazon Echo’s functionality was relatively basic when it was launched back in 2004, its functionality has improved significantly over the years as newer functionality and additional compatibility with services have been added.

As Amazon’s Echo has been in the market relatively uncontested for the past two years, it was about time someone else jumped into the smart speaker game and who else is more appropriate than Google who revealed back in May that they [...]

Premium speaker maker Audioengine recently announced their new HD3 Wireless Speakers designed for those looking for top notch audio quality in a relatively compact small form factor.

Featuring dual built-in class A/B amplifiers, durable 2.75″ Kevlar woofers and 3/4″ silk dome tweeters, the Audioengine HD3 will offer a premium sound experience with its classic speaker design and high end components.

“Classic speaker design with no plastic, full stereo sound, whole-house wireless and no setup hassles make HD3 the ultimate mini music system.” says Brady Bargenquast, Audioengine co-founder.

Connectivity options include 3.5″ stereo [...]

Several years ago, I reviewed the Creative Sound Blaster ROAR which I awarded with the CPCR Gold Awesome Award. It was an excellent prdouct that was portable, had great battery life, had fantastic sound quality, and could easily fill a room, an outdoor gathering, or a campsite with plenty of music. It checked all the right boxes and quickly became my all time favorite Bluetooth speaker.

While the Creative Sound Blaster ROAR was already quite impressive, Creative has spent the past few years refining their product, which ultimately culminated in the new Creative Sound Blaster ROAR 2, which retains pretty much the entire Sound Blaster ROAR’s [...]

Rarely do I think to myself, “I really wish I had a pair of wireless, portable speakers that I could take with me places.” As you might imagine, I’m not one of those people you sometimes encounter in public, blasting whatever noise they consider to be music from their phones, perfectly clashing with the music playing over the supermarket’s PA system (if I were one of those people, I’d probably go all out and hold my cell phone and two speakers in my hands while simultaneously shopping and annoying everyone within a 20 foot radius of me, but that’s just me…)

As such, I’ve never really thought I’d [...]

At CES 2015, Creative displayed tons of new products, but there was no doubt that the Sound Blaster X7 was the star of the show.

At about the size of a Bluetooth speaker, the Sound Blaster X7 is unlike anything Creative has ever produced. Inside its stylish black casing, the Sound Blaster X7 is not only a high-end external DAC, it’s also a serious amplifier capable of delivering up to 76w of power (or 100w with the optional 24V, 6A power adapter).

In order to achieve this, the Sound Blaster X7 features Creative’s proprietary SB-Axx1 multi-core DSP that we’ve seen in several generations of Sound Blaster products along with a Burr-Brown [...]

Well, it’s that time of year again. The time of year to eat a lot, drink a lot, and be thankful that we get to do another review for Audioengine! Yup. It’s funny how it worked out in the past few years that I’ve done one review every year for Audioengine. In 2012, it was the Audioengine A5+ coupled with the Audioengine  D1, last year it was the Audioengine A2+, and with 2014 coming to a close, this year we’ll be checking out the newly released Audioengine B2!

The Audioengine B2 is Audioengine’s latest speaker that combines many of the features of the Audioengine A2+ with the Bluetooth functionality of the [...]

It’s been several years since gaming hardware manufacturer Razer discontinued their last premium speaker offering (the Razer Mako), and it looks like they’re finally ready to jump back in.

According to a recent press release, Razer is introducing the Leviathan which is unique in that it’s a sound bar rather than the typical 2.1 speaker systems that typically saturate the PC speaker market today. Designed with versatility in mind, the Razer Leviathan will come in a two piece set containing both a sound bar as well as a subwoofer. Razer believes that the Leviathan could easily be used in a variety of scenarios such as desktop speakers or in a home [...]

A couple years ago when Creative first introduced the Sound Blaster AXX series, it was probably one of the coolest products I had ever had the opportunity of reviewing. At the time I simply hadn’t seen a USB powered Bluetooth speaker with the type of sound and voice processing Creative had crammed into the Sound Blaster AXX, and while it wasn’t perfect, being someone who regularly traveled to different tech shows and events, it was a product that I didn’t really know I needed until I actually had it.

Fast forward a couple years and now Creative is on their second generation Sound Blaster AXX, and along with that is also a new product based [...]