TECH SPECS
Price: $329
Speakers: Far-field tweeters x 2, passive radiators x 2, subwoofer x 1
Features: Built-in MP3 player and voice recorder, microSD playback
Dimensions: 51 x 188 x 109mm
Weight: 1kg
RATING
Features 5/5
Design 4/5
Performance 5/5
Value for money 5/5
Overall 5/5
When Creative founder Sim Wong Hoo showed me the Sound Blaster Roar 2 in September, I was a little sceptical.
The original howl is a power plant in the department of audio delivery, providing great low and pointed acoustics in a not-thus-tiny package. Miniaturizing the material would a poorer audio quality have like consequence? Making the device smaller wouldn't the howl of the power plant decrease?
Not so. The Roar 2 sounds better than the Roar.
But before you start grousing about Creative making unnecessary
changes to the soundstage of the Roar, which they did, you need to
understand that these tweaks are a necessity.
Shrinking the Roar by 20 per cent to arrive at the Roar 2
necessitated two changes. In the original, the woofer was upward
firing, or up firing, while the twin tweeters were front firing. In the
Roar 2, all three are up firing, so the grille mesh in front has been
removed.
This allows the speaker to be orientated in two ways.
In the Roar, having the woofer pointing towards you meant that the tweeters were aimed at the surface on which the device sat.
The passive radiators were then housed at the sides behind metal
grilles. No longer. Now, a thin protective plate of aluminium is placed
over each radiator.
So, both radiators vibrate with the bass, delivering audio punch that you can feel.
When comparing the Roar and Roar 2, I realised that the bass on the
Roar 2 has been dialled down substantially, while the highs now have a
sharper presence.
If you thought the Roar provided a good balance of bass and sharpness, the Roar 2 does even better.
Because the tweeters have been positioned differently, and the
radiators have been altered physically, the engineers have had to
retune the soundstage. They have tried to duplicate that of the Roar,
but certain changes had to be made.
Personally, I am a bigger fan of the smaller device. Otherwise, the features have not changed much.
The positions of the music playback control buttons at the top rear have been switched around.
But the rear control panels, which are used to make audio
recordings, set alarms, plug in a microSD card for direct MP3 playback
and a USB slot to charge mobile devices, are still laid out as they
were in the Roar.
If you already own a Roar, all that is holding you back from an upgrade would be the price.
The Roar is now $199; the Roar 2 is priced at $329.
If you have yet to enjoy the Sound Blaster Roar experience, Creative’s Roar 2 is worth the extra cash.
