BOXED AND COMPLETE 

CHOOSE iRoar compatible MIC !

Creative has released several well-received “Roar” portable Bluetooth speakers under its Sound Blaster label, but the new iRoar drops the Sound Blaster name, gains a bit in size over the original Roar and doubles its power.

Creative iRoar portable Bluetooth speaker (Credit: Brad Moon)

The iRoar keeps the unique capabilities that helped the Roar line stand out from the crowd, including the ability to play music from SD cards, audio recording and the ability to charge a mobile device using a 1.5A USB port. It can be used as a speaker phone and has dual array microphones that can capture sound in 360-degrees or selectively.

Compared to the Sound Blaster Roar 2, it’s larger (growing to 8.8 x 4.7 x 2.2-inches and 2.5 pounds), shinier and with attractive copper trim, and it loses the physical buttons for LED backlit capacitive touch controls.

And it’s much more powerful. In fact, I can only turn the iRoar up to about 50 percent volume before it’s too loud to comfortably listen to in my office.

Multi-Driver Audio With Expansion Options

The Creative iRoar uses a five-driver arrangement, with two amplifiers (pumping out over 40-Watts combined) and Creative’s proprietary SB-Axx1 Digital Signal Processor. One amp drives a pair of 1.2-inch drivers that reproduce the high notes, while the other is dedicated to the subwoofer. Two side-firing passive radiators round out the setup. The iRoar is horizontally spread out instead of being upright to ensure the speaker is stable and free from vibration, even at high volumes.

iRoar features 5 drivers, 2 amps and 40-Watts of power (Credit: Creative Technology)

The 2.75-inch subwoofer is mounted in the middle of the case, pointing up instead of the typical downward-facing positioning. This is an unusual design choice because it means the low end is more dispersed into the air than with a downward or front-facing subwoofer. It’s helped out by the side-firing passive radiators, but in a larger room the bass does begin to lose its presence. In a small room, the arrangement works well but with lots of open space the low end performance fades.

However, Creative was thinking big picture. On the bottom of the iRoar is a connector and guess what it’s for? An optional powered subwoofer base, the iRoar Rock. Dock the smaller speaker on top of the Rock and you gain the kind of booming base that portables simply can’t generate, while also fast-charging the portable’s battery. Creative has opened up the dock connector to third parties, so look for additional expansion options in the future.

Creative is also positioning the iRoar as a soundbar alternative for TVs, with an Optical audio input and you can connect two iRoar’s with a “MegaStereo” cable for left and right channel sound output.

Performance

The iRoar speaker produces high quality, balanced sound. The mids and highs are very clear and the built-in subwoofer adds better low end performance than most speakers its size, doing especially well in small to mid-sized rooms. Bluetooth playback support includes AAC and aptX Low Latency codecs and you can connect two devices simultaneously.

Battery life is rated at 20 hours and I easily went for a week using the speaker for three to four hours a day and the volume at roughly 30 percent before having to charge.

Extras

The iRoar has so many additional features and accessories that it’s difficult to mention them all.

The app (for iOS and Android) handles settings such as prompt style and firmware updates. It includes useful tutorials for the many features. It offers a series of listening presets such as “Audiophile Bliss,” “Live Concert,” “Cinemania” and Creative’s signature “BlasterX” with the option of drilling down to and tweaking the EQ settings for each. It also lets you install apps via SD card and includes a series of starters and concepts like an alarm clock and a guitar tuner.