Creative Katana Soundbar
Clearing the bar
PRICE $ 449 au.creative.com
There aren’t too many PC soundbars. Razer has their now fairly long in the tooth Leviathan, but aside from that there really isn’t much in the market. The reason for this may be that the width of a monitor and the proximity of the soundbar to the listener impacts the number of speakers it can house and the tricks that can be used for surround sound. The Katana is a 2.1 setup with a tweeter and midbass driver on each end of the bar and a separate wired subwoofer.
The Katana is loud. Extremely loud. At only half maximum volume the speakers are deafening but still surprisingly crisp. Sound quality in the treble and mid ranges is excellent thanks to some quality drivers and a built in DAC capable of 24-bit/96Hz lossless playback. FLAC files and games sound great, but music streamed at lesser fidelity sounds pretty damn impressive as well. The rather light and skinny sub doesn’t fare nearly as well, coming across as a little muffled and flat for the most part. The soundbar itself is quite a sleek and good looking unit, complete with RGBs if that’s your thing.
So far so good, but there are a few significant problems with the Katana. For what is essentially a good 2.1 setup, the Katana is very expensive. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the promised virtual 7.1 mode worked. It lacks any clear directionality and ultimately sounds like a worse 2.1 mix. The Katana performs well but when compared to the SBX Kratos 2.1 speakers you just can’t justify the added price tag. DANIEL WILKS