While the Sound Blaster X3 is accessed through the Sound Blaster Command software driver, Creative upgraded the Sound Blaster X4 to use the same app as the more expensive Sound Blaster GC7 (reviewed here). The new app is simply called "Creative App." It comes with a significantly cleaner interface than its predecessors and is available both for desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS) and mobile ones (Android, iOS).

Creative App (Windows)

The Device screen is split into different categories where we can access and configure various features of the Sound Blaster X4. On the left side of the interface, you can navigate to Playback, Recording, and Settings menus. You'll also find quick toggles for output selection (headphones, speakers, or both), and sound volume and microphone gain sliders. The main purpose of the Playback and Recording menus is to set the Sound Blaster X4 as a default playback, communications, or recording device and choose the playback and recording bit depth and sample rate. The Settings menu is used to reset the device and upgrade the firmware, driver, and app itself.


The Sound Mode section is where you configure and select your sound profiles. Creative offers a ton of premade profiles, such as Gaming, Music, and Movies, but also many other, game-specific ones, such as Apex Legends, Call of Duty Series, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, DOTA 2, League of Legends, Overwatch, Fortnite, Cyberpunk, and so on. You can of course create your own and add them to the mix. The sound profiles are essentially a combination of your preferred Super X-Fi and Acoustic Engine settings (more on them in a moment). They are mutually exclusive, so should you turn Super X-Fi on, all Acoustic Engine settings will be disabled. You can apply different settings, including an equalizer, to the headphone and speaker output.


Clicking on the Super X-Fi option opens up the Super X-Fi Windows app (assuming you have it installed). Hovering your mouse over this tile lets you select the Super X-Fi mode—Super X-Fi, Super X-Fi Battle Mode, or off. The Super X-Fi technology can only be applied to the headphone output.


Acoustic Engine is essentially what Creative previously called "SBX Profile." You can play with various DSP parameters which span far beyond regular equalization, such as Surround (aims to create a perception of being surrounded by speakers), Crystalizer (tries to enhance the dynamic range), Bass (expands low frequencies), Smart Volume (minimizes sudden volume changes) and Dialog+ (enhances voice audibility). If you're not a purist, you'll have a blast experimenting with all of these settings and their combinations. All of them can be adjusted on a scale from 0 to 100, and you can easily assign different Acoustic Engine settings to the headphone and speaker output, which is a nice touch.


The Equalizer section contains a system-wide 10-band equalizer with an additional preamplifier, bass, and treble sliders. All sliders work in a ±9 dB range. No special DSP effects are added to the sound, like in the Acoustic Engine category of the Creative App. Creative gives you 10 frequency bands to play with: 32, 62, 125, 250, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 4,000, 8,000, and 16,000 Hz. Equalization applies to headphone and speaker outputs separately.


SmartComms Kit is exclusive to the Sound Blaster X4—no other Creative sound card I am aware of offers this technology. It's a combination of three features: VoiceDetect, NoiseClean-out, and NoiseClean-in. All of them can be automatically adjusted by checking the appropriate box in the SmartComms Kit section of the Creative app (first, toggle the SmartComms Kit on and check the "Advanced" box), or you can play with the sliders to tune them yourself. I'll discuss all these features in greater detail in the microphone performance section of this review.


The CrystalVoice menu contains the microphone filters and effects. The Acoustic Echo Cancellation feature aims to eliminate echoes from our conversations, while Smart Volume tries to keep voice volume constant. The Voice Morph feature alters your voice in real-time to make you sound like a dwarf, emo, demon, robot, person of the opposite sex, and so on. Finally, there's a microphone equalizer with 11 different presets, which can help you sound better if your voice is otherwise problematic (very high-pitched or exceptionally deep and boomy, for example), at least in theory. More on those in the microphone performance section of this review.


Direct Mode is exactly that—a mode where the audio signal doesn't go through the sound card's DSP, to be reproduced in the purest form possible. It is not possible to use any DSP-related feature of the Sound Blaster X4 in Direct Mode, such as the equalizer, Scout Mode, Acoustic Engine, or Super X-Fi. You can still use the SmartComms Kit feature with Direct Mode active, though.


According to Creative, "Scout Mode" is designed to help you hear beyond what you see. When activated, Scout Mode significantly boosts the audibility of quieter sounds, such as footsteps and reloading guns. This should (and will) help you hear them much easier, but it comes with the obvious drawback of losing the ability to accurately determine the distance of your targets. You'll also be more paranoid than usual since you'll constantly feel as though someone is close-by. This is one of those features you simply must try for yourself to decide if you like it. In Call of Duty, especially in its non-Warzone modes, where there's constant chaos happening all around you anyway, using Scout Mode felt almost like cheating. In Apex Legends, it made me too twitchy, but it also definitely helped me hear my enemies sooner than I would otherwise be able to. In Rocket League and other games outside of multiplayer FPS ones, using Scout Mode yielded no noteworthy benefits. It is also largely overshadowed by a more advanced technology with the same goal: SXFI Battle Mode. More on it in the sound quality part of this review.


The Encoder section is where you can activate Dolby Digital Live surround sound encoding. This is only possible through the optical output of the Sound Blaster X4.


The Mixer category is where you can individually adjust the volume level of every output and input the Sound Blaster X4 has to offer. This includes the microphone monitoring feature, which will surely interest anyone using an analog closed-back headset. Here, you can also select what's being delivered on the optical output, stereo mix, or SPDIF passthrough.

During my testing, the Creative App was stable and nice to use overall. Creative fixed the issues I ran into while testing this app with the Sound Blaster GC7, such as the microphone not working whenever I'd apply a CrystalVoice filter.

Mobile Apps

Creative offers two mobile apps for the Sound Blaster X4 sound card: Creative App and SXFI App. Here's a quick overview of both.

Creative App (Android, iOS)

Creative App is the mobile equivalent of the desktop app of the same name, whose features I've just described. By offering this app, Creative found a great way to get around a common issue with external USB sound cards: the inability to use their features on consoles, as their functionality is usually highly dependent on the Windows/macOS driver. The mobile version of the Creative App, available for Android and iOS devices, contains every feature available in its desktop variant, so you can use it to fully configure the Sound Blaster X4. The mobile app communicates with the sound card via Bluetooth, and the one-time pairing process is extremely simple. It comes down to pressing the volume knob on the Sound Blaster X4 when instructed to do so by the app. Do note that the Bluetooth connection cannot be used for audio streaming.

Super X-FI App (Android, iOS)

The second mobile app supported by the Sound Blaster X4 is SXFI App. You have to install it if you plan to use the Super X-Fi technology because the app is actually what's needed to configure it. The general idea behind this tech is to create a feeling of being surrounded by speakers. Before you can use it, you need to own a pair of headphones from Creative's list of supported devices, which you can check out here. When you do, use the app to create a map of your head—scan your left and right ear, as well as your face. You'll need a friend or family member to help you with this step of the process. After head-mapping is done, Creative creates your personal "audio map," imports it into the Creative App (both desktop and mobile), and lets you start trying it out. I'll get to the acoustic characteristics of the Super X-Fi technology on the next page of this review.

Here's an official video, where you can find out more about the Super X-Fi tech and see the head-mapping process in action.