Sound Quality

As I've pointed out earlier in the review, the Creative Stage V2 is a 2.1 sound system consisting of a soundbar and a passive subwoofer. The soundbar is equipped with a pair of 2.25-inch speaker drivers, while the subwoofer has a side-firing 5.25-inch driver and a front bass-reflex port. The specified power output of the system is 80 W RMS (2x 20 W + 40 W). Creative doesn't offer any additional information about the integrated speaker drivers or built-in DAC. The only thing I can tell for sure is that the DAC is locked to 16-bit/48 kHz resolution and cannot be switched to any other bit depth or sample rate through the Control Panel.


While the Stage V2 can be placed under a PC monitor or TV, one thing should be clear from the start: This audio system is designed for smaller rooms, and that's exactly where it should be used. The closer you're sitting to it, the better it sounds. As long as you're positioned within some three meters from the soundbar, you should be able to experience everything the Stage V2 has to offer. Move further away or install it in a room larger than approximately 15 m² and you'll inevitably face issues with its limited power output. When I tried installing it in my home office, a room of around 20 m² with the sitting position 5 meters away from the TV, I had to push the Stage V2 close to maximum volume for it to be loud enough to immerse myself in a movie or to listen to some music at a volume I was happy with. While it's able to play at high volumes with no noteworthy distortion of the sound, this scenario leaves you with no room to "rock out," to crank up the volume even further when your favorite song comes on.

On the other hand, after moving the Stage V2 to a smaller room, especially after placing it under my monitor (in that case room size doesn't matter), Creative's compact 2.1 system started to sing. In these scenarios, I never felt the need to go above two-thirds of its volume range. The Stage V2 delivers a clean, at times surprisingly detailed sound, with a fairly neutral tonality. I wouldn't call it particularly warm, but it's not too sterile either; the system can be used for a wide variety of music genres, as well as anything else you might throw at it, be it games, movies, TV shows, your favorite YouTube channels, or something else. Stereo separation is surprisingly good as well; the Stage V2 does a good job of hiding the fact that its speaker drivers are fairly close together. This is especially true for near-field listening (when the soundbar is sitting below your monitor).


The subwoofer isn't of the earth-shattering kind, so if that's what you're after, you should probably look elsewhere—there are plenty of 2.1 systems in the PC speaker department where the subwoofer is so overpowering that the bass sounds almost vulgar. The subwoofer Creative packs with the Stage V2 is well integrated with the soundbar. It naturally blends into the rest of the system without a noticeable separation of the bass department, which is the most common pitfall of any subwoofer supplied with a budget 2.1 audio system. It adds a pleasant depth and warmth to the sound, but doesn't stray into excessive boominess even when boosted in the settings. I suggest you do boost it from its factory setting; adding +3 dB worked great for me, as it resulted in a more meaty and punchy bass response. Pushing it even further (the scale is ±5 dB) started causing an audible separation from the soundbar, which is something you want to avoid.

Should you find it necessary, treble can be boosted on the same ±5 dB scale, too. To me, the Stage V2 sounded best with the treble in its default, neutral position. The system also offers two additional sound modes, Surround and Dialog. Surround makes the sound presentation wider, but audibly more artificial; I suggest you keep it off. Dialog boosts the midrange, which can be useful if you have trouble hearing the actors in the movies or TV shows you're watching. Just keep in mind that it causes a disbalance in the tonality of the Stage V2, and remember to turn it off when listening to music, as that's the only way to get the best performance out of Creative's system.


Wireless music playback is done through Bluetooth. The only supported Bluetooth audio codec is SBC, but I don't see this as a big issue because SBC sounds "good enough" to be the codec of choice for Creative's system. When you're playing music through Bluetooth, you can use the remote's play/pause and next/previous song buttons to control your music. The Stage V2 isn't equipped with a microphone, so there's no way to hold a hands-free phone call while your phone is connected to it via Bluetooth. There's a small, but noticeable delay between video and audio when Bluetooth is being used. It didn't bother me enough to discourage me from watching YouTube or Netflix videos, although it definitely gets in the way of mobile gaming. With that in mind, I'd stick to using the Bluetooth connection for music playback because there wireless latencies are meaningless.