Creative Sound Blaster X4

The Creative Sound Blaster X4 is an incremental update to another excellent USB sound card, the Sound Blaster X3 (reviewed here). Creative added an optical input and a hybrid 4-pole TRRS port to the front, as well as the SmartComms Kit feature aimed at improving our voice-chatting experiences. SmartComms Kit includes a VoiceDetect feature that automatically mutes and unmutes the microphone depending on whether you're talking and does noise filtering for incoming and outgoing comms.

The sound card itself is equipped with a DAC capable of working with up to 24-bit/192 kHz PCM audio files in stereo, 24-bit/96 kHz files in 7.1 surround mode, and 16-bit/48 kHz when reproducing Dolby Digital Live content through its optical output. The headphone amplifier built into the Sound Blaster X4 has two gain settings, Normal and High. Creative recommends using normal gain for headphones whose impedance falls within the 32–149 Ω range. At normal gain, the headphone amplifier provides 1.2 V RMS at 32 Ω. At high gain, which Creative recommends for 150–600 Ω impedance headphones, power delivery goes up to 2.3 V RMS at 150 Ω and 2.9 V RMS at 600 Ω.


The Creative Sound Blaster X4 has a square shape and compact footprint. The central point of this sound card's exterior is the large multipurpose dial. The dial is surrounded by a glowing ring whose color changes depending on the current function of the dial. It can be used to adjust the volume of the sound or microphone, mute either of them and even volume mix between two sources—the game you're playing and Discord, for example.


Aside from the front-facing 3.5-mm hybrid output/input and separate microphone input, the Sound Blaster X4 is equipped with a set of four linear outputs, which can be used to connect active (powered) speakers. The Sound Blaster X4 supports 2.0, 2.1, 5.1, and 7.1 speaker configurations. Then there's a hybrid 3.5-millimeter linear/optical input, which can be used to connect external sound sources, such as smartphones and digital audio players, but also the PlayStation 4 and 5 (via an HDMI-to-optical converter) and other devices that can output audio through their optical port. Finally, there's an optical (TOSLINK) output and a USB-C input right next to it, which is used both for data transfer and to power the sound card.


The Creative Sound Blaster X4 is packed with features, which become apparent after diving into its desktop (Windows, macOS) and mobile (Android, iOS) apps. There, you'll find a 10-band system-wide equalizer, host of premade sound profiles, including game-specific ones, various DSP controls, advanced Super X-Fi and Super X-Fi Battle Mode virtual surround sound technologies, and the aforementioned SmartComms Kit.


SmartComms Kit consists of three features: VoiceDetect, NoiseClean-out, and NoiseClean-in. When activated, the VoiceDetect feature automatically mutes the microphone when you're not speaking and activates it when you are. The idea is obvious: to make you dead silent whenever you're just listening and remove the necessity of manually muting the microphone. You can set VoiceDetect to Auto Adjust or play with the voice level and environmental noise sliders on your own. The NoiseClean-out and NoiseClean-in features are basically noise canceling filters applied to outgoing (your voice) or incoming comms (voices of the people you talk to).

Overall, the Creative Sound Blaster X4 is an excellent, good-sounding, feature-packed USB sound card well worth its $140/€150 asking price. You can find out much more about it in my full review, where you can also listen to various microphone samples, including those showcasing the SmartComms Kit suite of voice communication features.

You can get a 15% discount on the Creative Sound Blaster X4 by using the POWERUP15 discount code kindly provided by Creative for TechPowerUp readers.