Creative Sound Blaster Play 4

[Janise Knollman]

Amust-have for any work calls, the Sound Blaster PLAY! 4 is designed to solve your video call woes by simplifying the way you communicate. It debuts our newest SmartComms Kit, packed with an array of smart communication software features such as auto mute and two-way noise cancellation guaranteed to redefine your video call experience.

We've also made sure to uphold our ethos in delivering convenience and quality with a direct mic mute button, Bass Boost and Dynamic EQs, as well as an instant audio upgrade that surpasses the default audio on any of your devices.

If you need to talk to someone on the side, disable the VoiceDetect feature temporarily by manually pressing on the physical mic mute button, and reactivate the VoiceDetect feature by pressing on the same button.

NoiseClean-in analyzes your incoming audio (imagine a colleague with a noisy background in your video call), detecting and suppressing the unwanted noises, before sending just your colleague's clean voice to you through your headphones.

Advanced settings allow you to access and control each feature according to your environment and preferences. For example, you'll be able to set how long it takes for your microphone to be automatically muted after you've stopped talking, or the level of background noise reduction you want on your outgoing audio (what others hear).

Expand the soundstage of your content, and hear spatialized audio which gives you a sense of space beyond conventional stereo sound. Best used for work calls to reduce call fatigue, open world games, and even music for a heighted sense of audio immersion.

Hear deeper and richer bass response that is clean yet impactful for that seat-rumbling experience. Best used to bring out the effects of explosions in movies, headbanger songs, and the roar of ancient beasts in MMORPGs.

The Sound Blaster PLAY! 4 will work with mobile devices that are compliant with the USB Audio Standard. To verify if your phone is compliant with the USB Audio Standard, you will have to approach your mobile device's manufacturer.

Due to the wide variety of mobile phone brands, models, and operating systems that may have different implementation of USB-C, certain features of the Sound Blaster PLAY! 4 may be limited by your mobile phone.

When the battery level of your mobile device is too low, it may not be able to provide sufficient power to the Sound Blaster PLAY! 4. Do make sure that your mobile device is adequately charged before using it with the Sound Blaster PLAY! 4.

Mode 1 is best suited for gaming consoles such as PS4, PS5, and mobile devices, and supports playback resolution of up to 24-bit / 96 kHz. Mode 2 is recommended for Windows and Mac systems and supports playback resolution of up to 24-bit / 192 kHz. We also recommend using Mode 2 if your intended primary platform for the Sound Blaster PLAY! 4 is PC or Mac, and using Mode 1 if your intended primary platform is on gaming consoles and mobile devices.

Ensure that NoiseClean is only switched on during online calls. NoiseClean may interfere with normal media playback (e.g., music and movies) and we recommend for the feature to be switched off for the best audio experience.

The Sound Blaster PLAY! 4 implements standard 1-button and 3-buttons media control functions that are widely used in the industry. Details of these functions are documented in the manual accompanying the Sound Blaster PLAY! 4. You are also advised to refer to your headset/earbud manufacturer on their products' implementation.

The latest Sound Blaster PLAY! 4 firmware (Ver 1.9 and later) adds a new Volume Control Mode to support hardware volume control. Visit creative.com/support/SBPLAY4 to download the latest firmware. Alternatively, you may also upgrade to the latest firmware via the Creative app.

Windows PC has the capability to control both the media playback volume of the media player and the USB audio volume of Sound Blaster PLAY! 4. In most cases, the default media playback volume is always set to maximum on the media player software.

On Android devices, user control is limited to the media playback volume and the USB audio volume. Furthermore, default media player volume is usually set to 50% or lower on most phones. We advise users to activate the Volume Control Mode to adjust the hardware volume of Sound Blaster PLAY! 4 when connected to mobile devices and gaming consoles.

Our tests have revealed that this only happens to Microsoft Teams running on Big Sur OS. Other communications software like Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet does not run into this issue. We advise users to mute or unmute directly on Microsoft Teams' interface. The Mic Mute button also works in Catalina OS.

For safety concerns, most mobile phone manufacturers do not recommend charging and using the phone concurrently, wired or wirelessly. As such, it is not recommended for you to charge and use the Sound Blaster PLAY! 4 and your mobile device at the same time. We advise users to disconnect the Sound Blaster PLAY! 4 or any USB devices from mobile devices during charging.

Hi, I haven't had much luck googling this - I was wondering if there is a DOS based player that can play music on Soundblasters, along with a file format that music can be stored in. I'm thinking similar to a .mid file for a windows based midi player, but DOS based either for FM synthesis, or for the later EMU synths. The Adlib Gold can do this with the Juke Box gold and the .RL2 format, anything similar for Creative?

Thanks,

J

When speaking of "Soundblaster", people generally understand the Sound Blaster digital audio standard in its various versions, which is not about synthesis.

You're saying you're looking for something to play MIDI in DOS with either FM or EMU synthesis. That's something quite different, even if there were Sound Blasters that could do both, as well as their native digital audio.

Well the only thing that may not have been clear is perhaps I should have said OPL instead of soundblaster. My mention of Midi was purely to provide an analogy - I'm not looking to play midi files natively on an OPL device.

Ideally I'd be able to download OPL game music and play the audio, without having to load the game. Almost like a SIDplayer on a C64.

Don't worry - it's quick and painless! Just click below, and once you're logged in we'll bring you right back here and post your question. We'll remember what you've already typed in so you won't have to do it again.

More wanted to bring this up as not sure if anyone else has this issue or a work around. I noticed when I did 32bit 384000 Hz audio quality that the spotify application would not play anything. You could select a song and it would look like it was trying to start a song and it wouldnt play and skip to the next song, wait a second like it was trying to play and then skip to the next song, and simply repeat these steps. Lowering audio quality on my sound card to 32bit 192000 Hz resolves the issue. Then increasing back up to 384000 Hz breaks it again so it was repeatable. I'm no audiophile and loweirng to 192000 Hz would be fine a solution but maybe I'm being stubborn as I don't want to do that just for one application. I realize this is probably more a spotify limitation since the max output might be lower like 320000 Hz but would be nice if it was possible to add some logic that could be added to the application to fix this issue.

I noticed and tested all this about a month ago and already uninstall the spotify application so not sure what version this was on. I've just simply just been using the webplayer as an alternative to the desktop application. Just curious if this affected anyone else as a small inconvenience.

It has been confirmed by other users that any sample rate above 192kHz breaks Spotify's audio playback. Here you can see an Issue thread created by a Soundblaster user who can use similar output options, and Spotify's answer to it.

Spotify works with 16/24/32bit and up to 192kHz audio stream. My guess is pretty much all music brought to Spotify is definitely under 192kHz. I'm not sure why higher sample rates break Spotify itself though.

I also read about having huge sample rates, apparently there is no much reason to set your sample rate much higher than 192 (or even less), since ad/da converters already operate at elevated sample rates and almost no-one (in commercial music at least) makes use of making music at such high sample rates. Creating, yes, but it's very likely down to 44.1 or 48 after mastering.

Classical music could be an exception (in some cases), when it comes to recording it.

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