Usage & Testing
Getting the Sound Blaster Play 4! setup is extremely easy. All you really have to do is connect it to your device and plug in your headset / mic and you are good to go. For those on PC when you connect the Play 4! Windows will automatically detect it and there are no drivers to install.
Now if you want to take advantage of any of the more in-depth features of the Play 4! you’ll need to download the Creative App. With the app installed and opened we are brought to a page that has many options and settings for the Play! 4. The first is Sound Mode which allows you to set the sound profile for playback. There are settings for say music, gaming, etc.
The next is the Acoustic Engine, here you can set 5 different parameters to customize your audio playback. It is really nice that Creative has given you a description of what each setting does.
Next is the SmartComms Kit, by default you can just set this to be enabled, but there is an advanced mode where you can change mange of the parameters for VoiceDetect, NoiseClean-out and NoiseClean-in.
After that is CrystalVoice. This allows you to enable Acoustic Echo Cancellation, Smart Volume, and a Voice Morph.
Under Mixer you can set the volume for playback as well as the microphone recording level.
Moving down to the Playback tab we can see the audio playback quality, the type of headphones you are using, and you can run a test. The Play! 4 supports up to 24 bit 192 kHz playback.
The next tab is recording, in here we can set the microphone recording quality. The Play! 4 supports up to 24 bit 48 kHz recording.
Now for testing I went ahead and connected my Rode SmartLav+ directly to my laptop and made a recording directly into Adobe Audition. The only adjustment that was made was normalizing the levels to -3. Keep in mind this recording is outside on my balcony with a busy street below. I would suggest listening to these clips with your headphones on.
Mic Directly Connected to My Laptop
Now I connected the Play! 4 and did a few different tests enabling CrystalVoice as well as the SmartComms Kit.
Using the Play! 4
Now the big things to note here is that at points in this recording my audio does sound very compressed and or digitized. This is the Play! 4 cancelling out background noise. At one point there was a motorcycle driving by right below me and you can’t even hear it in the recording! Very impressive!
