With the number of Bluetooth speakers flooding the market, both the portable ones and the multi-room ones, it will probably be hard to claim that you’re unique, you’re the best, you’re one of a kind, etc. But Creative may actually give other speakers a run for their money with their new release called iRoar. It has already won the CES Innovation Award for this year, so there might be some truth to their claim.
On the surface, it might look like just any other Bluetooth speaker. But the iRoar boasts of a lot of things, including a multi-core floating point SB-Axx1 processor that is the same one they put into the sound cards they produce. So even if the speaker is indeed portable, it doesn’t skimp on the sound quality. There are dual two-inch drivers for the high and mid range frequencies and for the low ones, it has a 2.75-inch woofer, with dual passive radiators on the side for support. There is one amp for the left and right channels and another one for the bass. In terms of connectivity, it has a lot of options: a 3.5mm analog line-in, micro-USB Audio input, a MicroSD card slot, a TOSlink Optical input, and a standard USB female 1.5A port for charging. And of course it has NFC to pair with your smartphone or any media player, and it supports aptX, aptX low-latency, AAC codecs, and SBC codecs for wireless streaming.
Another selling point of the iRoar, and what it considers its “most intelligent feature” is that it has a customizable open platform so that users can not just personalize it, but even create apps and features that can expand it. There are software add-ons and even an expandable hardware platform. The iRoar Dashboard app gives you a lot of options an add-ons and developers can actually create their own apps if they feel like there are a lot of things lacking.
The Creative iRoar is already available at the Creative website and is priced at $369.99. There are also other items you can add on, like the iRoar Mic ($79.99) and the iRoar Rock subwoofer ($149.99). But the last one will be available in the first quarter of this year.
SOURCE: Creative
