The cat is outta the bag

“The cat is outta the bag I see!”

I got this from a friend of mine who’s been curious about what I’ve been up to on the headset side…the “secret” project as my friends came to know it.

In case you haven’t seen what I’m talking about I’m referring to the Sound Blaster World of Warcraft Wireless Headset. (And we’ll have a wired version as well).

So I’m finally able to talk a bit about the project. And I’ve had a LOT of people asking me for info on the project. Some of which I can’t elaborate on yet…but some of which I can share.

The teaser really caught on with the World of Warcraft scene. We had an idea that it would be interesting to people but the voracious appetite for information got people riled into a frenzy. I saw analysis of the Flash file that looked like something from CSI. Truly amazing the dedication of some of the World of Warcraft faithful.

The concept of the headset is designed around one specific goal. To create a headset that World of Warcraft players will covet. It may sound a little bit weird. Talking about a piece of tech and coveting it. But World of Warcraft is much more than just a game to a lot of people who play it. It’s a beloved brand by many people. It’s friends. It’s family (in many cases!). It’s entertainment for this century and has taken the MMO genre of gaming to the mainstream. I’m always amazed by the sheer diversity of people who are part of my guild. We have medical professionals, military, former corporate executives, white collar, blue collar, chartreuse collar… You get the point.

How do you make a product that all of these different people from different “worlds” would want.

You start with the basics and go from there.

You make a headset that’s going to sound fantastic and be comfortable.

You pay attention to the details. Something that Blizzard is renown for in all of their games and something we at Creative will live up to.

You push the envelope of technology and don’t just settle for “good enough”.

And lastly. You KNOW who you’re talking to. This headset is the collaborative effort of several World of Warcraft players who are passionate about the game. That’s something that you just can’t manufacture. It’s found in all of those subtle touches at the end result.

So, I’m really looking forward to showing the prototypes at Blizzcon to the frenzied fans of Blizzard.

So if you’re going. Be sure to come by the booth and say “Hi!”. We’ll be there the whole show.

See you there! And if not. We’ll be dropping a lot more info over the next few weeks about the headsets along with more pictures.

As always…more to come!

August is going to be busy busy busy!

Soooo..it’s been a bit since I’ve blogged here. Feels good to be back!

A lot has been brewing behind the scenes here at Creative and August is certainly shaping up to be a busy month indeed.

Right smack dab in the middle of the month I’ll be heading to QuakeCon to hang with the Fatal1ty crew and get my yearly overdose of first person fragging. Definitely looking forward to QuakeCon..especially with the emergence of Quake Live that has re-invigorated the FPS online scene and taken it to a higher level. And of course I’m sure everyone is going to be tuning in to get any new info about Rage and Wolfenstein as well.

And the following week it’s off to Blizzcon where we’ll have a booth to show off the latest and greatest to the adoring fans of the epic MMO, dungeon crawlers, and Space Marines. I definitely need to find some time to sneak out of the booth and hopefully get another dose of Starcraft 2 multiplayer action. Should be a lot of fun as I have guildees down in area as well and that always ends up being semi-dangerous (ok..just flat out dangerous).

What completely amazes me is by going to these two cons you get a taste of just how far PC gaming has come…and a great look at where it’s going moving forward.

We also have some pretty large announcements coming up in the middle of this month so stay tuned to SoundBlaster.com around mid-august. You definitely do not want to miss what we’ve got in store!

As always..more to come.

Back from the mothership…

So first off. Sorry for the lack of updates last week. I was jam packed with meetings during our worldwide summit last week. But I’ll have PLENTY to talk about here over the next few weeks / months / (years!). Needless to say I’m charged up when even thinking about our lineup moving forward. I’d be understating it if I said people are going to be truly surprised at some of the things we have up our sleeve…but that’s for other posts here.

I’d like to give my sincere thanks to the product / marketing / design team over at CTL (Singapore headquarters for Creative). These are truly some of the most professional, hardworking and talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with.

That being said. We’ll be continuing with our regular scheduled programming.

So I found it immediately satisfying somewhat that my previous post was validated. You know..the one where I said headsets were completely subjective? More so than most other products on the market. So I linked to the IGN article last blog and was talking about how the audio was rated as fantastic (9.2) but the comfort was found lacking. Now we have the Extremetech review which essentially states the complete opposite.

I think it illustrates the point quite well. You can’t make everyone happy (believe it or not there are people that DON’T LIKE vanilla ice cream as well!)

All I can say is we have lots of gamers, both pros and casuals using these in the wild and they are loving them (and a few that prefer others as well to be fair). But you take the criticism you get regardless and use it to keep building even better products going forward.

We’re excited to add the MKII to our lineup…we’re all about giving gamers options for whatever their need is. As we approach the end of the year…we’ll easily have the largest assortment of gaming headsets on the market. And we’re just getting started here.

As always…MUCH MORE coming!

Over the weekend…

So I tweeted earlier about the game Prototype. I have to say this game surprised me 100%. A fantastic experience so far…even from the perspective I was able to download it directly and fire it up without loading up a DVD. That’s definitely a trend I’ve grown quite fond of.

So if you haven’t checked out Prototype yet…give it a whirl..and no I’m not getting paid to say that. It’s just awesome to see a great standout PC title that feels like it has a total unique spin to it. And the production value is strong as well.

Getting back to the hardware side of things. the Fat Pro MKII is ready to jump out the gate next week and we’re already starting to hear great things from some early seeds. The IGN review was up the day of E3. The hardest thing with headsets in general is the fit and finish. You’re NEVER going to make everyone happy. It’s really a very subjective thing…there are some people that swear by the head clamper headsets out there…that always makes me shake my head in wonder (I actually just think they’ve never used a REAL headset before…so they don’t know any better). And there are also people that love the MASSIVELY oversized headsets that look great with massive headbands…but at the end of the day end up being a lot more looks than actual performance. Just goes to show the massive variance in peoples tastes. But one thing was for sure…the audio number came out high, and for good reason. These things flat out blow away other headsets on the market when it comes to performance. What did you expect from a company that’s been making PC audio products for 25 years? We came to play.

I keep referring to some more announcements coming soon. I promise they’ll be worth it and we’ll be announcing something very shortly. When people see what we have up our sleeves I think they are really going to get it when we say “we don’t just SAY were about gaming…we prove it.” And we’ll keep proving it moving towards the back half of the year. Let’s just say the Sound Blaster brand is just getting started in headsets.

Also if you got a spare moment and want a chance to win a Fat Pro Titanium soundcard…hop on over to HERE and take the survey. Easy way possibly score a new sound card.

As always…more to come.

New look! Same great taste!

Hey there Blaster fans!

As you can see we’ve given our Soundblaster.com site a huge facelift. No botox here…we went for the straight surgical procedure.

The goal of the site is to make things a lot easier for us to talk to you..and you to talk to us. As well as make the things that you really want to get a hold of like my blog posts, and oh yeah..those drivers too (ok ok..I know you want the drivers more than my posts..but you can lie to me…and speaking of which…if you’re running Windows 7 give the beta drivers a whirl. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the performance and stability).

So the site isn’t just a prettification (thats my Bushism for today). It’s got a purpose as well. We’re still working on pieces behind the scenes so you’ll see more and more sections getting revamped and coming online with more and more info.

In other news just wanted to give team Complexity (who we’re an avid sponsor of) a shout out for their recent Counterstrike 1.6 match wins as well as the 3v3 WoW arena team showing some serious growth and skills at the last MLG match in Ohio. I’m thinking their RMP is going to be a force to be reckoned with as the season continues on.

As always..stay tuned there’s a lot more to come with some pretty awesome announcements we’ll be serving up over the next few weeks that are certainly going to turn some heads.

Ryan (AKA DigitalRonyn)

Back from E3!

Back in the office after a long week at E3.

It’s always great to get out in front of the masses to get a feel for where the market is at.

I was completely blown away by the informal polling I was taking at the show. Informally about half the folks at our shows were gaming on laptops. The numbers have certainly been rising on the laptop side…but to see that many hands go up for that many shows, really shows that the market is shifting. Just a year or two ago and maybe it would have been 1 or 2 hands going up. Now it was 30 or 40.

Also met with a lot of press in regards to Silencer and the overall direction of the Sound Blaster and gaming headset lineup. I think the message is starting to get out there…Sound Blaster and Creative are raising the bar in headset tech.

We’ll have a peek of the next badboy in the lineup shortly here. So for those that are looking for a USB flavored headset we’ve got something you’re going to want to see.

On a side note…if you haven’t seen the trailer for the upcoming Star Wars Old Republic MMO…go HERE now. No seriously…do it. Amazing trailer. If the gameplay lives up to the trailer…this will be a hit.

Other amazingly cool stuff at E3:

- Got to play God of War 3. Amazing gameplay. They’ve outdone themselves.

- Bayonetta looks to be pretty cool.

- Can’t wait for Final Fantasy 13…it’s just cruel that they make us wait so long to get these over stateside.

More to come!

E3 is here…the Silencer cometh…

So E3 is BACK! Or is it? We’ll see. Some of my fondest memories of tradeshows were back in the “glory days” of E3. The monstrous booths that looked more like sets of a movie than actual software and hardware companies showing off their latest and greatest. The sheer sensory overload that gun chatter, speedy mammals running to get rings, and jet engines roaring…all from the SAME booth. And of course the legendary “babes”.

What’s interesting now is how my perspective has changed over the past few years. Gaming  in general seems to be getting taken a lot more “seriously” as a market. How can you ignore it. It’s larger than DVD and BluRay!!! There’s a lot more “Hollywood” crossover and a lot more glitz. The trick is finding the REAL good stuff out there.

And speaking of good stuff….

This year Creative has partnered with Fatal1ty at E3 and we’ll be chillin’ in the Fat booth for the show. I’ll be up on stage a few times a day to talk about the latest and greatest were launching at the show. The Fatal1ty Professional Series Gaming Headset MKII.

And MKII is said MARK 2. Not Mortal Kombat 2. Haha. Although it is a bit of an inside laugh for us since Fatal1ty earned his nickname by dominating the local Mortal Kombat machine for hours on end.

The Mark II is essentially the culmination of several years of making headphones and DECADES of making sound cards. As a a company that has led the PC audio industry for over 20 years now we take the development of anything to do with audio pretty seriously. And I think people are going to be really blown away by the result. The Mark II is deceptively light…but when you put it on and crank up the volume…suddenly you will realize that the cans on your head don’t have to weigh a ton to pack a punch. Like a rally car…we’ve weight reduced these bad boys by getting rid of materials not needed and keeping only the good stuff in there. So what you end up with is a lightweight badboy set of cans that pack a serious audio punch. And even though they are light these guys are tough as well. We went with a steel core headband to ensure that these would maintain their tension (which by the way won’t pinch your head like some other infamous headsets…you know which ones I’m talking about) over time. And it just looks hardcore to have metal in your headset as well.

I think everyone needs to experience the comfy earcups to do them justice. These things feel like pillows on your ears. As an MMO gamer myself I’ve heard many a time the groan from fellow guildees over vent

“uugh my ears hurt!”

Well…that isn’t going to happen here. Of course this is mostly because the guild knows what I do for a living so if I sell them head clamping torture device headsets I’m going to have to hear it over vent over and over. So rest assured…it’s in MY best interest to make comfy headsets. So you all are covered.

A big question I’ve been getting since CES is…

“WHAT IS THIS SILENCER THING I’VE BEEN HEARING ABOUT?”
(yeah all caps…)

I’ve talked about it in a few videos on the web already, but here’s another explanation…

The tech answer:
It’s a noise-suppression technology that recognizes and isolates your voice due to a stereo mic setup. Not to be confused with beam forming which is used with webcams. It actually analyzes and compares the arrival times of sound from two separate mics on the headset: one located in the mic boom near your mouth – one located at the top of the mic boom outside the earcup. Your voice is then isolated as a “voice source” and other sounds are isolated as “noise sources” and suppressed in the resulting audio stream with no degredation to the “voice source”. So similar to some really cool tech used in Bluetooth headsets in that it removes background noise but NOT SIMILAR in that in removing background noise your voice remains crystal clear and unaltered. No Robotron 2084 action going on here.

The short non tech answer:

People wont hear your mom / overclocked CPU fan / kid crying in the background (yeah you know who you are) / police raid on the dorm room next to you  / or other background noises over your voice when you are talking over Vent / Teamspeak or other VOIP app of choice.

So Silencer is active with the MKII when you use it with a Sound Blaster Titanium card. We actually built the correct ports into the Titanium cards ahead of time since we knew this tech was in development. And this feature will be unlocked on the Titanium cards (for free!) with a driver revision that hits the street soon. And of course if someone DOESN’T have a Titanium card (why you wouldn’t I have NO idea now!) the headset still rocks when used with other stuff as well. Silencer is a bonus feature of the headset.

So there you have it. If you’re at E3…come stop by the Fatal1ty booth and check the new headset out. And if not..stay tuned here at  SoundBlaster.com for all the updates from the floor!

Thanks for letting me bend your ear (or eyes as it were).

More to come.

Ryan (AKA DigitalRonyn)