Creative Pebble Nova (verschiedene Farben)

The Pebble Nova are some of the best looking PC speakers I’ve seen to date and that says a lot. It’s not so much about the ARGB lighting which for me doesn’t stand out much, it’s rather the entire design including the coaxial setup of the drivers and their 45 degrees angle. Also, even though they are medium sized speakers they do produce very good volume levels which for 25WRMS per speaker is a very good result. However much like with most products not all is perfect about the Pebble Nova. You see you have three ways to use the Pebble Nova, wired either via USB-C and its built-in DAC, 3.5mm port and an external soundcard/DAC or wirelessly via Bluetooth. If you’re looking for quality since the Pebble Nova only support the SBC audio codec Bluetooth is not the way to go, although I reckon it should be enough for most non-demanding users. The built-in DAC however just didn’t do it for me even though it supports up to 16-bit/48kHz playback (this could also be better). It sounds well and produces clear mids and highs with sufficient lows, but it just didn’t stand out enough, not even when compared to the Katana V2 soundbar again by Creative which I've been using since I reviewed it a while back. Things change however once you plug the Pebble Nova into a separate sound card like the Sound Blaster AE-9 which I have on my simulator setup and so in that scenario these became among the best PC speakers (regardless of channels) I’ve ever used/tested. Mids and highs got crisper and more accurate, vocals became more natural and as for bass, let’s just say the lack of an external sub-woofer didn’t feel like an issue (at least most of the time). To be fair Creative does point out quite a bit that using the Pebble Nova with a separate sound card like their very own X5 will improve their audio performance (they even sell them in a bundle).