- A modular hub featuring DAC, amp and programmable controllers
- Capable of driving headphones up to 300 ohms
- Early bird pricing of $329 / £249 (about AU$499)
For gamers and musicians of a certain age, the words Sound Blaster bring back happy memories: Creative Labs’ sound cards ruled the school in the 1990s, replacing PCs’ very basic audio with something much more exciting. And now Sound Blaster promises to change the audio world all over again with a new modular hub for all kinds of devices – not just PCs but phones, game consoles and even studio equipment.
It looks like lots of people are interested: the Kickstarter for the Sound Blaster Re:Imagine has only just gone live and it’s already reached four times its initial target.
So what exactly is the Re:Imagine? That very much depends on what you want it to do. It’s a DAC, it’s an amp, it’s a sound card, it’s a very small retro gaming PC. It’s like Lego for your audio.
Sound Blaster Re:Imagine: key features and pricing
The core of the Re:Imagine is a wedge-shaped audio hub, the Horizon Base Unit, for power, audio and device connections. It has a headphone out, line in and out, mic in, Toslink optical in and a USB Type-C audio input too. Wireless connectivity is dual-band Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0.
The hub features a 32-bit/384kHz DAC (meaning it’s capable of handling seriously hi-res files) with PCM playback, and there’s an amp designed to drive the best wired headphones from 32 to 300 ohms as well as “large” desktop speakers. And there’s a 3-inch “smart screen” to control it.
The hub is designed for both stand-alone and connected use; for the former it has a Linux operating system and it’s powered by an octa-core ARM system on a chip with a neural processing unit.
The various modules are magnetically attached and square or rectangular, and the default set gives you the aforementioned smart screen plus four programmable buttons, a rotating control knob and dual slider controls. The Horizon Base Unit has five square slots for the modules but Sound Blaster will also make a taller, six-slot version called the Vertex.
The system comes with several apps including an on-device DOS emulator for playing classic PC games; AI-powered versions of the early ’90s Sound Blaster Parrot and Dr.Sbaitso apps, which parroted your speech and offered a pre-ChatGPT conversational app respectively; an AI-powered DJ app, and audio recording and visualizer apps.
It’s certainly an interesting design, although of course its success is likely to depend on what other modules become available – and on how many people will be willing to drop $500 on one, as that’s the predicted retail price. However it’s currently much cheaper for Kickstarter early birds: $329 / £249 (about AU$499) plus shipping and taxes.
The Sound Blaster Re:Imagine is on Kickstarter now with anticipated deliveries in June 2026.
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