Razer Announces The Leviathan Sound Bar
by Brett Howse on October 28, 2014 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Peripherals
- Audio
- Razer
Razer has traditionally been a gaming peripheral company, which started with the Boomslang mouse in 1998. Over the years, they have expanded their portfolio to cover more of a gamer’s needs, adding keyboards, keypads, mouse mats, and headphones as well as complete systems. Today, Razer has expanded their product family again with the launch of the Razer Leviathan sound bar.
The Leviathan is able to produce 5.1 virtual surround sound using Dolby Virtual Speakers and accepts Dolby Digital and Pro Logic II multichannel audio. The bar itself contains four tuned drivers, with two 2.5” full range and two 0.74” tweeters, which are powered by a 30 watt RMS amplifier. Frequency response is quoted as 180 Hz to 20 KHz on the sound bar itself. Complementing the bar and filling in the remainder of the audio range is a 5.25” 30 watt RMS subwoofer with a downward firing driver, which has a quoted response of 20 Hz to 180 Hz.
The sound bar supports analog, optical, or Bluetooth inputs, with the Leviathan supporting any Bluetooth 4.0 device streaming over A2DP, and Razer has also made sure to include aptX audio codec support for higher quality A2DP streaming. To make the connection to the sound bar as easy as possible the Leviathan also includes NFC to configure the Bluetooth pairing. The bar also supports several tilt angles (0°, 15°, and 18°) to ensure it works well in a variety of situations.
If the idea of virtual surround sound through the use of a sound bar seems like something you might be interested in, the Razer Leviathan will be available for pre-order on razerzone.com with worldwide availability starting in November. Prices are USA: $199/EUR: €199.
Source: Razer
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aliasfox - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
Why does every Tom, Dick, and Harry think they can waltz into the market and sell headphones/soundbars/speakers? It's sad that companies that actually do proper sound engineering like Sennheiser/Bowers&Wilkins/Paradigm are being out-marketed and outsold by Beats/Bose/Vizio, or even worse, Chinese OEM products with big brand names like Skullcandy and Razer with zero experience whatsoever...DanNeely - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
Because every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows how to pick out good speakers from a listing on Amazon/etc using a simple 2 step process. 1 Decide how much he wants to spend. 2 Find the model with the most watts from a brand he's vaguely heard of before.otherwise - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
Because Skullcandy and Beats realized that a huge chunk of the population buys headphones/earbuds/IEMs based on fashion and not audio quality, and capitalized on it.Impulses - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
B&W kind of glitz on the marketing too, they just aim it higher... And everyone's getting in on the act because it's a fast growing market, doesn't mean they'll necessarily succeed, Beats is like the one outlier...Skullcandy has actually put out some decent cans tho, no clue about their IEM, even Beats have gotten better. Beats' market share eclipses everyone else's tho, even put together, guess there's something to be said for being first to tap the mass market.
Even companies with decades of experience put out duds too, or get bought by Harman and turned into a budget brand that regurgitates old designs. The lines are getting blurred all over, if the average consumer can't be bothered to do any research then they deserve their fate.
aliasfox - Wednesday, October 29, 2014 - link
Skullcandy started out as a rebrander of Chinese products - the kind of bulk crap that anybody with a tiny bit of savvy can get in quantities of 1000 from Alibaba/TaoBao. If they've become more discerning, I'll have to re-evaluate.I still haven't found a pair of Beats that are reasonable on sound, regardless of price. I have Sennheiser HD380s in my office drawer and they may be ugly-ish, but they sound pretty phenomenal.
B&W does spend more on marketing than most other audio brands, but they generally have the engineering to back it up - B&W 8-series speakers aren't known to be great values, but they aren't known to be particularly poor performers in their price bracket, either.
GimmickMusik - Thursday, October 30, 2014 - link
I agree, I have a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pros. I would choose them over a pair of Beats anyday. I actually remember a time when Beats weren't used as a signature product for Dr.Dre, and they actually had a phenomenal quality, but then Mass production and commercialization happened and the quality of the product just kept dropping every single year.In terms of leisurely listening I just use a pair of Sol Republic earbuds. They cost me $40 and sound just as "good" as a $60 pair of Skullcandy's. The issue with Skullcandy though isn't necessarily the fact that they focused on design over sound. The issue is just that they haven't put any research into new audio drivers, but they still charge the same amount of money every year for their products. As far as Boss is concerned I think that they sound awesome if you just want to listen to some music, but as far as audio work is concerned (what I use my HD 280's for) they are not ideal at all. Their drivers are very unique to them. It's something that nobody else really has, but as a result if you try to mix something with them it's going to sound like a huge mess on anyone else's earbuds/headphones.
Impulses - Friday, October 31, 2014 - link
The overall sound quality of Beats cans has gone up since their introduction IMO, not down... It isn't saying much because they were awful to begin with, but they were mass produced junk from the start so that hasn't really changed, I don't know how you could suggest they were ever NOT mass produced...Recent models like the Solo 2 sound pretty good in comparison to their direct competitors from Senn, Beyer, V-Moda, B&W, etc. Other models are just ok; they haven't improved to the point where I can say some of their cans AREN'T a rip off. I'm not trying to defend them or Skullcandy, I haven't even kept a headphone from either brand, but I do think blind brand hate is silly (specially if you haven't kept up with their releases).
FWIW, my small collection of headphones has an equal mix of old school brands (Beyerdynamic, Etymotic, Sennheiser, Koss) and more recent newcomers (NAD, Philips, V-Moda, Xiaomi) as well as budget stuff (JVC, MEElectronics)... I've tried a few headphones and IEM up and down the product lines of those brands and I can't confidently say one is consistently offering a better value than the rest.
Shoot, I think Philips of all things has a more consistent lineup thru the low to mid end, even compared to something like Senn, but they don't fill every gap regardless (e.g. still tough to beat an HD558 on sale for budget open headphones). Skullcandy's slight transformation seemed to start earlier than Beat's but it may have stagnated, they put out a few pretty decent models a few years ago (Aviator etc) but still seem to be pushing those.
SkyBill40 - Friday, October 31, 2014 - link
Bose has been around far longer than some of the more audiophile grade associated names you've tossed around and makes some outstanding products. They're far better than the group you've placed them in, but that's your opinion.Personally speaking, when it comes to high end speakers, I'm all about Definitive Technology. Such a shame they don't make headphones. I have a very nice pair of Bose ones for that, but I'd be all over a pair made by DT.
prime2515103 - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
This sort of false advertising should be illegal. 20Hz from a 5.25” woofer? Is that +3/-30db?Impulses - Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - link
The Infinity speakers at my desk's side have bigger drivers than that sub's woofer... :p More like "subwoofer"*, the whole setup might actually be a step back from a pair of crappy Logitech 5.1.