Creative Stage Pro Review

Design

• Half-width design
• Wired subwoofer
• Remote control

Creative’s previous soundbars, at least the ones I’ve had a look at, have had a gamer aspect about them. The Stage Pro still feels as if it’s a desktop soundbar first, cinema bar second, but it is a little smarter in appearance, less conspicuous; neat and tidy but unassuming in appearance apart from the gold on its sides.

It looks rather undistinguished from the front, but that’s fine given this isn’t intended to grab the eye. It only comes in a black finish but the overall build quality seems good enough despite the quite obvious use of plastic.

There’s a display on the front that’s easily bright enough to be seen from the luxury of your couch, while connections live in a recessed area around the back. Controls are on the top of the speaker and cover power, volume, Bluetooth pairing/sources and a ‘Super-Wide’ button. More on that later.

The subwoofer, which relies on a wired connection to the main bar, is similarly unassuming. It’s thin rather than squat, so it saves on space in a similar way, and as it’s a front-firing subwoofer, there’s no need to place near a wall – you’re free to place it anywhere… the attached cable allows for, obviously.

It’s worth noting that the main bar’s height can block the TV’s IR receiver. The speaker tilts upward to push audio towards ear level, but in doing so, it blocks the remote control receiver on my TCL 4K TV.

Features

• SuperWide sound
• Bluetooth 5.3
• HDMI ARC

There aren’t many features here. There’s no Wi-Fi, but there is Bluetooth 5.3 for audio streaming. It’s a 2.1 channel soundbar, so its priority is stereo, and while it supports Dolby Audio and Dolby Digital+ soundtracks, there’s no room for Dolby Atmos immersive shenanigans here.

Connections include an auxiliary input (which I don’t see too often), an optical input, HDMI ARC, and USB-C. These cover the basics.

With 160W of peak power, it’s capable of a fair bit of grunt when pushed, though it’s more likely to push out about 80W RMS of power (40W for the main bar, 40W for the subwoofer).

Where things get interesting is with the SuperWide feature. It expands the size of the sound from the Stage Pro, pushing audio out wide in a way that’s much bigger than the speaker. There’s the choice of Near-Field and Far-Field, depending on how close you’re sitting to the speaker. You’ve got a choice of four audio modes: Movie, Music, Vocal and Gaming.

That’s all the Stage Pro has to offer in terms of features, despite the ‘Pro’ name. No smarts, no Wi-Fi, no real attempt at spatial audio. Keeping it simple, however, could be to the Stage Pro’s benefit.

Sound Quality

• Wide soundstage in Far-field mode
• Weighty bass
• Solid levels of clarity and detail

What’s impressive about the Far-field option is that it does expand on the width of the soundstage, and in a way that’s bigger than I anticipated. It achieves this while keeping voices clear and without sounding noticeably thin, a problem with soundbars that try to stretch audio.

Watching the Mayfair Witches on iPlayer, and there’s a scene where a character enters their father’s memory (it’s weird) but the sounds of the echoes within the memory are placed far from the speaker’s sides, and it actually helps the immersion in the scene by widening the sense of scale.

Switching to Oppenheimer, the Stage Pro proves to be a solid effort in terms of clarity – the detail of the droplets in the film’s opening come across naturally; the subwoofer provides a punchy sense of bass – the overall sound that emerges from the Stage Pro perhaps lacks a bit of clarity, but there’s energy and dynamism in its performance.

A 4K Blu-ray of Ballerina delivers a punchy low-end, though there’s a limit to how deep the subwoofer can go. With the action and gunshots that pepper the film, they all translate well in terms of clarity, energy and detail. In the action scenes especially, this is a soundbar that can go loud, delivering scale and impact.

Again, in terms of tone, there’s nothing here that pricks up my ears in terms of sounding unnatural; whether it’s glass smashing, explosions, or the many people who get hit in the face over the film’s runtime.

Jumping to a 4K Blu-ray of Civil War and the clarity with dialogue is so good I don’t feel as if I need to engage Vocal mode to hear what’s being said in some of the louder scenes.

There is some distortion at the beginning of chapter six, and distortion does rear its head in the second half of the film, but playing around with the bass EQ can remedy that problem (if it appears).

And, even though this isn’t an immersive soundbar, the sense of height it can provide also impresses. In it’s Near-Field mode there’s perhaps a greater grasp of detail and definition, but the Far-Field mode is perhaps the best execution I’ve heard from a soundbar as compact as this. Often is the case where this type of mode just ends up with the bar sounding like it should have done in its default mode. This is truly wide and expansive.

There is a problem with the soundbar’s volume levels, especially when switching through sources. Jumping from HDMI or a TV’s built-in app and the Stage Pro can veer from normal volumes to excessively loud or surprisingly quiet. There’s no consistency between the various inputs and, as far as I can see, no way to minimise these massive swings in volume.

You can play music from your mobile device to the Creative Stage Pro through Bluetooth, and though it comes with a Music mode, I can’t hear any difference between any of the collected modes.

It’s interesting playing with near- and far-field modes here, as the former pushes vocals forward to become the focus point of the track, creating a sense of depth with music. Far-field flattens the soundstage so everything exists on the same level. Near-field, for me, is the better of the two for music.

And in terms of sound, what works with TV and film, works with music. With Billie Eilish’s Wallflower there’s a good clarity and tone to her vocals and instruments, while bass comes across in a measured way with a decent, warm thud when the heavier percussion comes into play.

Again, don’t expect the bass to travel deep with a subwoofer in tow – Danielle Ponder’s Roll The Credits has come good weighty bass throughout but I hoped for more power. It’s a good effort for music, though, adding another string to the Stage Pro’s bow.

Should you buy it?