so back when i was in like high school creative lab sound blaster was basically
synonymous with high performance high quality gaming pc audio
and they're making a comeback but hold on Linus everyone knows an
external amp and dac is the best solution today
this new flagship sound card is dead on
arrival no you hold on smartypants
this time it's different
this sound card has built in
RGB lighting this sound card is ready to compete
in 2017.
the pro trek smart from casio features Android 2.0 energy efficient gps
functionality water resistance up to 50 meters and more check it out now at the
link below so in a nutshell the sound blaster x85
is creative Labs's latest attempt to marry a great dac chip the ess sabre 32
9018 and a great amplifier circuit to a
form factor that's convenient for pc users if a little unfamiliar to the
younger generation so taking a peek under the emi shield we
are greeted by the saber dack right there in the middle as well as this is
interesting all the main capacitors are high quality wema films and
interestingly while the rear jacks are all grounded to the bracket the
headphone jack is the one exception it's grounded internally to reduce crosstalk
with the rest of the outputs cool of course it's not quite as
impressive looking as the inside of a modi ii
and magne 2 a popular standalone stereo
dac and amp combo that enjoys the usual advantages of these solutions
particularly very low interference thanks to widely spaced pcb components
not to mention being outside the computer case we did notice though that
audio's products used fewer film capacitors and more giant electrolytics
and we also noticed that they have boring white leds on the front versus
creative's homegrown aurora reactive lighting
system which is basically individually addressable RGB lighting on yet another
damn separate piece of software to install
alongside rsync Corsair link and razer
chroma that and what a missed opportunity this is it doesn't even have
a music reaction mode so we'd recommend just ham fisting the proprietary
connector on the included strip onto an ASUS header and otherwise
ignoring it i mean this is supposed to be a sound card not an RGB controller
card like i'm i'm having flashbacks to when they started putting
firewire ports and like joystick ports onto sound cards
come to think of it that was also creative so then the main attractions in
creative software package are the blaster x acoustic engine and scout 2.0
most of the acoustic engine is creative's usual fare surround
crystallizer bass smart volume and dialog plus
crystallizer can help with compressed streaming audio and while dialog plus
sounds weird for music it can help with other types of content i would leave the
rest of them off but those two can be kind of useful
scout 2.0 on the other hand completely worthless it didn't give us
better spatial awareness than the conventional surround setting
and even worse than that scout radar this uh phone app that if it
did work would be cheating anyway was both distracting because you have to
look off screen to see it and horribly inaccurate picking up our own footsteps
and ambient sound in cs go as a blip straight ahead and usually failing to
register another player until they were within a few digital feet
relying on this thing would be a great way to boost your being knifed to kills
ratio so how about sound quality then well Anthony grabbed a selection of
headphones off of our headphone wall along with the aforementioned magne 2
and modi 2 and got to work using a maximus 9 code as a third comparison
source to represent good motherboard audio
so early on in the testing it became clear that both the ae5 and ASUS supreme
fx can drive even notoriously difficult
to drive planar dynamic headphones like the audeze lcd 2s and the 250 ohm bearer
dynamic dt990 pros and both of them at
uncomfortable listening volumes even
unsurprisingly though so does our magni and modi combo which is good because
that's the entire reason it exists so everybody's a winner
so far audio quality was a different story even without the surprisingly easy
to use draw it the way you wanted eq
highs are crisper and lows are smoother than our onboard audio which is
especially apparent in electronic music where high-pitched symbols and snare
drums sound notably coarse by comparison
rock and metal sound significantly less noisy which is to say that everything
doesn't devolve into a mess of riffs and symbols as happens with lower quality
outputs and meanwhile symphonic music sounds quite a bit smoother and fuller
with that said comparing the ae5 to our only slightly more expensive
it comes pretty close both of them are a significant
improvement over on board and i'd say the edge especially in quieter passages
goes to now obviously the 85 has the advantage
of not taking up any additional desk space
that is to say as long as your mo isn't to take it and put it on a
desk in front of you and talk about it to a camera it also though has a one less obvious
drawback that is unless you want to use
your cases often very poorly shielded front panel audio jacks you'll need a
long headphone cable to plug into the dedicated headphone jack on the rear i o
so bottom line then once upon a time filling up all your
expansion slots was like the mark of a baller system
and that's not lost on me here what is though is the fact that
something like this has one very
specific purpose to be plugged into a compatible computer
meanwhile external sound solutions
are more versatile dacs are usually driverless and cross-platform and amps
can be plugged into virtually anything with an output
so i guess the answer then boils down to how much you value three things
creative software including yes the RGB
controls their 7.1 surround support and whether
you're like into filled up PCIe slots
anker's power delivery charging enables faster and safer charging as well as
more power for your larger devices and usb-c connectors are super handy because
they allow you to use the same cable to charge your smartphone tablet and even a
supported laptop with no separate power brick required
so today we're looking at two products with these features the power core plus
26 800 as well as the power port speed
pd30 both of them have a usbc port that
can deliver up to 30 watts as well as up
to two regular usb ports they've got
hard-wearing mat exteriors this one's made of aluminum which is pretty nice
with high gloss detailing and these kind of cool blue usb ports to provide a
sleek look the foldable plug and compact size means that you can take them with
you wherever you want to go and you can check them out through the links in the
video description so thanks for watching guys if you
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