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so back when i was in like high school creative lab sound blaster was basically

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synonymous with high performance high quality gaming pc audio

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and they're making a comeback but hold on Linus everyone knows an

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external amp and dac is the best solution today

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this new flagship sound card is dead on

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arrival no you hold on smartypants

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this time it's different

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this sound card has built in

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RGB lighting this sound card is ready to compete

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in 2017.

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the pro trek smart from casio features Android 2.0 energy efficient gps

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functionality water resistance up to 50 meters and more check it out now at the

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link below so in a nutshell the sound blaster x85

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is creative Labs's latest attempt to marry a great dac chip the ess sabre 32

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9018 and a great amplifier circuit to a

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form factor that's convenient for pc users if a little unfamiliar to the

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younger generation so taking a peek under the emi shield we

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are greeted by the saber dack right there in the middle as well as this is

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interesting all the main capacitors are high quality wema films and

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interestingly while the rear jacks are all grounded to the bracket the

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headphone jack is the one exception it's grounded internally to reduce crosstalk

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with the rest of the outputs cool of course it's not quite as

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impressive looking as the inside of a modi ii

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and magne 2 a popular standalone stereo

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dac and amp combo that enjoys the usual advantages of these solutions

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particularly very low interference thanks to widely spaced pcb components

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not to mention being outside the computer case we did notice though that

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audio's products used fewer film capacitors and more giant electrolytics

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and we also noticed that they have boring white leds on the front versus

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creative's homegrown aurora reactive lighting

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system which is basically individually addressable RGB lighting on yet another

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damn separate piece of software to install

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alongside rsync Corsair link and razer

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chroma that and what a missed opportunity this is it doesn't even have

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a music reaction mode so we'd recommend just ham fisting the proprietary

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connector on the included strip onto an ASUS header and otherwise

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ignoring it i mean this is supposed to be a sound card not an RGB controller

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card like i'm i'm having flashbacks to when they started putting

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firewire ports and like joystick ports onto sound cards

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come to think of it that was also creative so then the main attractions in

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creative software package are the blaster x acoustic engine and scout 2.0

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most of the acoustic engine is creative's usual fare surround

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crystallizer bass smart volume and dialog plus

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crystallizer can help with compressed streaming audio and while dialog plus

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sounds weird for music it can help with other types of content i would leave the

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rest of them off but those two can be kind of useful

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scout 2.0 on the other hand completely worthless it didn't give us

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better spatial awareness than the conventional surround setting

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and even worse than that scout radar this uh phone app that if it

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did work would be cheating anyway was both distracting because you have to

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look off screen to see it and horribly inaccurate picking up our own footsteps

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and ambient sound in cs go as a blip straight ahead and usually failing to

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register another player until they were within a few digital feet

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relying on this thing would be a great way to boost your being knifed to kills

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ratio so how about sound quality then well Anthony grabbed a selection of

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headphones off of our headphone wall along with the aforementioned magne 2

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and modi 2 and got to work using a maximus 9 code as a third comparison

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source to represent good motherboard audio

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so early on in the testing it became clear that both the ae5 and ASUS supreme

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fx can drive even notoriously difficult

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to drive planar dynamic headphones like the audeze lcd 2s and the 250 ohm bearer

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dynamic dt990 pros and both of them at

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uncomfortable listening volumes even

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unsurprisingly though so does our magni and modi combo which is good because

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that's the entire reason it exists so everybody's a winner

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so far audio quality was a different story even without the surprisingly easy

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to use draw it the way you wanted eq

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highs are crisper and lows are smoother than our onboard audio which is

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especially apparent in electronic music where high-pitched symbols and snare

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drums sound notably coarse by comparison

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rock and metal sound significantly less noisy which is to say that everything

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doesn't devolve into a mess of riffs and symbols as happens with lower quality

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outputs and meanwhile symphonic music sounds quite a bit smoother and fuller

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with that said comparing the ae5 to our only slightly more expensive

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it comes pretty close both of them are a significant

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improvement over on board and i'd say the edge especially in quieter passages

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goes to now obviously the 85 has the advantage

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of not taking up any additional desk space

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that is to say as long as your mo isn't to take it and put it on a

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desk in front of you and talk about it to a camera it also though has a one less obvious

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drawback that is unless you want to use

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your cases often very poorly shielded front panel audio jacks you'll need a

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long headphone cable to plug into the dedicated headphone jack on the rear i o

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so bottom line then once upon a time filling up all your

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expansion slots was like the mark of a baller system

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and that's not lost on me here what is though is the fact that

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something like this has one very

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specific purpose to be plugged into a compatible computer

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meanwhile external sound solutions

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are more versatile dacs are usually driverless and cross-platform and amps

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can be plugged into virtually anything with an output

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so i guess the answer then boils down to how much you value three things

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creative software including yes the RGB

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controls their 7.1 surround support and whether

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you're like into filled up PCIe slots

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anker's power delivery charging enables faster and safer charging as well as

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more power for your larger devices and usb-c connectors are super handy because

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they allow you to use the same cable to charge your smartphone tablet and even a

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supported laptop with no separate power brick required

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so today we're looking at two products with these features the power core plus

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26 800 as well as the power port speed

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pd30 both of them have a usbc port that

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can deliver up to 30 watts as well as up

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to two regular usb ports they've got

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hard-wearing mat exteriors this one's made of aluminum which is pretty nice

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with high gloss detailing and these kind of cool blue usb ports to provide a

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sleek look the foldable plug and compact size means that you can take them with

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you wherever you want to go and you can check them out through the links in the

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video description so thanks for watching guys if you

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disliked this video you know what to do but if you liked it hit the like button get subscribed check out the link to

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where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there is

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our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum

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which you should totally join