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now this is a little guide that I've been meaning to do for a while this is

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an ASUS Zonar zense or sense uh whatever

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you prefer to call it I'm going to call it Zen for the sake of pronouncing it

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how I feel it should be pronounced uh here you can see there's a little

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acoustic powered by Sennheiser logo on

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the side so that is because this is part of that bundle that comes with the PC

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350 uh special edition headset which

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uses uh the larger Jacks for for both the microphone as well as the headphones

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here's your standard 7.1 Channel audio out uh rather 8 channel 7.1 I don't know

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why they call it 7.1 Channel and then there's a spit if out that is capable of

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both coaxial as well as optical audio

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output so what I'm going to be doing with this sound card today which I did

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do a full Tech tips episode on and um

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what I what I talked about a lot in that Tech tips episode was the importance of

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a headphone amp for getting the most out of your s so this card has an integrated

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amp and today what we're going to be doing is we are going to be changing oh

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yeah the integrated amp that's why it needs a MOX power connector even though

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it's a sound card uh we're going to be changing the opamps so isus had a um

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like a special little program a little while back where they were offering a

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free amp upgrade for the Zonar Essence

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St STX and the Zin so here I have my uh

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my opamps here these are the replacement ones and I'm going to be walking you

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guys through the procedure of changing the off amps on your Zonar

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zents so first of all there are a few screws that need to be removed here now

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remember you can put in whichever op amps you want the ones here are

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um yeah I'm just going to show you guys the part number and let you figure that

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out for yourself because the reality of it is I am actually not that hardcore of

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an audio buff so I wouldn't know the difference

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between these and other opamps so

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hopefully you guys can see that pretty

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well okay so I'm just going to be showing you guys the hardware aspect of

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installing the stock ASUS op amp upgrade kit so undoing the

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screws I better zoom out so you guys can see what I'm doing better

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here

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okay now I'm not sure if this is going to come off yet there may be one more screw let's just undo this one and see

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what

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happens there we go okay so we're going to pull off what is a shroud SL Emi

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blocker slash uh heat sink I don't know what it is but

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it looks like it's also attached to the PCI bracket here so that's uh one more

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screw there we

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go looks like it uses the same kind of screw so should be no problem to

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remember which ones go where okay it is not a heat sink so let the record show

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that so right there those are the included op

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amps and replacing them should be quite straightforward here this also gives us

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a look at the um at the insides of the

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Zone r card that we're using here so hm this

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might actually be kind of challenging CU I'm having a little bit of trouble getting my uh camera to stay right now

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ah there we go okay so what I may

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actually need since it's kind of hard to get in there is

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uh H I might need just a little screwdriver or something so give me a

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moment here guys okay so I'm back with a little slot screwdriver so what I'm

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going to do to remove these guys I'm just going to pry them up a little bit

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here that was

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easy there we

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are just going to pull these guys up woo they jumped around look at that

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like little bed bugs beep beep beep so

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before I take them off completely I'm just going to note which way they are

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installed so the Little Dot here is in the bottom left so I'm going to go ahead

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and install the new ones in the same

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orientation as the existing

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ones there's a tech tip for you when you're replacing something install the

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new one the same way the old one was in there so there they are so I've got my

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little dots on the bottom left here so I'm going to go ahead and position

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them in the right

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position if I can if that's not too

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challenging for me it may just

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be uhoh he's

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stuck

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uhoh

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H

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challenging never fear there we are okay let's try this again so maybe

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I'll do the bottom one first cuz that one looks easier so let's line up the

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one side and then

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the other side should go in got to give the legs a bit of a

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squeeze and then we can push that

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in okay so whoa I just hit my lens awesome

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last thing I need is more scratches on this

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lens give me a second here

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guys okay got it guys just needed to give it a little bit more pressure and

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then there you go it is now firmly seated so you just want to check both

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sides uh I'm just inspecting it a little

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closer right now okay yeah so you can just inspect both sides make sure those

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legs are in there

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right there you are and now we'll go

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ahead and put in our other one being sure to put it in the correct

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orientation and squeeze the legs closed a little bit cuz I noticed I had a

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little bit of trouble getting the other one in with them so wide

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set there we go just make sure they're

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uh positioned in the right place and

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then go ahead and push down

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firmly oh you know what see that one went in a lot further I don't know if

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the other one's uh quite in the right place

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actually

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h okay let's try pulling up the uh first

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one see this is the problem with doing guides when you haven't actually done

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something

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before okay so there you have it the okay guys sorry I got it figured out

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what happened was the legs of this one were a little bit wide and they were

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getting caught on the uh on the plastic

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housing around the op amp slot so now it

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is figured out they are both in firmly and securely so all that's left is to uh

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throw the Shroud back on and enjoy the upgraded sound quality remember these

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pieces are the ones that are actually going to determine the

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overall um in a lot of ways the overall

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quality and the overall flavor of the sound coming out of your sound card so I

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look forward to trying them out thanks for checking this out online as techtips

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don't forget to subscribe for more unboxings guides reviews and other

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