LH Labs makes a lot of amazing claims
about the geek out but I have to take what they say with a grain of salt
because they are a division of light harmonic the same company that brought
us the 10 GB Lightspeed USB cable a
$1,000 USB 2 cable for Chumps so welcome
to my review of The Geek out 450
with the purchase of a qualifying Intel processor SSD or knck you could
instantly win an Intel gaming Jersey and be entered in the draw for the ultimate
system click now to learn more all right so some of the stuff that they claim is
outlandish but that doesn't mean everything that light harmonic says is
going to be pure rubbish so first up and this is legitimately pretty cool the
geek out natively decodes and amplifies
pretty much any kind of audio signal that you can throw at it all the way
from your Cheapo MP3s to high sample
rate 384 khz 32bit PCM and even DSD 128
I mean we're talking individual songs that are 500 Megs at the high end there
and it does all that stuff in a very appealing form factor it's actually
smaller than my previous carry around
USB amp and Dack the file E10 to which I
will be comparing it and it's more featur Laden to boot inside the Fairly
robust chipping box you get a handy little carrying bag a usb2 cable in case
your ports are a bit cramped and the unit itself which has a pleasing subtle
brushed finish on the aluminum housing on the front are LED indicators to let
you know what the DAC is doing and on the back is a key to help you interpret
the aforementioned LED indicators on the top we've got the USB interface on the
right are the volume buttons that offer surprisingly granular sound level
adjustments although be sure to turn your system volume down when first
firing this baby up since otherwise it'll be really really loud and they
have an extra feature called the 3D aier
that is supposed to make your music sound uh more like it's surrounding you
and less in your head which can be activated by holding both buttons at the
same time for about a second I would have preferred a dial here because it
would make adjusting volume by feel easier and additionally I didn't find
the 3D feature made much of a difference with headphones and with some IMs I
actually found that it added a significant background his that was extremely distracting
finally on the bottom is where the headphones go up to two pairs of them
which is actually a super cool feature if you sometimes listen with a friend if
you're listening alone bear in mind the impedance rating next to the Jacks
that's the output impedance of that output so the 471 will likely be best
for your headphones unless you're driving larger cans with higher
impedance LH Labs recommends this model
for up to 100 ohm rated headphones with a higher-end geek out 1000 model
available for big guns like the odsy LCD
2s either output will work but pairing
your gear correctly will deliver the best results all right so what's the
process of actually using this thing like on Mac and Linux no drivers are
needed but since apparently Windows isn't 100% compliant with devices that
support asynchronous USB audio Class 2 you need a driver on Windows it's
unfortunate but not a complete deal breaker in my mind once you download and
install the necessary file all you need to do is for standard listening change
your default audio device as usual with that finished we can do listening tests
now right not yet I actually added an extra step and I can't find the bloody
thing right now but we'll overlay it I added an extra step that was missing in
my last amp to amp comparison a sound
level meter to help me ensure that the volume was the same between each amp I
used a 1 khz Test tone and dialed each
amp in at 85 DB with each head phone
before doing any side-by-side listening this is really important because pretty
much across the board people will report
that louder music sounds better if all
other things are equal so I started with my usual listening methodology top 40
music from the Google Play Music Store on my favorite headphones my hd8 DJs and
then I threw in a pair of dt770 pro adoms for variety and side by side at a
reasonable listening volume there's no difference with either of these
headphones that I can detect at higher volumes like if we get irresponsible and
just crank it till it sounds fun the geek out scales noticeably better than
the E10 without sound getting unbalanced or distorted though so that's a definite
point in its favor if you're into that of course this product wasn't designed
for your typical streaming quality music files though it was designed for high
definition audio files so after the usual I decided to mix things up a
little bit and order this ALB in four flavors from the 2L music store I went
with high quality 320 kobit pers second MP3 44 khz 16bit CD quality flak 192 khz
24-bit highres flak and finally the 6
gig mother of all albums DSD 128 quality
the highest quality one they provided I Then followed this Yamaha guide combined
with this imer post to correctly configure Fubar to even and play the
super high resolution files found myself a quiet room to sit in and tried
desperately to tell the difference between any of them now to be clear
crummy MP3s are rubbish and easy to pick out of a lineup but these high bit rate
ones I don't know man sometimes I was sure the flax had a little bit more
detail and dynamic range but other times I was equally sure that there was no
difference at all and for myself if the difference between high-end
highdefinition audio files and high quality MP threes is that difficult to
hear then I'll save my hard drive space and money so back to the product itself
for the conclusion subjectively must be
my tin ear but when it comes to amp and da upgrades I'm usually pretty hard
pressed to tell the difference compared to changing out headphones so I'll Focus
here on what you get objectively you get format compatibility that really is
exceptional if you feel like that sort of thing is important you get a compact
USB amp that is legitimately better than what your PC or as this amusing image
from a headfi user demonstrates other device probably has on board and third
you get to feel like one of the cool kids for having a Neo device that enables you to get the most out of your
highdefinition music collection and that you can also put in your pocket just
don't do both of those things at the same time because this puppy gets mucho
hot when it's running speaking of mucho hot Mast drop has a seriously Hot Drop
right now and I don't know where that mod mic ended up
ah there it is there a speaking of mucho hot Mass drop has a seriously Hot Drop
available now the mod mic 4.0 which you
can check out my review of here it's a mic that you can attach to any pair of
headphones to provide clear voice Communications while still enjoying the
sound quality of a proper pair of high-end headphones as opposed to a
gaming headset it's pretty affordable as it is but for the next week Mass drop is
offering you the insane price of we don't know yet so there will be a
graphic I'm sure most of you have heard of mass drop by now but if you haven't
you should definitely check them out they're a site that facilitates group
buys for a wide variety of products from clothing to multi-tools like the
Leatherman Wave to computer hardware like the mod mic they work directly with
manufacturers and Distributors to guarantee you the best price available
and they ship to as many countries as the manufacturer will allow they have
two options to buy you can buy in at any price or you can commit to buy and only
confirm your order if the drop reaches lowest price I've used them before my
team uses them and I know that many of you probably use them already anyway so
I have no issues fully recommending Mass drop and to top it off they're actually
giving away a few units of the mod mic to some of our lucky viewers just sign
up using the link in the video description and you will be entered to
win but lonus you might say I've already got a mass drop account because they're
awesome uh how do I enter they've got you covered just leave a comment below
this video mentioning either a product you'd like to see me review next or a
product you'd like to see on mass drop and you will be entered to win winners
will be contacted by mass drop September 6 6
6th anyway guys like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it
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