WEBVTT

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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the ASUS Zonar Essence

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STX now I talk about sound cards a lot

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and people ask me for sound card recommendations a lot and you know

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there's sort of lower-end ones the whole Zone R line actually is just kind of

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awesome so whatever your price range is just buy a Zonar and you'll be fine um

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but this one is like the baller Zonar

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this is the Zonar with all the features that you need especially if you use

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headphones so 124 DB sound to noise

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ratio which is just ridiculous I mean remember that decb are essentially a

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doubling of of in terms of sound to noise ratio it's a doubling of quality

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every time you go up 3 DB okay so think

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remember that so when you see something that's 110 DB sound to noise ratio that

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is like many times worse than this okay

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it has swappable opamps which means you can actually customize the sound of it

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according to your liking so if you don't know what opamps are those are the uh

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the components on the board that actually do the amplification for the

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card okay so we're going to go ahead and start opening this up the reason I'm

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opening this is cuz we're using it in like an ultimate system build guide so

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if I was picking an ultimate sound card for me personally this is the one that I

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would choose let's have a look at what ASUS has to say for themselves on the

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box here anyway though so industry leading okay with basically no

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Distortion built-in headphone amp provides exceptional quality even with

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600 ohms of impedance remember guys for context a Sennheiser hd800 is 600 ohms

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of impedance so we're talking like spending well over a grand on headphones

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before you're going to run into the limits of what this can drive okay

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nickon fine gold capacitors offer great Dynamic performance it uses audio

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capacitors which are actually different from the kinds of capacitors that some

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competing products are using on sound products whether it's built into a

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motherboard or whether it's built into a sound card where they're more like

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motherboard capacitors different capacitors will affect the way the sound

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comes out of the analog signal like remember guys okay any of the music

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you're listening to is inherently digital any of the sound you listen to

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is inherently analog so the process of

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converting that digital signal to an analog sound is extremely complicated

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and depends on every aspect of the design of the card so everything from

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the processor to the Dax so that's the digital to analog converter everything

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to the do they have anything on here about the Emi shielding okay well Emi

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shielding to keep just random interference that's bouncing around

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inside your PC from from affecting any part of that process to the uh to the op

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amps as well everything affects the process so okay moving right along

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perfectly Shield Emi free okay there it is uh customize your sound card

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effortlessly with swappable app opam sockets you can just buy them online

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it's not a big deal uh okay in terms of driver features they'll be digital live

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D be headphone D be virtual speaker they'll be Pro logic 2 direct sound 3D

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vocal effect smart volume acoustic Echo oh acoustic Echo cancellation that's

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kind of neat okay and let's go ahead and check out the card itself so they have

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like an awesome picture of the card which we'll use to help us through the

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process oh yeah so guys if you if you

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don't know I'm running um an ASUS uh s

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what am I running I'm running a Zonar zent which is a similar card to this one

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but actually not quite as good if I was going to pick my ultimate sound card

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this one would be it so in terms of IO you've got stereo outputs so front right

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front left this is if you're using an external amplifier so for for Amplified

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speakers or something like that then you've got your amped headphone jack

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your line in and your spit this is your digital out so this is a headphone

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lovers sound card this is not for you

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know 7.1 or you know whatever sort of

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things that people think are fancy this is for audio files who are interested in

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stereo speakers high quality output to stereo speakers or high quality output

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to headphones it does have front panel Jacks so you can still plug in your

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front panel headphone jack and microphone Jack but honestly guys if

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you're not using these ports you're doing it wrong with a sound card like

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this has a dedicated Molex power adapter

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or connector rather and that is because this card actually does draw some power

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in order to deliver that Punchy sound at a moment's notice it also has some very

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large caps going on which is going to help with that as well you can see that

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while this sort of shield on here this Emi Shield looks like it has gaps in it

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there's only very small gaps so from the inside of the case there's almost no way

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for any kind of interference to get in there you can see it's actually blocked there's a copper piece that's right in

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there that makes it so that nothing can really sort of get in there it uses PCI

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or rather PCI Express 1X connectivity remember guys that can be plugged into

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any PCI Express slot whether it's 1X 4X 8X or 16x PCI E1 pcie2 pcie3 all of

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those standards are are basically interchangeable for the purposes of

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something like a sound card here's an adapter so you can take those analog

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outputs and you can run them to just sort of a regular stereo Jack okay

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here's an adapter for this so you can run uh smaller jack headphones or

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microphone off of this all right and then there is a oh awesome I actually

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didn't realize this but this coax Jack right here is actually Optical as well

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so you just use the included adapter and you can get an uh you can do optical

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audio out from there too all right included documentation audio Precision

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test report your individual sound card

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was actually tested and this was printed out from your sound card so this will

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give you the full characteristics of your card this card that's in the Box as

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opposed to being some kind of generic you know how a lot of high-end products

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come with like a certificate of performance or something like that that

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actually has no basis on this thing this

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physical object that's in the Box not how it works with an Essence STX this is

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a serious sound card all right we got a thing about the

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philosophy of something in a picture of the card okay that I'm less interested

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in moving right along we've got uh ASUS's driver disc don't use this

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download the latest off Theus website they're excellent also there's a third

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party um Universal driver for Zonar

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cards that actually has a couple of extra features so that's kind of cool

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here's a sticker that you could put on something okay uh here's a quick start

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guide here's a wow there's there's a lot of documentation here slick there's

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another quick start guide I told you there's two quick start guides are these

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the same thing oh no they have different part numbers on them okay and then

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there's uh like another poster they have two posters included

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yep okay all right

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cool um I think that pretty much covers

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it so if you're looking for a sound card recommendation my general recommendation

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is some kind of Zonar card if you're looking for a specific recommendation I

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would take this one personally um I'm more of a headphone guy I don't use

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surround so that's that's the context of that recommendation from me but uh let's

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just see if we're missing anything here hyper grounding circuitry design okay oh

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I don't know if I mentioned but it uses a bur Brown PCM 1792 a digital analog

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converter so that's part of achieving that 124 DB single noise ratio this one

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can do even better than that swappable op amps perfectly sealed analog output

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path with all that shielding and all of that good stuff and I think that pretty

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much covers it thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the

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Zonar Essence STX from ASUS don't forget to subscribe to L's Tech tips for more

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