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This video is brought to you by the Intel Core i7 4770K unlocked processor.

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If you're a speed freak, add an Intel 3500 series SSD to your Haswell system

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for a truly enthusiast class experience. Now, I often get asked which sound card

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to buy. And the answer over the last couple years has been inevitably

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uh decide on a budget and then buy whatever Zonar card fits inside your

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budget because it's pretty much that simple. Back in the day, every sound

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card that was a sound card worth buying was creative. And then for a while, it

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was Ozentech. And nowadays, it really seems like it's just ASUS is the way to

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go. But not all of their sound cards are built with the same things in mind. In

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fact, they have a couple of offerings at the same price point around that $200

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range that do differ a little bit. So, today we're going to be having a look at

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the Zonar Feebis. This is the, as you

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may or may not have figured out based on

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the massive Republic of Gamers logo on

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the front of the box, this is the gaming oriented card. So, it's not necessarily

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about, oh, well, we brought you the absolute best possible DAC and we

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brought you, you know, swappable op amps for, you know, the music listening audio

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files out there. It's more along the lines of the features that enhance the

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gaming experience. So, why don't we start with the card itself physically,

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which has a very ROG look to it, as you

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can plainly see, at least you'll be able to once I finally get it out of the box.

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So, it uses a PCI Express 1X interface. This is the same as the Zonar STX, which

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is actually for music listeners, maybe the better choice. It has dedicated 7.1

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audio out using all 3 and 12 mm jacks.

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This is again a more gaming oriented feature because many audio files are

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going to be using headphones that use the larger jack style. So they would

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have to adapt to get down to this whereas many gamers are using gaming

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headsets which use standard 3 and 12 mm jacks. Another thing that gamers often

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do is they'll have mic and headphones and then they'll have a separate speaker

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setup that they use sometimes. So that's why it has dedicated plugs for all of

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them. This is in contrast to my personal Zonar Zense which is actually a very

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very very similar card which uses a

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breakout cable in order to achieve those surround uh those uh those surround

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outputs. There's a link right here. So that's for the external control box.

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More on that in a moment. And other than that, you've got pretty standard looking

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sound card. So the back of the card is a matte black PCB, which I've come to

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expect at this point from high-end gaming gear. Then on the top of the card, we find a PCI Express power

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connector. This is essential for the amped headphone port on this card. It

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can handle up to 600 ohm impedance headphones. So yeah, you need more power

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than can be delivered by a simple PCI Express slot. Other than that, speaking

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of 600 ohm impedance headphones, there's a Zonar Feebas logo at the top that

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glows red when you're in high impedance headphone mode and blue when you're in

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low impedance headphone mode, which I think is kind of cool. And the rest of it is covered by a simple matte black

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shroud with ROG branding on it as well as ASUS branding and then some very cool

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aggressive looking lines. Now, this actually has a functional purpose as

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well as looking nice. An EMI shield does exactly what you might think it does and

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reduces electromagnetic interference by

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shielding it. So, there you go. We can remove that though by simply removing

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four screws, which gives us a better look at the actual guts of this card.

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Man, it just looks high-end. It's got all these components on it and stuff.

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So, the processor itself is an Oxygen CMI 8888. This is a slightly updated

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version of the controller that's in the Zent. And then for our DAC, we're using

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a TI PCM 1796A DAC. Slightly slept

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stepped slept down. It's asleep over there. No, it's not asleep over there.

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Slightly stepped down versus the Zonar Essence STX. And speaking of things that

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are step down versus the Zonar STX is what you're going to see looking closely

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at this card is that while it does use JRC 2114 op amps, they are soldered. So

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you do not unfortunately have the option to change them out for different op

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amps. What op amps basically do is they

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can color the sound or they can they could be more warm or more rich or more

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uh flat or whatever else. And some people have a very their their ear is

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very tuned to a preference of what they want to hear and they like being able to

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swap out op amps like you can on the Essence 1 or the Zonar Essence STX. Not

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possible on this card. It's sort of a take it or leave it. We've tuned it this

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way and this is how you're going to experience it because this card is

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optimized for gaming. Not necessarily those discern this discerning m music.

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My screen turned off. those discerning music listeners and those audio files

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and those sorts who want that customizability. Also, there's a

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headphone amp built into this guy right here. So, there's the that is a

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TPA6120 A2 headphone amp able to handle, as I said before, up to 600 ohm

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headphones. The 7.1 circuitry is completely separate from the headphone

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circuitry. And while it's reasonably high-end, it's not to nearly the same

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extent because, well, there's a lot more of it. And it's deemed less important

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from a gaming or even an audio file standpoint because you're bound to be

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using probably There you go. There's your

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spitf out. Probably a digital out to some kind of external decoder or you're

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going to be using headphones directly off of it. And if you're using something like powered speakers, they're not going

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to be so high-end that you'd notice much of a difference. Anyhow, this brings us

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to the Feebas control pod, which is maybe not that different from what you

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might find if you have a pair of speakers that includes one of these already, but it does have some cool

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functionality. So, it allows you to extend your headphone and microphone jacks, meaning that you can, you know,

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plug in short cables. So, some headphones come with the breakaway cables these days. You've also got a

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control pod cable. There you go. That goes right there. So, you go ahead and

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plug all these in together and they're conveniently togetherly located

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locations just like that. And it allows you to do a few different things. You

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can adjust your volume with the knob on the top. You can mute your mic by

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pressing it. And then there you go. You plug in your front headphone and microphone. It's got a bit of weight to

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it. But this this, my friends, is where the special sauce happens. Those are two

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microphones. And if you were someone who

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was not using this correctly, you can use this as a microphone. Please don't

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do that. That's get a real microphone. But what you can use this for is

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environmental noise cancellation. Now, I haven't used the Zonar Feebist yet. I'm

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unboxing it now. But I have used their Thunder FX external sound card, and I

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can tell you their environmental noise cancellation, at least on that one, I'm sure it's better on this. It's like,

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yeah, thumbs up you because what it does is it uses these mics to listen to the

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environment and then the microphone on your headset itself to listen to you and

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it's able to cancel out what these ones here in a very, very cool, very

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effective. It works. It's awesome. It's actually really, really good. So that

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along with their Zonar software, which I personally really like. That's part of

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what makes their sound card so easy for me to recommend, are what makes this

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sound card so easy to recommend. So the Zonar software has gotten an ROG skin.

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I've actually used the skinned version. I personally don't like it quite as

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much, but I'm not as used to it because the one that I use day-to-day is a Zent,

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which doesn't have the ROG skin. But this one comes with something that not

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all Zonar cards do, and that's Dolby Home Theater V4. So, this allows you to

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add virtualized surround support to things like headphones, which is uh from

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what I've read, haven't tried it yet, very, very effective and a definite

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differentiating factor between this one and other Zonar cards. So, there's a

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graphic equalizer as well built into the Dolby side of the software. And then

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there's the separate Zonar software. There's two two separate applications

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for it. And there's also a tweak dialogue option that allows you to in

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movies and games particularly enhance dialogue and hear it more clearly, which

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from what I've seen apparently actually works, which is uh which is very very

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cool and probably part of the reason why this product has been on the market a

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year already by the time I'm actually doing this video and hasn't been replaced in any way yet. So,

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subjectively speaking, haven't used the card yet, but it is very, very similar

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to the Zonar Zense, which I've been using extensively for a long period of

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time. And with the Zonar Zense, I was never tempted in any way to upgrade the

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card. Personally, I'm not one of those audio file guys who is swapping out op

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amps on a regular basis for the most tuned possible music listening

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experience. That's not me. I do appreciate good audio. I do appreciate a

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high-end sound card and a decent pair of cans and all of those things. I mean,

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who doesn't appreciate a decent pair of cans? But I'm not one of those super

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fussy guys. So, based on my experience with the Zense, I can confidently

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recommend the Feebis because it has, well, this additional benefit, which is

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nice. It also looks really cool and glows in your system, which is also

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nice. And with some of the more gaming oriented features such as the oh the

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environmental noise cancellation can't underscore how important that is enough

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especially in something like a crowded land as well as the EAX emulation and

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Dolby home theater V4. Yeah, very

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excited to try this out. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for unboxings, reviews, and other computer

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videos. And let me know in the comments, do you have a sound card yet? Because as

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much as I'm talking about a $200 sound card right now, ASUS has Zonar cards

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that are like 3040 bucks. In fact, they have a headphone amped one that isn't

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that's under $50. And I get tweets at

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least probably once a week. I'll get a tweet or a message or something like

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that saying, "Hey, Lionus, I didn't try a sound card until you told me to try

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one. And holy crap, I can't believe I wasn't doing this before. It makes such

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a big difference compared to onboard." Unless we're talking about very high-end

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onboard like what you might find on something like a Maximus 6 formula. Thanks for watching guys. Don't forget

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to subscribe and we'll see you again next time.