Are Sound Cards Still Relevant? Sound BlasterX AE-5
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,293 words · ~6 min read
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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