ASUS Xonar Xense Premium Gaming Audio Bundle Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,370 words · ~11 min read
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now this is a pretty cool product this is actually a bundle product this is the
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ASUS ASUS ASUS Zonar zents so this is a
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premium gaming audio set which means it comes with a premium gaming audio sound
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card as well as a premium gaming audio headset and this is the I mean this is
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exciting because this is actually a senheiser PC 350 that is rebranded
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espcially for this bundle so the value of this bundle is phenomenal because
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this is a really expensive headset this is an expensive sound card and they
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actually come together for a price that's it's still expensive but you know
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it's not it's less expensive I guess so here we go go with your zents go for
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Glory let's talk a little bit about what Aus has to say about themselves on this
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product triumph over your opponents in FPS games with Precision Acoustics
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Embrace Clarity for the win with Emi Shields and8 DB sound to noise ratio and
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fight to the end with ergonomic headset design this is all very good stuff and
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let's have a look at what they have to say on the inside of the box so first of
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all this is tested for the ultimate gaming gear all right so basically
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they're saying Aus and Sennheiser teamed up which is kind of what I was saying
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before which is very good okay you can triumph over your enemies now this is
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key right here powerful headphone amplifier this sound card the zent sound
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card here actually has a headphone amp and why is that important you might ask
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well because the PC 350 is actually a
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very premium headset and what that means is that the drivers in here have a
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higher impedance than just your typical Cheapo headphones so it means that in
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order to really get the best results out of this particular headset you need an
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amplifier so until recently you couldn't buy a sound card that had a proper
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built-in headphone amplifier but now you can so there you go Embrace Clarity for
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the wind so Emi shielding covers it so that you don't have sort of random
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interference uh bothering your sound card realistic 3D game audio okay here's
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your IO ports list right here so we've got a mic line in headphone output with
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support for up to 600 ohms of impedance nice 7.1 Channel speaker output as well
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as digital audio output so we've got the whole works here's your package contents
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which we're not going to look too closely at because we're going to open the package and we've got Christo
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Christopher Sun okay true Pro gear for
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pro FPS Gamers cool so they've got a little gamer quote on there too
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excellent so I'm going to go ahead and try and figure out the best way to open
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this box which appears to be from this side not the other side the other side's
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tempting they got those stickers on there but I'm on to their tricks I'm
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going to open it from this way
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okay oh okay no I get it you have to do
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both so I'm not onto their tricks their tricks are too tricky for
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me see this is the problem with like live one take unboxing videos is I have
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to like figure out the box in real time you know I actually had a pair of a PC
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350 uh headset not a pair of headset I
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had a PC 350 headset not long ago and I also have an hd555 and I got to say the
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hd555 particularly is one of the most
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difficult boxes I have ever encountered in fact it seems like headsets in
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general are are fairly challenging like I had a some real problems with the
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Corsair hs1 as you guys may or may not recall if you saw that video I just
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couldn't get that box apart for the life of me okay so let's have a look at the
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sound card first okay okay here right away like plus 10 points check it out
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matte black PCB ASUS gets major major
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points for that because nothing looks better in a gaming machine than a matte
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black PCB with nice shiny chromed ACC
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sense and that is just outstanding okay
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so there is that uh that Shield that were talking about so you can actually
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here you can see under it in some places you can even see a copper heat sink down
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there so they are actually cooling uh probably the amplifier would be my guess
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cuz I can't imagine the audio processor needs a copper heat sink on it but you
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can see right here that this card does require external power from a four pin
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Molex connector okay we've also got a
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plugin for our front panel audio all right let's see what else we got on this
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card that's worth talking about hm
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I mean I wish I could sort of show you more of the card but I can't because it's got this cool shroud on it but I
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mean the Shroud is pretty sweet but when it's installed in your case you'll
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probably see it sort of something like this so you'll be able to see the bottom
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of it a little bit you'll be able to see the top acoustic powered by Sennheiser
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it's really really nice looking card okay so here oh yeah this is important
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PCI Express 1X that is the interface that this card uses and I get a lot of
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questions about this but yes you can put a PCI Express 1X card in a 4X slot in an
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8X slot in a 16x slot doesn't matter it'll just use less bandwidth boom done
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so there you have it that is what you need to do you just plug it into any PCI
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Express slot and it'll work 100% okay here we've got spiff output so that's
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your digital out here we've got 7.1 out and I'm probably going to find an
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adapter somewhere to show you how to use that then we have our headphone as well
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as our microphone now please note these are the larger audio jacks not the ones
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that you typically find on the back of a sound card so here we go we can sort of
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keep picking away at this box and figuring out how exactly it comes apart
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so uh okay there seem to be some kind of tabs here and we can try to see how that
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works okay there's some kind
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of this is ridiculous look at this okay so that comes off there but then it oh
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yeah here we go so there's Clips here in the plastic I mean the thing is you'd
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never be able to put this box back together after you took it apart I mean
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maybe that's the point cuz most places NCI included uh don't take Returns on
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headphones for hygienic reasons and so I
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guess they want it to be as difficult as possible to put it back together without
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uh looking like it's been taken apart so there we go we've finally removed that
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part of the plastic oh I think we can actually Slide the whole no we can't
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Slide the whole thing out we can slide out part of it you got to be kidding me
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okay so that's uh um that's secured in there in some other fashion but I think
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we found the accessories yes we have
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achieved something today there we go all right so here
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first things first uh let's find this so
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what the what is
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this oh look at that you got to be kidding
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me it looks like this do not only coaxial out but also optical audio out I
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did not notice that on the box that's
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very cool so you got this little adapter so it'll grab your Optical signal which
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is actually under the coaxial digital
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audio that's really cool okay so there
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there's that we've also got a uh here we
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are where's that we've got one adapter
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oh so if you want to use it with uh with something else because you can see the
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included Zen headset that already has the larger Jacks but if you wanted to
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use it with a smaller headset they've included one adapter for that as well
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okay and then here is the adapter for the what appears to be a DVI port but do
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not plug a monitor into it I'll tell you that much right now do not plug a
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monitor into this uh so you go ahead and plug that in there then you can go ahead
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and uh here let's just plug that right in like that and there is your 7.1 audio
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out and they are colorcoded and those do appear to be goldplated connectors there
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we are so that's pretty much it for the sound card I think we've got everything
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relevant plugged into it right now so you can see it in all of its Glory here
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we have a Zonar quick start guide which
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also has a driver CD throw it away download the latest off the ASUS website
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quick start guide shows us a little bit about the audio card
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layout okay so yeah here there's a combo digital output Port very very cool
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very cool indeed gaming headset PCI bus Golden
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Fingers install the audio card do all these things what else we got in here
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connect the TV tuner
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card okay that's it that's it for English all right now I'm going to have
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to ask the cameraman probably to uh oh never mind okay I think we got it I
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think we got it okay I think we're we're
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one step there we go I think now we can extract the
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headset yes success look look at this
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thing it's ridiculous
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okay so this is a fairly standard looking PC 350 other than the uh than
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the larger headphone and microphone connectors and let's just go ahead and
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extract it from the plastic that it's sitting in so PC 350 as I mentioned
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before this is an expensive and premium gaming headset so you've got a nice pley
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material it's designed to fit extremely
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large ears so if you've got like long ears you can actually wear the PC 350
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quite comfortably and I do know a couple of people with PC 350s who have also
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said that it is extremely comfortable even with glasses because of the way
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that the cushioning is designed you can easily have something sitting under it
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and it's not going to put undue pressure on your head now you don't have the uh
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the padding only on the ear cups youve also got it on the headband itself where
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it is actually even softer I mean it's hard to demonstrate something like how
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soft the cushioning is on something but I hope this kind of gives you the point
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like I'm putting no pressure on this whatsoever it's very comfortable for
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long gaming sessions it includes a boom mic which is adjustable so in terms of
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how far you want it to sit away from your face so you see you can put it up
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here and then you can bring it down and you can actually adjust it in so if I
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just kind of ah give it a bit of a bin then it'll come in like this and if you
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want it a little bit further away then you can adjust it a little bit further away like that now these are a closed
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headphone which means that I actually cannot hear a whole lot of what I'm
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saying right now but the benefit of that is you have a very good stereo effect
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because you're not going to get any spill over when the right speaker makes
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noise say someone's walking over there and you hear the footsteps right so when
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the right speaker makes a noise it's not going to leak out and then come into
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your left ear so it's able to keep things very isolated for good
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directionality and it also means that you're not going to disturb others when
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you're gaming late at night so if there's like you know explosion and
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gunfire and all that stuff the people in the Next Room are not going to be like
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banging on your wall hey what do you think you're doing so that's uh that's a
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definite benefit of using a closed style headphone and I think we've shown these
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in pretty good detail you've got the labels here for the right as well as for
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the left earphone although there's a quick check if you put it on and the mic
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doesn't come down towards your face if it comes down in the back of your head
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then it's probably not on the right way I think so that should uh that should
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pretty much take care of itself for most users all right and last but not least
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we have built-in volume control which has a nice little volume indicator there
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as well as an onoff switch for the mic thank you for checking out my unboxing
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of the Zonar Zen premium gaming audio set and don't forget to subscribe to ncx
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Tech tips as well as Linus Tech tips and there now I actually have everything
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plugged into this guy that looks hardcore