Gadgetory

what's up guys Jays two cents here and I've been working on the 970 SLI versus 980ti hybrid versus tight next video so we'll be getting to that shortly but before we get there today we're talking about some audio things we're gonna take a look at two new products here from creative the first one being there are our von Urbana or von Arana the weird name it's our vinyl I've headphones as well as they're a 1 portable headphone amplifier that runs off a battery and or USB power first I didn't think I really would have much use for that but believe it or not it actually fixes a problem I had here in the tech cave today's video is sponsored by master op the largest community commerce platform in the world had to master off today and suggest something to be dropped I'm like literally drop it you know where they're gonna price down the stuff so once again I gotta give a huge shout out to mass drop for sponsoring today's video by sending over this stuff and of course we only look at stuff that they're doing drops on so if you guys are interested in these headphones in this amp come by the end of this review then you can look down in the description you'll see a link to the drop where you can get discounts on this stuff the more people that sign up for the purchases the cheaper it gets that's the way mass drop works if more companies work that way but then again if they did then mash up wouldn't exist and then it wouldn't be such an awesome thing so yeah other companies don't do that just let just like mass drop handle it now taking the are vaana's out of the package one of the first things that you'll notice is it's very light weight and when it comes to headphones and stuff that can sometimes be a little bit of a throw off I mean you kind of think to yourself well our light and there's that old adage of well weights equals quality but that's not always the case with headphones if you have a real heavy headphone you'll start to get neck fatigue head fatigue ear fatigue fatigue fatigue and all those other kinds of fatigues and stuff so don't let the weight of them fool you they do have swivel ear cups you can actually lay them flat like that and be like boy no stand Nick you know know who would actually do that but whatever now the cans on here are all plastic but there are polished black with chrome the I'm not a fan of polished black I've said this many times it's gonna eventually look scratched and scuffed so if it were more of them at color it would have looked better in my opinion but this gives it more of kind of an elegant feel you've got a chrome creative raised logo on there and then you do have leather at ear cups now the ear cups themselves they do feel like leather they're extremely soft they create a good seal around your ears when you put them on I can't hear anything now that seal actually makes things nice and isolating the outside noise so your music is going to sound better the bass is going to sound better you're not gonna have as much interruptions from the outside world how many people put these things on just for the sake of shutting up everyone around them right am i right you don't want to hear everyone talking when the old point of this is enjoy your music and not hear the crap around you and they are fully adjustable they go about an inch and a quarter on either side in terms of adjustability so if you've got a big ol head like I do then actually I really don't have a very big head but if you have a huge head on top of your shoulders anyway then these things will fit nice and comfortably now the headbands actually not all that big considering the headphones aren't all that heavy so doesn't need a huge headband but it is nice and padded again with that pleather ette material and other than that there's not a whole lot to say about the cans and the headband itself you do have a lead app a wire lead coming off of each ear so they're not going into in one ear and then through the headband so you're not going to deal with breaking a wire up here the downside is if a wire coming off of each ear which sometimes people don't like I personally don't like that and then it's a fully rubberized cable so it's going to tangle up easier because it's completely rubber now when it comes to the specs on this these are 40 millimeter drivers they have a 10 Hertz to 30,000 Hertz which is it's kind of interesting because it's wider than the normal 20 Hertz to 20,000 Hertz that people advertise because that's kind of the average hearing age or hearing age hearing range of the human ear I was really interested in how that 10 Hertz was going to respond so I ran this these things through base mechanic to see how they sound we'll talk about that in a moment now I'm going to verify this on the box because I actually forgot yeah they are 32 ohms I didn't want to get that wrong with the r32 ohms and sensitivity at 1 kilohertz is 103 dB you know plus or minus so you actually have pretty decent headphones here they're not that expensive they're very lightweight and they sounded really really good and I did run base mechanic with these things to test out some of the different Hertz ranges and I want to say that right around 30 Hertz is where we started to get drop-off on in terms of volume you did have some pressure level you could feel the base but you couldn't really hear it much below that because for whatever the of the can design the thin plastic you know cans on here I just wasn't able to actually reproduce ten Hertz it might be making some sort of SPL or sound pressure level at that range but you can't really hear it one technically it's below the hearing range at least what they say but to these just didn't have enough oomph to really do it well of course sound is always gonna be subjective we all hear a little bit differently but I will tell you me being somebody who's into bass but prefers audio clarity over bass will tell you that these things sound extremely lifelike I listen to a lot of different types of music on these I listen to dubstep I listen to rap I listen to rock country jazz vocals classic or classical and they just didn't really seem to have anything that was out of their spectrum usually rock or heavy metal when it has a lot of crash cymbals and things going on tends to get very very just what's the word I'm looking for here anyone who listens to heavy metal knows exactly what I'm talking about all the sounds will just kind of smash together and it becomes hard to pick out anything in the audio it's hard to to hear the the lead guitar it's hard to hear the bass guitar it just starts to sound like noise really but these were able to really give you good separation of sound so the bass on these things although not like beats by dre level or beats by apple or beats by whoever bought them this month or whoever dr. dre sold out - it's not that level of bass but that's good because that level of bass often will give you an imbalance sound where the bass is too heavy this becomes more fatigue for your brain to listen to after a while I thought they were very balanced and very lifelike the the highs were crisp the mids were clear and then the bass was just right in my opinion wasn't too much bass but it wasn't too little but they have no inline controls no extra frills or anything like that it's just a nice lightweight headphone to keep you on the go and to give you nice music in the meantime now included with them it does also have an extension cable on here as well as a audio adapter here for different sized plugs you have your quarter inch plug here that goes on to your three-and-a-half millimeter so you could use these in some sort of a high-end amp or something like that and then of course it comes with a little carry bag now as far as I'm concerned the star of the show really for today's review is the Sound Blaster II one HD audio amp when they asked me if I wanted to do this review I almost told them just in the hip bones don't bother sending the amp first of all if we're gonna consider weight and size an indicator of quality then this thing right here would be absolute garbage because it's tiny and it feels hollow quite honestly but this thing actually really surprised me and I found an alternate use for it here in the office I'll talk about that in a second now it comes with this guy in the box here is a red I'm kind of confusing why they chose red but they chose red as a red extension cable here that you can use to plug this into your phone remember this is ultimately a mobile amp it's a battery-powered amp and it can clip onto your belt or anything else you want to clip it on to and then it comes with a USB cable here with a micro USB 2 standard USB so that you can use it as an audio amp for your computer and I thought to myself why would anyone do that well one this serves as a charger to charge up the internal battery on this which is non-replaceable and it also in it works as an interface with your computer where this can work as a headphone amplifier for anything you plugged into your computer and that's the part where I was like why would anyone want that if you look right here it actually has two headphone outputs on this so if you're sitting on the bus or the school bus or the train or whatever you do when you're traveling or you've got someone with you and you both want to listen to music you can plug this into your phone or your mp3 player and then you can both listen at the same time independently with their own headphones whatever headphones you prefer whether it be some sort of an earbud or a full-on headphone on the side here has your volume slider so you can control the volume through the amp you've got your power switch when you turn that on you get a little LED indicator white means you're charged and when it turns red it means you're Diane and then it does have a phone call answer button on the side and it plays play pause button but also has a built-in microphone so you can use this thing if it's clipped on to your shirt or something your phone and not mess with your phone calls and stuff because you could answer the phone directly through this thing so it also becomes a smart interface for your phone which I thought was extremely awesome but for me personally I had a problem where people especially local people won't come into the studio here and join tech talk with me and I had fractal Josh here once late last year and I had a problem with getting I couldn't get two headphones going because my amplifier that I use for my preamp for the microphone does not feedback audio from the system out to the headphone monitor so we couldn't both listen to headphones and it was a terrible terrible arrangement so now I can use this thing here to get dual headphones if I have an in-person guest and this actually solves that problem so there you go the are vaana's from creative as well as their II one portable amplifier I gotta say this thing was absolutely amazing and I thought maybe plugging in two headphones on this thing would have reduced the audio level to both headphones depending on the impedance of them and it didn't they it did not lower the volume at all it will probably lower the ball or the battery life obviously but I even went as far as to test my AKG k7 xx's which are an audio grade or sorry I just clip that in here my bed but those are kind of a mid-level audiophile type of headphone that do require a bit of power I plugged them in directly to my phone and it was not a good listening experience it wasn't loud enough it couldn't create enough bass it couldn't fill out the spectrum of sound for the driver the phone just doesn't have enough power the second I plug this thing in it went up quite a few decibels in terms of volume but the clarity went through the roof so there you go I mean that doesn't say something I don't know what does so tell me what you guys think about this what do you what kind of portable amp DAC are you guys using tell us in the comments and of course guys thanks for watching thanks for master upto sending me this to take a look at for you guys and if you guys are interested in this of course at the time of this video going live because you're watching from the future I can't really help you there then look in the description you will find a link to the drop and I get no kickbacks from that this is just you guys saving money if you're interested in buying this I don't get anything out of it other than I get to keep the headphones and damn damn the AK the amp DAC probably just call them well Dax yes I know they're already called Dax anyway I'm going to get the heck on out of here guys thanks always for watching and I'll see you guys in the next one