Gadgetory

so back when I was in like high school creative labs soundblaster was basically synonymous with high performance high quality gaming PC audio and they're making a comeback but hold on - everyone knows an external amp and DAC is the best solution today this new flagship sound card is dead on arrival no you hold on smartypants this time it's different this sound card has built-in RGB lighting this sound card is ready to compete in 2017 the protrek smart from Casio features Android 2.0 energy-efficient GPS functionality water resistant up to 50 meters and more check it out now at the link below so in a nutshell the Sound Blaster X 85 is creative labs latest attempt to marry a great DAC chip the ESS Sabre 3290 18 and a great amplifier circuit to a form factor that's convenient for PC users if a little unfamiliar to the younger generation so taking a peek under the emi shield we are greeted by the saber DAC right there in the middle as well as this is interesting all the main capacitors are high-quality we move films and interestingly while the rear Jack's are all grounded to the bracket the headphone jack is the one exception it's grounded internally to reduce crosstalk with the rest of the outputs cool of course it's not quite as impressive looking as the inside of a Modi 2 and Magni to a popular standalone stereo DAC and damp combo that enjoys the usual advantages of these solutions particularly very low interference thanks to widely spaced PCB components not to mention being outside the computer case we did notice though that shyt audios products used fewer film capacitors and more giant electrolytic s-- and we also noticed that they have boring white LEDs on the front versus creatives homegrown Aurora reactive lighting system which is basically individually addressable RGB lighting on yet another damn separate piece of software to install alongside are a sync corsair link and razor Creelman that and what a missed opportunity this is it doesn't even have a music reaction mode so we'd recommend just ham fisting the proprietary connector on the included strip onto an Asus header and otherwise ignoring it I mean this is supposed to be a sound card not an RGB controller card like I'm I'm having flashbacks to when they started putting firewire ports and like joystick ports onto sound cards I'm thinking that that was also creative so then the main attractions in creative software package are the Blaster X acoustic engine and Scout 2.0 most of the acoustic engine is creatives usual fare surround crystallizer bass smart volume and dialogue plus crystallizer can help with compressed streaming audio and while dialog + sounds weird for music it can help with other types of content I will leave the rest of them off but those two can be kind of useful Scout 2.0 on the other hand completely worthless it didn't give us better spatial awareness than the conventional surround setting and even worse than that scout radar this phone app that if it did work would be cheating anyway was both distracting because you have to look off screen to see it and horribly inaccurate picking up our own footsteps and ambient sound in csgo as a blip straight ahead and usually failing to register another player until they were within a few digital feet relying on this thing would be a great way to boost your being knifed to kills ratio so how about sound quality then well Anthony grabbed a selection of headphones off of our headphone wall along with the aforementioned magnet 2 and moti 2 and got to work using a Maximus 9 code as a third comparison source to represent good motherboard audio so early on in the testing it became clear that both the 85 and a su supreme effects can drive even notoriously difficult to drive planar dynamic headphones like The Odyssey LCD 2's and the 250 ohm bear dynamic DT 990 probes and both of them at uncomfortable listening volumes even unsurprisingly though so does our Magni and modi combo which is good because that's the entire reason it exists so everybody's a winner so far audio quality was a different story even without the surprisingly easy to use brought the way you wanted EQ highs are crisper and lows are smoother than our onboard audio which is especially apparent in electronic music where high pitched cymbals and snare drums sounds notably coarse by comparison rock and metal sound significantly less noisy which is to say that everything doesn't devolve into a mess of riffs and cymbals as happens with lower quality outputs and meanwhile symphonic music sounds quite a bit smoother and fuller with that said comparing the 85 to our only slightly more expensive it comes pretty close on both of them are a significant improvement over onboard and I'd say the edge especially in quieter passages goes to now obviously the 85 has the advantage of not taking up any additional desk space that is to say as long as your mo isn't to take it and put it on a desk in front of you and talk about it to a camera it also though has a one less obvious drawback that is unless you want to use your cases often very poorly shielded front panel audio jacks you'll need a long headphone cable to plug into the dedicated headphone jack on the rear i/o so bottom line then once upon a time filling up all your expansion slots was like the mark of a baller system and that's not lost on me here what is though is the fact that something like this has one very specific purpose to be plugged into a compatible computer meanwhile external sound solutions are more versatile DAX are usually driverless and cross-platform and amps can be plugged into virtually anything with an output so I guess the answer then boils down to how much you value three things creative software including yes the RGB controls they're 7.1 surround support and whether you're like into filled up PCIe slots anchors power delivery charging enables faster and safer charging as well as more power for your larger devices and USB see connect are super handy because they allow you to use the same cable to charge your smartphone tablet and even a supported laptop with no separate power brick required so today we're looking at two products with these features the power core plus 26800 as well as the power port speed PD 30 both of them have a USB C port that can deliver up to 30 watts as well as up to two regular USB ports they've got hard-wearing matte exteriors this one's made of aluminum which is pretty nice with high-gloss detailing and these kind of cool blue USB ports to provide a sleek look the foldable plug and compact size means that you can take them with you wherever you want to go and you can check them out through the links in the video description so thanks for watching guys if you just liked this video you know what to do but if you liked it hit the like button get subscribed check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one 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