Gadgetory

ladies and gentlemen on the desk here I have the Sound Blaster k3 plus which is creatives attempt at making an audio interface for streamers or people who want to do voiceovers record or even people who want to go to karaoke and sing so today I'm gonna be recording directly from it going through all the features and also doing a comparison between this and also the current audio interface that I use at the moment this is the edirol you a 25 X now think about the 25 X and the thing I love about it enough use it for so long it's got an onboard compressor built-in and so essentially that'll fatten up your voice make it even so in post you don't have to process it and whatnot but for 130 dollars it does come in at a pretty decent price considering you got two XLR mic inputs you've also got two individual headphone outs as well for individual monitoring with their own volume controls so we compare that against the skull at 2i2 which is a very popular unit at the moment that is a hundred and fifty US dollars of course the U a 25 X that I use I got that for about $30 used in Japan you currently can't buy them at the moment but let's go through a tour with this device and see what we can do and actually see what makes it pretty special when it comes to an end streamer who just wants to get into streaming and have some cool effects available welcome back to take your city guys I got this thing on the desk here the sound blaster k3 plus we're gonna go through all the controls and what it features here two XLR front inputs and also a quarter inch jack inline in there which you can use with a guitar for example and you've also got your two headphone jack outs which 1/4 inch - got the volume controls for them right there when I can't touch them since I've already normalized them and also your mobile out Jack as well for controlling that mobile in Jack if you want to use a 4-pole connector with your mobile phone and get input to this device you can and then you can control the volume of that with this knob here 48 volt power we're not going to turn that off for reasons being I'm using the condenser for this actual review and then moving over to the left here we have an interesting button called the sound board so let's press that and now we get access to a heap of different sound effects which we can use on the fly double tap ok and then we can turn that off and we've got our sound board effects I'd like to see creative maybe add in the solution if a firmware or a software solution to come in to add your own sound effects in and then flash them to this advice that would be awesome but we've got the voiceover feature as well apparently it cancels out background noise we'll test that later when we hook it up to get some measurements on the output and input of this device itself so then besides that we have the treble and bass volume turn that up get more trouble turning it down eliminate some treble and also bass same thing so if you have a mic like the BAE ring and b1 which I'm using now is actually a little bit bass anemic so we can turn that up just a little bit and turn the treble down just a little bit and it'll balance out the microphone quite well of course we got the volume knobs for our inputs there I'm not going to touch those for reasons being that I'm again using this device to record this review okay so if we press the reverb setting now we can move along with that change and if we want to change the reverb effects so if you want to sing for example so there we go now we can turn that off of course that is your reverb effects so now on the right here is the auto-tune setting and before I turn the knob we can go through all the different settings and I'm gonna say I do not know anything about auto-tune never used it before but we've got all the different settings and I'll just quickly flick through them for you and in here just changing my voice in what is known so you can put this on C and then you can sing for yourself a little song and the same way we turned it on so that's pretty much the bread and butter of the creative k3 plus easy to install very simple to use also has a very low signal to noise ratio so you plug your microphone in you shouldn't have any people complaining about noise with your condenser microphone I know I've tried some audio interfaces and even some USB stand alone condenser microphones in the past when you turn them up they introduce noise and that's something you just don't want especially if you're live streaming having to report this thing doesn't have that at all it's also good a 96 kilohertz 24-bit output so what we're gonna do now is gonna move over to the main desk test this thing out and see the frequency response curve because maybe some people don't want to buy it just for its condensed a live streaming functionality maybe some people want to replace their onboard audio or even upgrade their sound card for example and they want to see if this is the all-in-one solution that they can need so let's jump across now right now okay so it's on right now and I'm gonna keep smoking and then I'm gonna try and turn it off right now okay boys over is off was there any difference let's find out so we just finished the voice-over effect and I thought that made no difference whatsoever I'm not entirely sure what does but at the same time I wouldn't buy an audio interface for that feature anyway for me I'd like to see that button change to a compressor button if anything and guys if you need to remove background noise from your recordings then you should be buying a dynamic microphone not a condenser microphone condenser microphones will basically suck in all the noise in the whole room of course the further you get away from the microphone the more tinea becomes but the last thing we've got to check now is the crosstalk levels and I'm glad to say that they were phenomenal over 65 DB difference so left and right channels were separated perfectly all up to a volume of 100 and the best news is that the frequency response curve was phenomenal as well there was basically no bass roll-off up until 10 Hertz and then after that it rolls down to zero and it's also a very smooth curve and then of course up to 20 kilohertz it's a very straight line and a smooth roll-off - so in other words this is gonna be a very flat very good very rich sound going to your headphones and of course with that volume level it's going to power even high-end headphones quite nicely so this is a unit that will double down it's not only a recording device but an excellent replacement for an onboard audio unit or a sound card or even onboard audio itself in a motherboard so here's what the onboard camera audio was sound like obviously very tinny I'm sitting about two meters back from this thing it's going to sound horrible but let's switch over now to the bearing of b1 going through the k3 plus so now I've been using this combination for the majority of this review you probably already used to it it sounds very nice in my opinion I love the sound going into the k3 plus from the bearing of a1 of course this microphone is a very good value for money option a little bit bass anemic and a little bit treble like very slightly so you can actually balance that out with this unit itself however it doesn't have a compressor on board let's compare that now against the UA 25x which does have a compressor on board so now I've got the babe ring of B 1 connected directly to my edirol you a 25 X the compression nozzle is set up around about two-thirds of the way up so here's a little test of what this will sound like and so we can jump back now to the creative k3 plus and you guys can analyze whether you think this Audio Interface sounds better or the k3 plus sounds better because I'd love as much as I analyze it myself to hear your feedback in the comments as well so we're closing out the k3 plus from creative is a tight little unit comes into 130 bucks comes in 20 dollars cheaper than the scarlett 2i2 which is a very popular audio interface out there at the moment I'm very impressed with what I've seen here with the numbers and the frequency response curve but also the noise coming into this unit itself so if you want to get into streaming and you want something that's reliable simple and easy to use this has definitely got a lot going for it plus it does look really cool on a desk as well very simple black design with that brushed aluminum on the top so it is made of hard plastic and metal too I do like the design I do like the simplicity of this thing creative have done a pretty good job with the k3 plus there was for Aussie and UK pricing I'm not entirely sure yet I will update the description below when I know more about those details but any guys that's about it for today if you enjoyed this video be sure to hit that like button let us know in the comment section below what you think about this microphone going into the k3 plus lover and your thoughts and opinions as always and I'll catch you in another tech video very soon peace out for now bye and then we can move on to auto-tune and it's many different modes and see the frequency whisper and usually mobile phones have their four pin which is works and then we go here on the right ensure that our knowledge no cool well my md gravis good night