Gadgetory

welcome back to take a city this is doc easy coming back to you guys today with a review of the titanium HD now this is a sound card from creative and I got two of them for like $160 on special so I'm gonna be keeping one maybe I'm gonna let that I'm gonna let you guys decide whether I should keep it on because there's some things that I got to talk about with the sound card there's some things that I love there's some things that I'd annoy me let's get on to the bill quality first of this sound card and essentially I really like the build quality of this sound card it's cased in a nice hard plastic here attached to metal and it really does feel like a solid well-built card I thought it felt more solid than the creative Z I'm looking at the front of it it's just all black looking at the back of the card it's got a black PCB which looks sleek as well and over to the rear of the card we have a mic in a headphone out a line out and also a line in so it's got that mic in and that line in which I really want from a sound card I currently have it on my own ball audio and I love it because I use a condenser and I use a boom mic for gaming now the headphone out so the line in let's talk about quickly about the line in line in has a phenomenal clear signal going to it I noticed no noise the mic in is really strong as well this is something that the created Z didn't do and something I was not impressed with on the crazy but the titanium HD has a really good mic in with no noise I'll quickly do a test for you guys on the boom mic so I've got my ghetto highs is on and I've got them attached with AV mode of boom Pro so those guys have been following me and know that I reviewed the V mode of burn pro and it was a really good microphone it basically turns any headphones into a gaming headset but this is what this microphone sounds like on the creative titanium hd's mic in with no noise so I mean yeah I think the mic in does a phenomenal job of just yeah getting a clean signal so anyway let's get back to the review okay so what did you think did you think it was good I thought it was pretty impressive I thought it was a little bit better than the zone on dgx and which is a $30 sound card and that's excellent value for money but I thought yeah it did a good job I mean as expected from one of the best sound cards you can get currently on the PC so I thought that was good let's talk about that on the line out and the headphone out because something there's something weird going on here anyway but it basically is if you have the headphone out hooked up you can't use the line out so that's kind of like a design flaw a lot of people are annoyed about it for me it's not that big of a deal you can get by by using a stereo splitter I use the headphone out to stereo split it to an amp from a headphone and split it to the 2.1 analog sound now essentially I'm gonna make another video as well comparing the audio interface to the titanium HD to the onboard audio but essentially the difference between a sound card and the other two is that a sound card and I forgot to mention this in the created Z is that a sound card will do a phenomenal job of powering analog speakers so my creative Z when I hooked it up to my created I'm sorry my Logitech Z 4 speakers 2-point ones Wow did they come alive this thing really pumped those 2.1 speakers is that two point one speaker system to life the base was just thump and so damn hard the mids and the highs were just coming out really well I mean people will be like where's just allowed a signal yeah but it's a loud clear signal that that speaker system needs the onboard audio just sounded nowhere near as good for the 2.1 speakers if you've also got a 5.1 speaker setup then you may wish to go up to creative Z something that I thought sound cards did really well over the other on the onboard audio in the m-audio interface was that they powered analog speakers really really damn well not to mention the 5.1 up mix and the thx and dolby digital settings that these things have now let's talk about headphones though you want to know how these things sound for headphones and obviously I'm using headphones a lot of the time practically all the time when I'm on the computer so the headphone out of this thing had an interesting thing that I did really start to fall in love with and that was cmss 3d and in 5.1 up mix so essentially what this sound card does and the crazy does up makes the 5.1 as well but this thing has a setting called cmss 3d which basically makes your games feel you're in a room and I'll put a link in the description below when I'm testing cmss 3d against stereo sound but I thought it sounded really good and I thought it did a good job I mean some games that just really started to immerse me and I was really good but that being said something that I noticed about this sound card was that the soundstage on the headphone out sounded better than the line out this was with the 5.1 unmixed now when I searched on Google to see if anyone else had this problem there was only one guy who said he noticed a difference and then everyone said it was in his head it was placebo but not trust me when I was switching back between my objective 2 and my and the line out I noticed the difference the headphone out did a better job of up mixing to 5.1 than the line out did so I was kind of surprised to find that out so it was a little bit of a lie in the end I'm kind of sitting here gone what's creative doing why are these problems like plaguing this sound card don't they fix these things before they ship them out I don't know like there should have been some extensive thorough testing done on these sound cards but anyway there you can work what work around that by getting a stereo splitter on the headphone out so that was something that kind of annoy me about soccer but ultimately I'm left here and now let's talk about another negative the headphone out when I used the headphone out directly to my headphones which was on which what I was doing initially was doing doing that I noticed that the headphones hurt my ears after like a few hours of listening my ears became blocked and maybe an audio engineer wants to chime in or someone who knows a lot about audio but when I hooked it up to the objective to even from the headphone out it wasn't hurting my ears anymore so there's something weird going on with this headphone out on this particular titanium HD but yeah hurts my ears and so I can't use I need to use it with an amp so something weird going on there but ultimately the sound card I'm left sitting on the fancy in conclusion for you guys I'm sitting on the fence as to whether I should keep this sound card or not I mean I love the 5.1 up mix I also think without CMS s3 3d on it's fun for music as well when you go into games you turn cmss 3d on it sounds really good so I'm kind of sitting on the fence here as to whether I should keep this thing what do you guys think and I mean ultimately I can recommend it if you know the flaws of this thing and I would recommend if you have sensitive headphones like I do then you may wish to get an amp say a Pheo e6 or an objective 202 to hook it up to the headphone out to spare your ears from getting damaged so yeah just something weird going on but ultimately I'm left here like why can't something just work perfectly why can't I just use the headphone out directly the lineout works at the same time so I could hook that up to my analog speakers and why can't I just do that and you know have everything working from the sound card that's kind of what annoys me about it because my onboard audio I mean my onboard audio is good enough as it was you know I thought if it wasn't for the bass roll-off the on velour would be perfect but that's something I don't see being overcome anytime in the near future because the fact that you know motherboard manufacturers have to fit so many things on a motherboard so they kind of got a cut on costs when they can and one of those things is the coupling capacitors and that's why you get the bass roll-off and something they don't do on the sound cards or any other I guess thing where you're spending money on audio so I'll turn it on left sitting on the fence of whether I should keep this thing and I probably won't I mean it's just another negative also when I came up with testing when I was overclocking my GTX 780 to the max this thing also introduced a little bit of noise as well so ultimately yeah I'm just left here confused because I love the features of this sound card and I mean I love what it can do but at the end of the day I'm not really an audio enthusiast and it's 250 dollars because I got a couple it with a headphone amp and I'm sitting there gone hmm okay is that bass roll-off and that you know 5.1 up mix and that you know better signal to my analog 2.1 worth 250 bucks because if you guys don't know I can't really listen to music that loud in this house so that's why I've got a headphone so I got a baby and I've got neighbors close by so I'm just altima I'm just yeah I don't know you guys decide this I'm on the fence I'm sad I'm suffering now let me know what you guys think anyway peace out for now I'll catch you guys soon with another video and I hope you enjoyed this review of the titanium HD and I'll catch you guys soon with another tech video bye