Gadgetory

so today we're going to take a look at creatives x7 daca and pamba as well as the accompanying speaker set which goes with this unit and they are the xm7 ladies and gentlemen welcome back to check yet city this is brian coming back to you guys today with an interesting review of the creative x7 flagship decamp combo now creative also decided to send me their accompanying speaker set the XM sevens as well so if you wish to just see the speakers and I'll put the link in the description below so if you wish to skip ahead to that you can do so but before we get onto the speakers let's take a look at this big bad boy the x7 so the creative x7 is an interesting piece of hardware it's pretty much an all-in-one solution where it's got a DAC and combo and an ADC built on board it's also even got a mic on board the actual unit so if you don't have a microphone you'll still be able to use this thing now an interesting thing about this product is it is NFC compatible that's near-field communication so if you have another one of these units or you have a device that can support NFC you can pretty much have an intercom going on at your house so that's the first thing that I like about this product the next thing I like about this product is the design it's kind of like some Star Wars futuristic design here and I actually really think they've hit the mark with the design it's a heavy solid built unit but also as that it's got all the connections you can ask for from a unit looking at the front of the unit here we see the creative logo standing out there with the mech port and the volume knob though one thing I will critique from the get-go is that I wish there was a volume indicator since this product has so many different uses and features it would be interesting to see a volume knob though if you connect it to your PC then it will show the volume on the desktop itself looking below that you've got the power button there which you can power from a standard AC adapter which is included with this combo below that you've got a standard mic in port as well which can work as a line in and besides that you've got a quarter inch Jack port there for headphones and then besides that you've got a three-and-a-half millimeter jack for standard headphone input as well output so all in all you can power two separate sets of headphones from this unit at the same time as well it will allow for that also below above that you've got the SPX button there which will allow you to turn on and off SPX effects at your will so it's a really good feature there and also if you download the soft where you can take advantage and tune the SPX settings to your own liking but we'll get onto that a little bit later when we look at the software suite looking at the sides of the unit you've got the aggressive sound blaster straightedge styling there as well as the logo printed on there below that you've got a USB host port as well that's on the left side of the device on the right side you've got pretty much the same styling there though no USB host on this side so looking at the bottom of the unit got four rubber feet in each of the corners there this will allow this unit not to slip on your desk which is a great thing taking off this plastic cover reveals opm's which are interchangeable so you can mix and match the sound to the way you like though I will say out of the box this thing sounds fantastic looking at the rear of the unit this is where all the magic happens you've got four analog outs there which will power two speakers at 8 ohms at 27 watts per channel if you switch that down to 4 ohms you'll then have 38 at what's available to each channel and you've also got besides that the power in there the 24 volt power in and if you decide to buy creatives optional power supply then it can put out more power though I will critique that and I kind of wonder why they didn't include this power supply with the x7 since it is an expensive unit but looking below that we've got the line out RCA s there which have the right and left you've also got the rear and the sub out 3.5 millimeter jacks which will allow you to hook up a 2.1 sound system with this unit you've also got a line in there for RCA as well as an optical out and an optical in and the USB which will allow you to get sound from your computer via the USB and one good thing about this unit and we'll start talking about the benchmarks is that the balance of this unit was pretty much perfect so there was no color in this unit I was happy to report that over both the optical and the USB line in there so this thing performed extremely well on the benchmarks and then we look at those crosstalk figures and Wow this is the lowest I've pretty much ever seen you can just see there this thing is not moving at all so very impressive figures coming out of the x7 with however that should be expected when you're paying top dollar for a product like this but it was glad to at least know that this product was a premium product that not only looked good it performed really good as well on the benchmarks so with that being said we'll quickly take a look at the software that's included then I'll do a mic in test for you and I'll also test the onboard mic included with the x7 so a dual mic in test for you guys whilst we take a look at the creative soundblaster x7 software suite now for this test I'm using my V mode of boom Pro microphone plugged directly into the x7 unit with a setting of 70% with the microphone boost turned on and also echo cancellation turned on though let's take a look at the first tab here SPX pro studio if you turn this on you'll notice the light will come on and you'll also be able to access cool settings like surround which will emulate a surround effect for your speakers and your headphones I find this great for certain types of video games like MMOs or RPGs when I want to get that little bit of extra immersion though for competitive games I do tend to turn it off crystal eyes are a great setting for bringing out a bit of extra edge in your music I do like to listen to this with certain types of rock for instance to cipher down when I listen to that I turn this setting on bass though I tend to leave this setting off at all times as it adds a lot more quantity of bass but at the expense of quality so if you're at a house party or something and you need some extra bass then I could see this setting maybe coming in handy below that we've got the smart volume and dialog + settings which will allow you to cap some of those loud noises in movies and bring out the voices more sort of normalize the volume great if you're watching a movie at nighttime and you've got loud guns going off and you just want to hear the voices a little bit easier and not annoy your neighbors or bring them as my own as least annoyance as possible though their setting here we've got crystal voice and this allows you to change your microphone settings you can see here I've got it actually at 69% with the mic boost setting turned on below that we've got crystal voice which allows you to actually add a lot of cool different effects in if you want to change it to alien brute or if you want to change it from a boy to a girl you can do that and vice-versa if your boy if you're a girl and you want to change it to a male voice you can do that with this setting you've got a lot of different settings there it actually doesn't work while I'm recording on the desktop for some reason but it does work in games people can hear my voice change smart volume I won't click that setting as a little semi recording crazy but it will help cap the wisp cap the shouting and help boost the whispers below that you've got noise reduction which will essentially take away the noise out of your microphone if you've got a noisy microphone plugged in or if you've just got your settings smashed to the max and you're amping your microphone through an actual preamp as well so that can help with that below that acoustic echo cancellation will help cancel out echoing focus will help narrow down the microphone or it'll help open the area up depending it I find this works pretty well with the actual onboard array microphone below that we've got a mic EQ there which will allow you to add some more warmth into your voice if you wish to though for me personally I like my microphone to do most of the job for that and I like to have the settings or the components as good as possible so I don't have to play around with the mic EQ though I could imagine this having some good values in other certain types of applications let's move on now to scout mode where if you turn this on you'll be able to hear footsteps that much easier in FPS games for instance if I'm playing advanced warfare and I want to hear voices a lot or hear footsteps a lot easier then I can just quickly turn this setting on but keep in mind that this is nothing that you can't do with a good EQ program though it's just great that creative have included this with just a click of a button so if you're playing FBF games and you want to hear those footsteps easier then that's a great setting to have speakers here we've got polarity the first setting here which allows you to reverse the polarity of your speakers if you wish to personally for me I don't bother with this setting though some people claim it can make a difference so you've got that there on the actual tab the next tab here is calibration which I really like that they've included this with the setup as this can actually run you up a lot of money if you get a professional to do this that's calibrating the Seekers so all the sound hits your ear at the same time by either delaying the sound output or actually increasing the volume levels as well so this will help you get a perfect sound experience also below to the next you've got settings for your speakers which will allow you to put your speakers a direct mode if you wish for an uncoloured sound though as I said before my XM sevens I do believe they have a v-shaped output so I'd like to add warmth in there so I select the warm settings for those XM sevens below that we've got headphone mode you can put this into rack mode as well that'll give you that uncolored sound and on this unit as you saw before that graph this thing is a really mutual output which is really good you've also got the high gain setting there which will power those hard to power headphones like those also dynamic headphones that you see going around so I've got mine set at normal gains since I'm just using some low ohm or easy to drive headphones we've got here cinematic below that Dolby Digital I'd like to leave this on full I love 5.1 surround sound with Dolby Digital you can put this on full maximum and it will just give you a awesome experience when you're watching movies below that you've got the mixer panel there for both playback and recording so you can change settings on the fly and then below that you've got the EQ settings if you wish to EQ in some extra bass for example if I was on onboard audio I would have this dialed in but since this unit doesn't suffer from bass roll-off or it suffers very little I don't have to turn up the bass that much and you'll find that this will give you strong sub bass and it'll also give you good bass from the unit now if I'm on my on board audio as I said before I would do something like that you can also add some also there's also other presets in there like flat country and dance and all those other jazz sorts of types of EQ if you wish to put them in below that we've got the profile setting there which will allow you to save all these previous settings into an easy nice custom setup here as you see I've got actually a few custom setups going and so you're able to save a profile on the fly very easily as well as choose from some other profiles here just by clicking a button and then below that you've got your settings here for speaker and headphone which will essentially change the volumes on the fly so that's about it for the software suite let's move on now to a quick test with the onboard array microphone and then we'll move on to a conclusion for you guys okay so we're just going to quickly test the beam microphone on this unit now I don't know if you guys would be able to hear me properly but as closer when I get closer to the unit it should sound really good however if you move far away from the unit then it kind of does not sound as good as a dedicated microphone like a boom mic that'll be directly to your mouth then without being said let's move on now to the conclusion so the x7 is you can see it performed extremely well on the benchmarks this thing is pretty much worthy of being a flagship product though with that being said we'll quickly take a look at the accompanying speaker set then I'll round it all up for a big conclusion for you guys so let's quickly take a look at the XM 7s these are the accompanying speakers that come with the x7 if you wish to purchase them now they're 60 watt speakers per unit and also you get a 30 mil tweeter with it as well as a 105 millimeter speaker now I was happy to report that the bass was very tight on these units and it was pretty strong considering the speaker was only 105 millimeter now also with this unit you get a very big design our surprise is actually quite big measuring in at 295 millimetres by 230 millimeters by 173 millimeters with the covers on you can also take the covers off very easy if you wish to go for that look and then the speaker connections on the back are very easy to use that comes included with speaker wire which is also pre-cut as well which allow you to screw it in and you're pretty much good to go the one thing I will say is that off the mark these things were very clear and crisp but the bass was tight the highs were very clear the one thing I will say is that it is kind of like a v-shaped sound output coming out of these so one thing that I will say that's good about it though is that in the creative SBS studio was there was three presets as soon as you open up the software that allows you to choose which sound set you liked which profile you're late for your speakers so I street a immediately selected warm and I was proud to report that these things sounded really good so let's quickly take a look at the design and the weight of these speakers they're way a little bit over three kilograms per speaker and also they're designed of like this nice subtle black wood it's very solid design on these units and I am pleased to report that it does feel like a quality unit though it is a little bit pricey and I would like to see a 2.1 dedicated system as opposed to a 2.0 now let's talk about the loudness of the speakers because anyone buying speakers wants to know how loud they go with the accompany Act seven these things went really loud for a solar room it's about as loud as I would want maximum volume in my room however that being said they did not go any louder than that so if you wanted these things for passe for powering a party or the you know barbecue and you want music going on from inside I'd say you'd need more powerful of a system to do that so if you're just in a room and you want really loud audio for instance watching movies and stuff this unit will perform and do the job perfectly fine and then some so we conclusion the x7 this is this bad boy here this thing really impressed me a lot it has the hardware to go in and you've got like a 127 decibel signal-to-noise ratio there you've got volume there you've got options there you've got a great software suite you've got a fantastic mic input and you've got a decent mic built onto the unit itself everything on this unit feels really good as well as so much connectivity there and I will say I'm happy to report this time around with the x7 that the USB line is usable it's fine you do bring no distortion or no poor sound into the unit as opposed with the e5 I thought the USB was a bit lackluster compared to the optical in there that is not the case with the x7 it performs extremely well and I was happy to report that very flat neutral line when I was using it in direct mode which really pleased me as well then we're going to move on to the software suite I really like what creative have done with this software suite it's fully featured packed with unit I mean packed with features I mean the list goes on so this unit as you saw in the software suite you can change it can EQ things you can even change your voice you can also set all the volume levels you even got the options to set smart volume in there so I was very pleased with this unit all in all the x7 gets a big recommendation from me even though it is pricey so keep that in mind though if you're looking for a unit that's got it all and you're a gamer as well and you appreciate low input lag from your sound this will definitely give you that option it I was happy to report as well in games that I noticed no delay over my onboard sound which was a great thing as opposed to other USB DAC amp combos have used in the past which do introduce the delay from time to time so lhasa let's look at the accompanying xm7 these things were great speakers though very clear and crisp and I was happy to report that they did perform really well they were very loud for a room though if you were wanted to step it up to a party setup now if you're having barbecues and you need really loud music these things would not do the job that well I'd say you'd want to spend a bit more money and get something even more powerful so if you're into just watching movies in your room or playing games from desktop speakers these things will do an excellent job so that being said they are very big for your desk and this is one thing I kind of don't know what I'm gonna do now because I've got two massive speakers where I don't know where they're gonna fit as opposed to the x7 which can pretty much just fit on top of my computer like that so ergonomics I don't know what I'm gonna do around here but these speakers I'll probably figure something out though this is where I kind of wish they were a two point one setup where I could have two smaller speakers on my desk and then a sub underneath my desk though with all that being said very good unit very well made and they do have two really high quality speakers on each unit and they can go the mile so that's about it for today guys the x7 that gets a big recommendation from me even though it is a bit pricey however it is worthy of being called a flagship product and it comes with all the bells and whistles and then some that you could want from it DAC amp and a DC combo now the accompanying XM seven speakers they are a little bit big so if you know this setback and you do have room to fit them on your desk and you're not - you don't care too much about base then they will make a great accompanying partner to the x7 so I can recommend eight recommend them if you do know these limitations so that's about it guys if you like this video then you please give it a big thumbs up and if you have any questions or comments about the x7 all the XM sevens then drop a comment in the comment section below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can and if you haven't already subscribe to tech guess City and I'll catch you guys in another you very soon peace out for now bye