Gadgetory

welcome back to tech at City this is doc easy coming back to you guys today with a comparison comparing a sound card this is the titanium HD versus the onboard audio it's a real tech 1150 versus an external USB external audio interface the m-audio fast-track now there's recently been some good articles that have come out Tom's did a blind test article where they essentially volume matched all their sources and they found that people couldn't tell a difference for listening to music between a cheap onboard audio solution versus even like a $2000 docking up solution so I found that was pretty surprising in defense of the audio files I'd like to see more testing done and I'd like to see Tom's to maybe allow the audio files to bring in their best and then that would make for a really interesting read but I'll put that article in the description below for you guys you can check it out for yourself also Tek syndicate Logan from tech syndicate with his friend I believe called Tyler they made a video called audiophile myths and I thought overall the message of this video was really good in that be careful of all the snake oil that is in the bullshit that exists in the audiophile industry I believe me there's a ton of it out there but I did disagree with him on some points and I will elaborate on that today in particular the sound cards being useless I thought I did disagree with that but anyway let's talk about music listening first because this is where if you're listening on easy to drive headphones there's not much of a difference okay so this is the first comparison we're going to do we're going to be comparing this sound card versus the m-audio versus the on board for music and more particular listening from headphones now when I hooked up my HD five nine fives in stereo to my sound card and my semi onboard audio my faster there was virtually no difference at all I couldn't tell a difference if there was one I couldn't really tell now this is a normal listening levels however when I did got my Fidelio X once I did notice that there was a slight bit of bass roll-off as these are real bass heavy headphones I could notice it and same with my JT s5 three 5s they're actually seismic headphones so I could notice that bass roll if it was there so if you guys are on easy to drive headphones or moderately easy to drive headphones then there's not much of a difference to be had at all if you're listening in stereo now one cool feature that the sound card did have over the other two is that it up mixes the 5.1 and I thought that this actually sounded pretty fun and a lot of the music I was listening to some people say this might call the music but hey beauties in the hot air of the beholder in this case and I actually enjoyed the 5.1 up mix from even just for music listening of course I had cmss 3d turned off however one thing that the m-audio fast track and the sound card did do is that they had much higher output so they could power harder to drive headphones with more ease as opposed to the onboard so that's that I think that's the biggest difference to be had if you're on headphones now for music listening another huge difference is if you have analog speakers when I hooked up my Logitech Z Falls to the sound card the signal was so clean and powerful the bass was just coming out it was just you could feel it shake in my room it was the good when I hooked it up to the onboard audio it just lacked that punch it lacked that drive the onboard audio I thought wasn't sufficient for powering decent 2.1 or 5.1 speakers for that model the m-audio did do a pretty good job but I just thought the sound guy just did a phenomenal job of powering speakers so if you're on analog speakers that's something you may wish to purchase a sound card Oh overall for easy to drive headphones onboard audio was really good value for money and there wasn't much of a difference to be had let's move on now to gaming ok gaming let's move on now to gaming and this is a really interesting topic because this in my opinion and what is where this sound card the titanium HD came to life and it beat the m-audio fast track and the onboard audio by a big shot now Tek syndicate they came out and said the sound cards were useless but they were using a 2005 I think it looked like a pretty dated sound card so I would like to see them maybe go out and buy something like a titanium HD and do some testing because I think that will be surprised I thought this sound card was damn impressive so essentially this sound card had a feature called cmss 3d it also allowed the audio to be up next to virtual 5.1 surround now if you guys want to hear a demo I've got a link in the description below that tests the stereo versus the cmss 3d so you guys can hear it for yourself make sure that your speakers or your headphones are in stereo mode though if you're listening to this so when I did this I was surprised the positional audio of this sound card was phenomenal to say the least I thought it just did such a good job I can position where people were so accurately and if you've got a pair of HD 5 9 5 you will know how good these headphones are in terms of soundstage so I thought the sound card won hands down if for gaming the onboard audio did a good job I thought it did a much better job than the m-audio fast track and you're probably like why is that they've both got stereo I thought this had a bit of delay I mean when I was playing friends I was playing Call of Duty ghosts quickly I mean I could hear someone's footsteps and all the sudden I've got knifed so I was like what the hell's going on so maybe I hear some gunfire and then I'm actually dead and then I hear a little bit of gun fires like okay this thing actually didn't introduce a little bit of delay and it was pretty noticeable so for gaming I'd either stick to a sound card or on board audio if you've got the money I'd recommend a sound card because the positional audio again I got a I've got to emphasize this it was phenomenal I think I think Logan's friends said that it was just color it was useless but I got to disagree I mean try it for yourselves if you don't believe me because I thought this thing made a legit difference whatever if they if they are coloring the sound then they're doing a damn good job and they're doing it in the right direction so the wind for gaming definitely goes to the Sound Blaster titanium HD so let's move on now to the conclusion okay so in conclusion I will say that sound cards are not by any means useless I thought especially something like this the titanium HD did a phenomenal job of positioning it was so accurate oh man my man my headphones almost fell off my head when I don't know was shocked I was shocked at how good this thing was let's talk about though for music listening because it is important listening and stereo honestly there was not much of a difference at all there's a little bit of bass roll-off but is it worth $150 hell no as you guys didn't know I'm more of a mid I love mids so I'm more of a mid orientated person in that my HD five nine fives are awesome headphones and my favorite headphones so for me if I was just listening to music and stereo I would not need a sound card but since I gave a lot and I like to game competitively at least try to game competitively something like this really did impress me and the virtual art mix the 5.1 was really damn good not to mention for music listening as well I thought with cmss 3d turned off it was actually offered a fun sort of feature for listening to music so a sound car ball means is not useless so if you guys think so then maybe I implore you to try one for yourselves and then make up your own mind of course if you are listening to audio on a junk pair of headphones then you're not going to notice a difference at all but if you're listening on something like HD 595 s then I think you will notice a difference as I did so basically you know in a nutshell I want to try things for myself and I think that the sound card is not useless the m-audio I thought this thing was useless for gaming especially compared to the onboard audio it introduced delay at latency which was noticeable so I can't recommend this for gaming it is good for a musician and obviously a musician is going to know who they are so that was its kind of really I'm going to bump this out of the comparison so another good thing that the sound card did was that it powered analog speakers really well it gave them just such a strong clean signal and so if you love listening to music or sound from analog speakers then you may wish to get a sound card as well so anyway to sum it all up sound cards are pretty damn cool I did really like this I have tried the creative Z and I sold it I didn't really like the creative Z but I thought the titanium HD I'm you know I think it's a keyboard it's a really good sound card anyway if you guys enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up if you have any comments about this comparison please leave a comment in the comment section below but yet in a nutshell beauty is in the ear of the beholder baby so if you guys want to listen to things and get them and then be your own judge that's all I can tell you with audio it's very subjective but anyway I found in the sound was not useless baby anyway these are for now bye