Setting the stage: A finite supply of NOS tubes​

Tube amps can be wonderful and are often beloved in the audiophile community, but they face a supply problem. While many enthusiast threads here on Head-Fi will say the artisanship of constructing valve or vacuum tubes peaked in the 1970’s, they were already facing stiff competition from transistors, and many of the classic companies like Mullard, Amperex, Siemens, Telefunken, RCA, and GE ceased production of audio tubes themselves or even went out of business. The reality is the audiophile consumer market is smaller than the musician and military industries, and once those industries began to move to less expensive and more compact and durable transistors, the customer pool shrank dramatically. Without the financial incentive and many of the “master” factory workers retiring, we entered a few decades of audiophiles going on the hunt to collect “holy grail” samples of surplus, New Old Stock (NOS) tubes. Sadly, top shelf tubes have become rare and their prices continue to shoot up.

However, it seems that there is something of a resurgence of tube popularity, as many tube amplifier options have appeared in the last decade – from very affordable tube hybrids and all the way up to some of the best amps in the world using tubes – and thankfully many of the sophisticated equipment used to make the best tubes from England, Germany, and Holland were purchased from storage and put back into use in Russia, Slovakia, and China to make new tubes!

Why Tubes?​

Generally speaking, why get nostalgic about tubes at all since solid state transistor amplifiers have become mainstream? The most commonly cited and misunderstood reason is the Euphoric “tube sound,” harmonic sounds that give music a more solid body and richer timbre. This doesn’t mean “More Bass,” but this increased complexity can appear more or less depending on what tube you choose. Tubes also Handle clipping more elegantly; instead of sharply hitting 100% level gain and hitting a plateau, that hit is a bit more rounded off to more smoothly hit 100%. Sweeter highs, and sometimes more forward mids are quoted as a better feature… a tube that changes the magnitude of frequency response is a lower grade tube imo, but the other two factors can indeed help highs seem smoother, less threadbare and glaring. Lastly, an overlooked aspect of tubes is that they can be completely capable of intricate detail, and are often chosen for extremely high performance amps, including the world’s best electrostats.

Enter the Apos Ray tubes​

A 12AU7 variant of tube, Apos conveniently lists (and sells) a fairly wide number of amplifiers on their website that can use these, including xDuoo, Bravo, Bottlehead, Cayin, and Woo Audio. The tubes are delivered suspended in a fairly robust block of foam, inside attractive packaging that pleases my graphic design sensibilities.

This is a far cry from my experience buying 6DJ8 old stock tubes from eBay… my two Amperex came directly in little cardboard boxes, protected in shipping by crumpled paper in a larger box, while my Sylvania JAN tubes, Baldwin organ pulled tubes and Voskhod military surplus tubes didn’t even come with a retail box at all and were merely secured by strips of foam and tape before being placed in a brown box with loose packing peanuts to fill the void, mostly. It’s also worth mentioning that my 6DJ8 SET hybrid amp included a tube in its packaging, apparently a quite good one, but I never heard it because it got smashed in shipping. I had a devil of a time cleaning out the glass shards from inside my amp and the grit out of the RCA ports. So, I actually feel the Apos Ray’s protective and easily identifiable packaging is a significant plus for reliable delivery and storage.

I’ll note that the pins are gold plated. Marketing says that this “increases conductivity,” well Gold isn’t a particularly conductive metal… but it prevents rust, and in the long term that WILL improve durability and prevent a loss of conductivity, so the leaf-thin coating is a nice addition.

One piece of marketing that I picked out from the included Apos booklet was that only 4% of the tubes produced and tested on equipment by a sound engineer measured up to their tolerance standards… that figure kind of boggles my mind with how low the yield is on these! The Ray are hand selected, and matched pairs would have to be even more similar to eachother, which is extremely important to providing the sensation of soundstage depth in amps that require matched tubes. If two tubes have similar noise performance but their gain isn’t also matched, it doesn’t just shift the center imaging off to one side, it collapses the illusion of depth into a wall of sound mash. Did Apos succeed in that? That’s a great time to start discussing sound impressions.

Listening impressions​

Though I’ve rolled 7 different 6DJ8 tubes, and attended CanJams and private meets to hear many tube amps (Woo! ALO! Sennheiser HE-1! Blue Hawaii! Though I’ve got to say, the Fostex HP-V7 was one of the most transformative and romantic amps I heard, shame they were discontinued long before I had the savings to buy!), I don’t actually own a 12AU7 amp. Apos Audio was kind enough to lend me an xDuoo TA-22 with stock tubes and the Apos Ray tubes… though these are loaners, and Apos did not offer any financial incentive for a positive review, nor have they read this review before I posted it.

As a basis for comparison, first I warmed up and used the stock xDuoo tubes for two hours, playing some Call of Duty multiplayer and 30 minutes of the 4K Ultra Blu-Ray of the movie Dune: Part One. Side note: the xDuoo cannot directly play audio from the PS5’s USB ports, so I used the optical output from my LG OLED television. I also used a Sennheiser HD 660S2 for evaluation, keep an eye out for a review on that soon. Compared to the solid state amps I typically use, the stock xDuoo tubes sounded syrupy and warm BUT also veiled and the timbre was a little funky, it brought the curious image to mind that all the Atreides were talking through those cardboard toilet paper cores. BAUUUUM-BA-EUUUUUGH?


By contrast, with just 5 minutes warm up and well before the recommended 6 hours of burn-in time with the Apos Ray, the timbre was immediately clearer and sounding much more normal, able to sound both intimate and grandiose, and it was a joy to watch the rest of the movie in this way. Whispered dialogue was as discernible as could be hoped, but more impressively the audio mix didn’t mash up into chaos in loud action scenes with many voices, sound effects, and music all playing at once. After Dune, I went back and played the headphone mix of Call of Duty MWII, which provided the joy of hyper detailed live audio that provided surround sound in reaction to my player character movements, made easy hearing footsteps over the din of directional gunfire at different distances, and kept me engaged and focused well past my bedtime, haha!

To give the stock tubes and Ray tubes a more fair comparison, I let both sets stay warm and active in the TA-22 for two whole nights and days each before coming back to listen to music. To the stock xDuoo tube’s credit, the funky timbre cleared up and provided a closer comparison, but the Ray tubes maintained their clear advantage. I used my Sennheiser HD 660S2 Mixtape playlist on Apple Music for evaluation (it’s a work in progress).

• “All I Need” from Radiohead’s In Rainbows album was more clearly able to pick out the reverb details on the tail end of each note, better portraying the sense of sound within the boundaries of a space, compared to the more dampened xDuoo tubes.
• While not sub-bass monsters, the Rays were able to perform the suckout and bass/electronic hits of “Blueshift” by Machinedrum and Holly with a convincing attack, which some people would call good dynamics.
• “And I Love Her” by Santo & Johnny is an intimate and cozy track in contrast to the prior electronic track, the extra clarity of the Rays did not push the sound too far from the euphoria of the track and I didn’t feel like I was hyper focusing on the Lo-Fi nature of the track or any particular flaws.
• I did bemusingly note the artificial “analog” and noise added to “Short Change Hero,” but again I was still in the flow of the emotion intended in the track, the detail served in equal measure with the euphoria that tubes are known for. In summary, the xDuoo stick tubes were capable and warm tubes, but the Rays were more delicate, nuanced with a richer insight into recordings, and better at portraying soundstage depth behind the instruments and the listener.
• “(-) Ions” by Tool is an atmospheric track featuring wobbling sheets of metal and arcing electric sparks that seem to move around the head (very cool on headphones), I picked this track because the buzzing has a lot of texture and it’s a good way to get a sense of detail retrieval and how firm the attack can be with extremely rapidly changing sounds; the Ray tubes in the TA-22 hybrid amp don’t have the coarsest, hardest texture out of anything on the market, but it’s a significant upgrade over the xDuoo and plenty energetic to be spine-tingling.
• Bonus track, not on the playlist, is “Demons” by Imagine Dragons. It’s a decent song, but one of the most extreme victims of the loudness wars I’ve found, with poor dynamic range and a lot of clipping and distortion (especially in the drums). Tubes can’t magically “fix” lost information and bad mastering, but the Rays do kind of round off the harshness of the drums and it just about makes the most out of the quality of the track, where a high end solid state would brutally highlight these flaws and distract from the enjoyment of the track.
• “Postcard Blues” by Cowboy Junkies also features a shrill blast of harmonica that was too hot for the mic; it’s always, erm, powerful, but the Rays help smooth and sweeten it to a fairly enjoyable level, even though the HD 660S2 doesn’t cut the highs as much as the old HD 650.

Throughout all of this, even with the xDuoo TA-22 positioned right next to my WiiM Pro streamer and my cellphone, the tubes stayed impressively nonplussed. Despite being surrounded by electromagnetic signals (I even asked friends to text me while I had the music paused), I never heard a single squelching sound of EMI. I knocked on the table, the xDuoo chassis, and even the little v-shaped protective stands, but I never heard the tubes ringing. My Amperex bugle boy tube is so microphonic that it seems to have a subconsciously constant whine all the time, and EMI is what made me previously stop using my old tube amp. Impressive showing here!

The money question: can modern production tubes stand up to the classics of yore?​

In the context of featuring high performance, high value, and high confidence, Apos Ray tubes could be the last stop for many people looking for a great tube experience. The Rays are more comparable to solid state amps with low levels of euphonic and harmonic distortion, and they’re quite detailed, but they they do manage to sweeten the music a bit, striking a nice balance that doesn’t become so full bodied to become muddy while also doesn’t become so analytical that flaws distract from enjoying the music. These MSRP for $179, but there’s an ongoing introductory sale at $149 ongoing as of this review, AFTER cyber Monday. For a matched pair (which is more selective than just picking any two tubes), $149 is a good value compared to matched NOS tubes that are collector’s items, and you get the assurance of 3 months of warranty with the ability to get an exchange if something is wrong.

​

Why?​

Lets start with a food analogy. A dish like Fried Rice or American pizza is a lot like a Harmon curve tuned headphone: they are almost always welcome meals in any season, and they can accommodate most ingredients (music) you happen to have in the fridge and still taste good. A more unique flavor is a bigger risk, but at the right time they can really hit the spot: a summer pistachio ice cream, pumpkin spice latte in the fall, pork chops with a drizzle of bitter dark chocolate sauce and mint leaf garnish, or a pair of Apos Caspian headphones with rock, dubstep, EDM, or smoky, intimate club music. The Caspian won’t be all things for all people, but it is a passion project for people who want a heavy sound.

Disclosure: Apos Audio loaned me the Caspian with standard and optional balanced Flow cables at no cost to me, but they did not stipulate for a hype review, also I received no compensation and I have to send the headphones back to them.

Physical Attributes​

Evoking speakers and furniture, the dark stained wood and black leather upholstery of the Caspian have a design that would fit right in with a handsome bachelors pad. If you think a black leather & espresso wood couch sounds comfy, these are the headphone equivalent.

Timber and metal build “quality” come at a cost though: these are heavier than a resin or plastic based headphone from AKG or Sennheiser, or an on-ear portable headphone, but the weight is distributed ok. For people who prefer real leather pads, these seem to be the moisturized, soft, real sheepskin type, oval shaped and detachable with a similar kind of “slot” mount as a Beyerdynamic. The foam inside is a high density memory foam… but it doesn’t need massaged back into shape under the leather every time you wear it. So, I think people who like leather pads will find a lot to like here, and they will be easy to wipe clean, but I also find the typical leather & memory foam pitfalls: they retain heat really well, and eventually the leather feels “hard” against my head after about 45 minutes (YMMV, I’m really sensitive to this). The headband is evenly padded across the length; people with buzz cuts or thin hair may miss having a divot in the center to prevent a hotspot.
While I did most of my testing with the 4.4mm balanced output of my HiBy R6 Pro (a portable music player), I would say by physical traits this headphone is safely intended for home use. The black stock cable and the upgraded Flow red balanced cable have their “Y” joint about a foot and a half from the earcups: nice for flexibility as you turn your head or lean back, but also more easily caught on something when walking around (and more surface for microphonic rubbing noises, though the soft red woven wrap isn’t the most scratchy). It looks a bit bulky and feels a bit heavy so I wouldn’t expect people to walk outside with it (plus it’s open back, with no water proofing and only a fabric dust/hair protection layer on the inside of the earcup). Neither does the headphone fold flat, or make any other accommodations to coexist inside a backpack. The oval earcups only fit under the chin of longer necked people (like me!), and the cables exit the earcups at an angle so they rest forward of your shoulders (nice!) but that also means they stick up if the cups are laid back around your neck. However, the Caspian also comes with quite a nice cubical zippered case, with two zippered mesh pockets inside for accessories, wrapped in a smooth protein leather that looks classy, and I could certainly see someone taking this to an office or just using the case for storage.

Sound​

Savory, heavy sound flavor with bass and lower mids emphasis.
It’s a colored sound, which has pros and cons, and will divide reception, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. With low-end extension and emphasis almost unheard of in open headphones, the Caspian kicks serious bass! This fundamental grounding keeps breathy female vocals from soaring in EDM like “Delicate Weapon” by Grimes & Lizzy Wizzy, but Drums ‘n Bass (DnB) or dubstep will have their beats and oceanic bass waves pressed into the spotlight. I also immediately thought of (and looked up) Cowboy Junkie’s Trinity Sessions album… a famous “in situ” recording among audiophiles, but I felt like the harmonica was mic’ed a bit hot in the recording and can especially sound shrill on the otherwise wonderful finale “Postcard Blues.” Well, the Caspian really plays to the strengths of this song: a synergy of honey with Margot’s vocals, richness in the guitar and other instruments’ fundamentals as each are added, and the harmonica is still loud, but more rounded, less shrill, sweeter. Checking out the perennial bass test track, Angel by Massive Attack, takes the ominous bass overtones to full threat level, with Andy Horance’s velvety and moist high vocals emerging from the shadows. I also asked my mother in law (lets say she’s more “mainstream” in her audiophile experience level) to have a listen, and she remarked how clear it sounded to her. In some ways, this tuning is like the designers wanted to add more bass to an HD 650, though they made their own thing in the end.


However, I believe the tuning from Sandu Vitalie and Kennerton’s design considerations have managed to avoid a muddy mess. Apos published their own frequency response graph on their product page (I copied their “raw” graph here), and while it‘s plain to see that the sub bass has about 8-9 dB more intensity than the 1 kHz mids, and substantial dips in the upper mids/treble frequencies, the end result still has plenty of detail, and the highs are present despite being laid back. Psychoacoustically, our brains are more apt to notice peaks than we are dips, so sure the graph looks a little uneven, but it also has some of the tailored look of what a music producer might do when mastering their music to reduce fatigue without impacting presence much. What this all boils down to is the headphone has an intentional tuning that will not be a jack of all trades, but do some music (or fit some tastes) particularly well. And most people will be able to reach the peak of the “amplifier scaling” easily with this headphone… with low impedance and high sensitivity in a rating that looks like they belong to a small portable headphone, you don’t need much power to hear what the designers intended (an Apple dongle would be fine!), though the headphone has enough resolution that it pays to have a signal chain that has minimal distortion. For audiophiles who prefer a Topping or SMSL amp that measures very low distortion but perhaps sounds a little clinical, the Caspian might offer a great synergy that brings some emotion and art back into the music. For me, the headphone seems to beg being played a bit loud, where it had admirably low distortion, but physically still resulted in me wanting a break after an hour… the design intent was to be low fatigue, and your mileage may vary from mine!

The Caspian also features other design elements to prevent masking of detail. Aluminum is not as electrically conductive as copper, however it is a fraction of the weight, therefore much less mass, thus the copper-plated aluminum voice coils attached to the driver membrane have less inertia than they would if the wiring was pure copper. The driver is rather large, and offers great air displacement for the bass. I’m not entirely sure if humanity has mastered graphene-coated drivers yet to take full advantage of the material (maybe if the polymer membrane was infused with graphene rather than just two attached layers…) but I’m not an engineer or an expert, and perhaps this graphene plus the lower mass voice coils have assisted in the audible result of a low distortion driver with quicker decay than I would expect from this size driver or this much bass. Kennerton surely put a lot of technology and inspiration into the design!

As I have had this demo unit for several months (Sorry Apos), I’ve saved ten songs that I’ve come across on shuffle that play to the strengths of the headphone’s coloration:

Who is it cool for?​

The Caspian is a beautiful lie. It’s not a studio-neutral headphone that presents the truth and nothing but the truth (so help me!), however it is a rocking headphone that focuses on the emotional experience. For people that use wireless earbuds or smartphone speakerphones, or have a pair of closed-back ANC headphones for on the go use, this headphone will appeal to bassheads and be a great complimentary headphone to come home to. They may find themselves surprised that an open backed headphone can be a basshead headphone, and surprised that a basshead headphone can also sound fairly clear. I think it would also be fun for someone who only has an hour or less for each session of music fun, and wants to maximize their listening session.

Sound Blaster X G5
The Gaming device with everything* we asked for



A Little Context
The G5 is part of Creative's "Blaster X" gamer focused line, cued after the name of the X7. I loved the Sound Blaster X7 (reviewed here) and the more music-focused Sound Blaster E5 (also reviewed here). The X7 is my most–used piece of audio gear right now, but the $400 X7 is Creative's top of the line setup, and a lower-cost, upgraded replacement for the discontinued Recon3D USB (reviewed here) was still missing. For me, the Recon3D USB represented a headphone to console connection, with headphone surround processing and microphone input, for around $120.

When Creative hinted about an E5 variant they would call the G5, people on the X7 and Mad Lust Envy gaming threads were dreaming of an Astro Mixamp killer. It seems Creative was actually listening and filled an impressive number of our requests, but does the G5 succeed and absolutely slay the competition? Read on!



Statistics/Design
In the box, you get the G5 itself, which is a DSP, DAC (Cirrus Logic CS4398), dual headphone amp (Texas Instruments TI6120A2), and mic (with ADC), but also you get a bold red micro USB cable (the new ones like on android smartphones and Playstation 4 controllers), a 1m optical cable (yeah I used metric, and it's a Toslink to Mini-Toslink connector cable), a map of various setup/cable wiring options and instructions, two warranty papers, and something in Singaporean which I also assume is a warranty/thank you card. If you noticed that was mostly copy-pasted from my E5 review, that's because the G5 is mostly a gamer-focused adaptation of the E5, and that's a very good start! Plus, you know, I can plagiarize myself without fear of lawsuit

The power aspects of the G5 are kinda balanced between a portable and desktop amp. Creative removed the E5's lithium battery, but as a hardcore gaming device it would be plugged in to USB on a PC or console anyway, so that's an acceptable cost savings measure to bring the price down. As an amp, it does have enough power for my AKG K612 to sound linear and full... Which, by the way, requires a higher volume setting than the 600 ohm DT880 for the same apparent loudness. Output impedance on the headphone jacks is between 2.2 and 2.4 ohms, pretty ideal for most headphones except the most sensitive IEMs. Speaking of IEMs, my Custom Art CIEMs and entry-level RHA IEMs pick up a little background hiss (less than the X7) that is easy to ignore once the audio starts, with no hiss for my 32 ohm Oppo PM-3 or V-MODA M-100. Unlike the Astro Mixamp or Creative's old Recon3D USB, it has plenty of volume headroom and has some nice density to the notes. From a pure value:sound quality perspective, this is pretty impressive at this price compared to the more commonly recommended signal chain gear, but more on competitive options in the conclusion.



The G5 contains a fair number of connectivity ports and buttons, same layout as the E5 but some have different functions. There's two 3.5mm jacks by the big but unobtrusive volume dial; the left jack is for headphones (TRS) and headsets (TRRS), the right is for microphones only. The digital volume dial and can be clicked to mute, and it is also backlit with a red LED that changes brightness with the volume setting, cool! Next side to the right of that has the Scout Mode button and the SBX activation, both with white indicator lights for "on," and a gain switch. You can hold the buttons to turn off processing for a "straight" audio signal. Then there's three LEDs indicating which of the three SBX profiles is active, those three plus Scout Mode total 4 sound profiles which can be customized with a computer. The next face around the right is the wide picture above. The two ports on the left are combination 3.5mm (TRS) and mini-Toslink ports. Then, the "USB–Device" port is for connecting to a keyboard, mouse (not on PS4), USB thumbdrive, and I can confirm that my PS4 recognizes my Blue Snowball USB microphone through this port. It doesn't work as a digital connection to smartphones or tablets. The furthest right micro-USB port is for charging the E5 and PC/Mac/PS4 connection (Just one cable! No rats' nest, yay!). The G5 CAN play from USB and the line-in at the same time, and you CAN output straight or processed audio through the line-out to another DAC or amp... So you can build a rats nest if you want!



Sound
I played some high-rez FLACs of music using VLC (and some fun stuff from iTunes), with SBX and any EQ off the sound is pretty good: it's overall pretty clean, though maybe a slight upper mids emphasis which makes vocals and guitars sound a tad more romantic. This is all so slight and close to flat, that you have to be really used to your headphone on another amp to hear the difference; without A/B testing this will sound like a nice flat amp. Plugging in my headphones to the G5 compared to my PC's Gygabyte more board was an immediate improvement; every note more crisp, nuances revealed so the playing stage is more transparent (and thus relative depth of a great recording is easier to sense). My next description will be familiar to most people who have owned a nice amp: audio is a bit more engaging, like as if you can feel the artist's emotion or the music is "full of life" rather than dull or a soda-gone-flat.

One more thing… Straight out of the box, the G5’s SBX processing was smeary and, frankly, bad. The G5 sounded good without processing, and a firmware update basically fixed the processing. I highly recommend installing the new Blaster X suite to your computer and updating the G5’s firmware right out of the box before judging the processing.


What makes it cool?
Let's cut to the chase here: this is a lower cost reconfiguration of Creative's E5, with fewer features but still retaining most of the things a gamer at home will like. As an audiophile, this is a great starter Amp/DAC. I would go as far as saying is pretty comparable to the well-known Schiit M&M stack or FiiO E09k (with less output impedance and hiss) and E17 stack for a pretty great price. It also includes a DSP that can be custom-tuned for a headphone (Hot treble? Anemic bass? EQ that!) or use (music engagement, tactical gaming, movies at night). That processing (including SBX Headphone) can be output to a crazy desktop super-setup or AV receiver (night mode + Netflix, anyone?). They also enabled Creative's excellent SBX Headphone Surround to take positional audio from PC/Mac and immerse players in 360° (2D) sonic environments. I feel trading things like the battery, built-in microphones, digital phone connections via USB or Bluetooth from the E5 in order to reach a lower price point is fair (though the loss of Bluetooth controls on a mobile app is a tiny bit annoying). The lower cost, LED volume indicator, easy mic setup, and processed output were all community requests for improvements after looking at the X7 and E5, and Creative brought that to market.

That leads me to the uncool part. The G5 cannot decode Dolby or DTS from a Playstation or Xbox, so consoles are a Stereo-Only affair. Good stereo, no problem for 2D games, but that means the G5 is not a true successor to the Recon3D USB, even if the sound quality is improved.

I can only speculate as to why the G5 wasn't enabled to decode Dolby while the Recon3D USB was for around the same price (less, when on sale). The existence of the Recon3D makes me doubt cost as the reason, though maybe it has to do with Dolby and post-processed digital outputs, or perhaps not enough gamers have been educated about the appeal of surround gaming.

Conclusion
If you liked the Sound Blaster Omni but wanted to be able to connect to consoles as well as computers, then the G5 does that while being an amp upgrade. However, for PC-only gamers, the Omni is cheaper and you won't outgrow it because the Omni also has a line-out and post-processed optical output for upgrades. If you like the G5 but could make use of turning it from a transportable to a portable, with the extra features of Bluetooth, Microphones, phone and tablet USB support on the go, and a battery, then for $50 more you can buy the very versatile Creative E5. If you want headphone surround with a game console, then shop for an X7 or another brand. The G5 definitely takes a stab at all of Astro’s Mixamp line with a much more powerful Amp and crisper DAC for overall sound quality at almost the same price, but the Mixamp still has 360° surround audio for consoles and a physical knob for mixing chat and game audio.

Purely based on sound quality, Schiit, FiiO, Fostex, and others should watch as the G5 sounds surprisingly close for less money. The G5 has it’s own implementation of the amping chip also used in the FiiO E09k, Fostex HP-A4, Asus STX, and Creative’s own ZxR, while sharing the same DAC chip as used in several of Astell & Kern’s DAPs and sounds nigh-indistinguishable in A/B tests with Schiit’s Modi DAC. Let that sink in for a little… The G5 is no gaming gimmick.

As it stands, the G5 is low–cost considering it's sound quality, and is a great *stereo* home-gaming device.

How far can mods take a headphone's performance? That's the key question when looking at headphones like ZMF Headphone's Vibro Mark II; but instead of answering the question, the Vibro has opened the door of awareness to whole new possibilities! Yes, ZMF has objectively improved the technical performance from the original, subjectively changed the flavor to amazing tonal richness, and re-forged the set to make a strong new impression.



Sound Signature
I invited a music enthusiast friend over, let's call him "Tin Ears" to protect his freedom to blurt out his unfiltered mind and reflect his gear-noob status. On the way, he was very excited as we talked about different technical aspects of sound and songs that would really strike us in the feels, but I refused to tell him how the Vibro sounded to me or hype him other than to say he was in for a treat. He walked in, continuing the conversation, but I cut him off with "Here... Have some chocolate!"

"Woah the wood looks amazing! These pads are HUGE!!"

He put them on. I started playing one of his favorites, The English Beat's "I Confess."

"Holy [nsfw] man. Holy [NSFW]!" Pause... "Damn, this is so good, it makes me want to... To punch a hole in the wall, hahaha!"

The Vibro MkII is, on the frequency graphs, definitely colored and a "fun" headphone with a moderate V-shape (what I'd call a "u" shape). The response starts out with a few decibels bass boosted above neutral that smoothly curves down partway into the midrange, levels out, and starts lifting up a few decibels into the treble "hump" (smoother than your typical "spike") peaking at around 7kHz, beginning to roll back down around 9kHz, and coming back to level with the mids around 12-13kHz and continuing to smoothly roll off past the audible hearing range. So, yeah - energetic midbass and plenty of sub-bass extension (especially with a more-powerful-than-average amp and a DAC better than your phone), nicely balanced against the treble lift. To make a “fun” sound signature, the fundamental midrange needs to be relatively lower so that there is some excitement at the extremes. I specify "u" shape because the slope is gentle; still the mids have a nice presence.

Beyond the frequency range, the Vibro is also endowed with rich timbre, unforced detail, and low fatigue from the treble. I hear the thicker, richer timbre and I think of another headphone that tried to have similarly solid mids/midbass (introduced at $1k, now selling for half that) while also having good detail, soundstage, transparency... and this Vibro achieves that solid weightiness without the bloom, slower decay, nor sacrifice as much of inner detail as that other headphone. Note attack has a solid THUMP that can be felt on the surface of the ear. The Vibro doesn't decay as sharply as my Vintage Stax (what does?!), but coming from another mid-fi headphone like my AKG K612, the Vibro will raise the bar for resolution without sounding artificially enhanced or pressed into the spotlight. Since it doesn't try too hard to spotlight detail from etched or spiked treble, it's easier to listen to for longer times. As a closed headphone, it presents soundstage depth differently than an open headphone, but if you get used to it, the Vibro will show you a room inside your head and do a Hi-Fi job of strongly placing each instrument distinct from each other with only a little concentration. The headphone definitely encourages you to sink in and in and in, and then grooves you with some serious mojo.

What does this mean? I can listen to Margot sing "Walking After Midnight" (Cowboy Junkies, Trinity Session) and really enjoy the varying softness of the electric guitar plucks, hear the ambient decay from Margot's tapping foot inside the church with surprisingly good imaging from a closed headphone, and actually enjoy the spice from the harmonica's high notes. I LOVE the impact of the drums and great gritty texture of the bass guitar on "Heart of the Sunrise" by Yes. I can play an intense game of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 or Destiny without the crack of guns or booms of grenades fatiguing me, yet still use virtual surround processing to predict right when an enemy will appear around the corner and that I'll have to escape that firefight coming up from behind. The thunder inside the Vault of Glass in Destiny sounds so cool and powerful. The Vibro sounds especially magic with Electronica, Alternative, Rock, Jazz, Pop... Not the last word in detail for large orchestral ensembles or recreating the sound of standing out in the rain, but the Vibro still plays with the intensity of the musicians. Go ahead and put anything on, you'll have a good time.



Design
Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise, but the carved wood earcups, super-plush pads, planar magnetic drivers contribute a lot to the sound and ergonomics. Vibro Mk II's start their life as a Fostex TRP-series headphone (Fostex is an OEM Manufacturer). Vibro Labs lathes out the jointly-designed earcups out of "A solid block of premium forestry" as per ZMF's website; mine is carved out of a dense but sustainable Sapele wood, most are Cherry. Meanwhile, Zach tunes and rewires the drivers with premium OCC Litz copper, reassembles the headphone with some massively thick pads and the customer's choice of earcup and adjustment "arm" finish. The cables have a new mini-XLR detachable system that clicks into place smoothly and solidly; Zach (and his wife) make them out of 4-strand wire and terminate the cable with whatever plug the customer wants. I suggest 1/4" or XLR.

A factory-stock Fostex T50RP is pretty good, but a Vibro coaxes better sonic refinement and comfort (and aesthetics) out of what parts are reused. A Vibro is more comfortable due to the significantly more deeply plush, malleable, and slightly more breathable earpads and plush "pilot pad" headband. The wood and padding put the Vibro on the heavier side of headphones, plus they're pretty large, but I wore them while gaming for 5 hours with minor weight shifts, and I don't mind wearing them 1-2 hours without fussing with them (at room temperature). The Vibro MkII cups also have a cool cup mounting system, with wiggle room to pivot the cups a bit in any direction to sit flush against your ears and head. The earcups also have three tuning ports which add about +1 dB of midbass for each unplugged port; I most often listened with the default two-pegged-ports which is just slightly "fun" of neutral but still seems faithful of timbre, while all ports unplugged made my bassy V-Moda M-100 seem redundant. The bass tuning plugs are fun, but feel more like different favors of one headphone rather than 4 different headphones. Go back to the T50RP, and the sound will be more etched in the treble and have more bloom in the midbass, with less pleasurable and believable timbre.



Part of the Vibro's impact and... vibrancy comes from the different-than-usual Planar Magnetic drivers. Most headphones use the Dynamic cone drivers like most home-theater speakers use, but Planar drivers use a super low-mass film that can change direction super fast from the electromagnets set on one or both sides of the film. The much flatter waves and speedy responsiveness from the film benefit the listener with less distortion and basically immunity to effects from an amplifier's output impedance. The downside is that the Vibro is the most power hungry headphone I have had in my house, yet. At work, I had to turn up my poor iPhone 5s to just two ticks shy of maximum volume to get my regular listening volume, and even max was less than what several coworkers wanted to set it. The darling O2 amp on 3x gain can reach adequate volume easily, but still sounds a bit dull and fails to articulate the bass and soundstage depth as well as my more transparent Cavalli Liquid Carbon (connected via XLR) and Theta Basic II DAC at home... The Vibro definitely scales up with a better system.




Cool Factor
Want a unique headphone? One with that hand-crafted feel, with natural wood grain (that you can still feel) in either nude "natural," "stained," or "burst" finish echoing acoustic guitars, one that is collectable and just perhaps as much an heirloom to an audiophile as a Gibson is to a musician? The Vibro delivers.

Secondly, or perhaps more importantly, you'll want to hold onto your custom Vibro because it sounds so addicting. I'm a firm believer that there is no single "best" headphone that will be everyone's favorite... but Tin Ears was just one among three friends, three family members, five coworkers, two GameStop workers ("Astros are best!"), and one random customer at GameStop who all wanted to listen to several songs, all heard something new, all came away impressed, and half softly spoke expletives. That makes the Vibro a pretty easy recommendation. Even if you one day get a technically better performing summit-fi headphone costing twice as much or more, the Vibro still earns its place as the non-fatiguing, toe-tapping alternative for when a harmonica sounds too shrill or a j-pop singer is too sibilant.


Best Use Scenario
The Vibro MKII is best kept near a desk at home or work where you can connect it to a brawny amp and set it down when you need to get up and walk somewhere. The pads and cups seal in the sound quite well with above-average closed headphone comfort, so the Vibro serves well in an environment where you need to cut down ambient noise but you can't wear IEMs because you frequently need to hear a coworker or say hi to your Fiancé/Spouse (face the door!!).


Overall, the Vibro is pretty close to ideal for what I would look for in a closed headphone. It is pretty much for home use, is a little heavy, and requires a desktop-class amp, but it has great strengths in addicting sound, extended-wear comfort, good sound seal and isolation, and frankly is a unique looking headphone with that "custom, handmade" feel. It satisfies on it's own against many hi-fi headphones in the sub-$600 bracket, but also makes a great compliment to own alongside a very technical, transparent headphone that may stray too close to analytical for some songs. You might as well spring for the stain or "burst" finish if you like that look, and a stand or the case, because the Vibro will be just as much a conversation starter as a Swarvosky Crystal statuette. The slight cost will be amortized as the Vibros will be around for a loooooong time for you, for whenever you want to bring some magic to the most popular music genres on the planet.

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I'd like to give a big Thank You to Zach of ZMF for letting me borrow these Vibro's after I asked to review them. I also appreciated Zach's quick service when I had a shorting issue with one of the cables... it was well worth hearing the headphone on my best setup!

One device to hook up your headphones to... Basically anything.

In the 1980's, there was a Man. So manly was this Man, he could fix or fashion any tool from materials on hand, his name became a verb for finding unusual uses for paper clips, chewing gum, and battery acid, and earned a capital M in Man from me for being so clever and self-reliant. A combination of handyman and Sherlock. Most of you already know, I'm thinking about MacGyver. Now, Creative Labs have cooked up a pretty clever little portable product in the Sound Blaster E5 that is festooned with so many input and output options, and accomplished it in such a capable manner, that I can MacGyver myself into virtually any audio setup to complete the chain between audio and headphones, and I can feel just a little bit as cool as he.

Full disclosure, I knew about the E5 and wanted one, so I jumped at the opportunity when Creative posted on Head-Fi that they were looking for reviewers for this and a few of their other new items. I figured, I've tried so many other surround-processor devices and most of Creative's products of this type, I should apply and let you guys know how the E5 stacks up. Neither Creative or MacGyver have paid me for this review.




Stats N'at
Before MacGyver could deactivate the laser beam grid blocking his progress, he had to understand the constituent parts and nature of the gear he had on him or around him, so let's start with what you get with the E5 and it's various features and connections.



In the box, you get the E5 itself, which is a DSP, DAC (Cirrus Logic CS4398), dual headphone amp (Texas Instruments TI6120A2), and mic (with ADC), but also you get a bold red micro USB cable (the new ones like on android smartphones and Playstation 4 controllers), a 1m optical cable (yeah I used metric, and it's a Toslink to Mini-Toslink connector cable), a stout 45° angle stand and screw mount, some attachment rubber bands, a map of various setup/cable wiring options and instructions, two warranty papers, and something in Singaporean which I also assume is a warranty/thank you card.

The power aspects of the E5 are kinda balanced between a portable and desktop amp. Battery on the E5 lasts up to about 8 hours, basically I can use it for two or three days if away from power. That's not as great efficiency as an amp specifically made for sensitive portables, but it does have enough power for my AKG K612 to sound linear and full... Which, by the way, requires a higher volume setting than the 600 ohm DT880 for the same apparent loudness. Output impedance on the headphone jacks is between 2.2 and 2.4 ohms, pretty ideal for most headphones except the most sensitive IEMs. Speaking of IEMs, my Custom Art CIEMs and entry-level RHA IEMs pick up a little background hiss that is easy to ignore once the audio starts, with no hiss for my 32 ohm Oppo PM-3 or V-MODA M-100.



The ports really help to define what you can do with this magic black box. Looking at the pictures, I'd just like to clarify what some of the ports are/do. There's two headphone jacks by the protected volume dial, the side to the right of that has the power button which also can be held to activate Bluetooth pairing, then the SBX activation button which can answer Bluetooth calls, a gain switch. Design wise, the two buttons and switch are contained in a trapezoid-shaped flat panel, which fits neatly with the shape of one side of the desk stand. Then there's three LEDs indicating battery level. The next face around the right is the wide picture above. The two ports on the left are combination 3.5mm and mini-Toslink ports, though the input is a TRRS 3.5mm port and the output is a TRS 3.5mm. Then, the USB host port is for connecting to a smartphone or tablet source... I can plug in my iPhone 5S with just the charging cable that came with it and get digital sound output. No CCK required! It doesn't charge my iPhone, but it charges Androids for a bit... Greatly sacrificing the E5's battery life. The furthest right micro-USB port is for charging the E5 and PC/Mac connection. The E5 is pretty fat for a portable, but I was surprised how well it fit into my cargo shorts pocket and strapped to my iPhone without being as tall as my FiiO E12. I'd call it a "full-sized portable."




Sound
I played some high-rez FLACs of music using VLC (and some fun stuff from iTunes), with SBX and any EQ off the sound is pretty good: it's overall pretty clean, though maybe a slight upper mids emphasis which makes vocals and guitars sound a tad more romantic. This is all so slight and close to flat, that you have to be really used to your headphone on another amp to hear the difference; without A/B testing this will sound like a nice flat amp. Plugging in my headphones to the E5 wired to my iPhone 5S was an immediate improvement compared to iPhone alone; every note more crisp, nuances revealed so the playing stage is more transparent (and thus relative depth of a great recording is easier to sense). My next description will be familiar to most people who have owned a nice amp: audio is a bit more engaging, like as if you can feel the artist's emotion or the music is "full of life" rather than dull or a soda-gone-flat. Compared to Creative's older Sound Blaster Z or Recon3D USB, I prefer this E5, and I prefer it over gaming DSPs such as the Turtle Beach DSS (crisper and more powerful) and Astro Mixamp (crisper, smoother, more powerful, and less hissy).


What Makes It Cool?
How have I MacGyvered the E5 to my uses? Weeeeell, of course I played Battlefield 3 and Starcraft II on PC, and SBX was particularly awesome with Borderlands 2 with the OpenAL "Hack" to enable true 3D surround. I can use the PC/Mac software suite or the mobile app to tweak SBX and EQ. My Fiancé and I were watching a TV show off my AppleTV which had really bad volume jumps between music and dialogue, and SBX's smart volume feature saved me from having to change the volume all the time (and save my sanity). I took the E5 with me to RMAF, where it became PARTICULARLY cool and useful beyond just a portable DAC/Amp. I could A/B headphones of nearly the same sensitivity rapidly using the two headphone jacks... I couldn't plug in the HiFiman HE-1000 at the same time as the HiFiman Edition X, but high gain did quite good with the HE-1000 (that headphone has marble-like solid bass!), and then a quick flick of the gains switch to low and I could listen to the Ed X with the same song file, DAC, and Amp. Doing that made it really easy to set a baseline for comparing ALL the variety of headphones at RMAF (except the Stax... Heh). And if I wanted to test out an amp, I could use the E5's line-out, if I wanted to use a DAC I could just use the E5 as a transport to bridge the songs on my phone to the optical input of a DAC!


[COLOR=FF00AA]Hifiman Edition X, Sound Blaster E5, and my iPhone, playing a Mirror's Edge video with surround processing baked in.
And I look COOOOOL![/COLOR]


The E5 is pretty complete, in the sense that it can be a part of pretty much any audio setup. The only glaring omission is that it can only connect to game consoles with stereo audio. To do that, the E5 would have to be able to decode at least Dolby, but ideally would be able to decode Dolby Atmos or DTS X for surround with height channels. This is no problem with PC games because the surround isn't encoded over USB and some games even support full 3D surround with above and below cues. C'mon, surround gaming is where Creative shines (in my opinion), and yet the E5 can only play stereo with the largest user base of gamers (console)! Let's make this happen, but keep the ability to take the processed audio and pass it along digitally to another DAC like the E5 currently can on PC. Ironically, the E5 has the best microphone integration and easiest setup I've ever had on PS4... Just unplug the USB charge cable from my controller, plug that into the E5, and Voilá! You get (stereo) sound, dual microphones with noise canceling (I had to turn up the gain, but this was Creative's best sounding mic I've heard yet), and your volume dial right there. With nearly full gain, I could talk with a keyboard behind the E5 and CrystalVoice to focus the direction of mic pickup (part of the SBX features) and the mic silenced the key clicks. If you like stereo gaming, it's a killer setup.

Conclusion
When Creative made the E5, they concentrated first on sound quality, then portable design with lots of connection options, and lastly tacked-on the existing SBX suite. The result is more audiophile than gamerphile. It has great sound, a thoughtful design that is very useful to the adroit, and full-featured for PC/Mac and mobile devices, but I really miss the accurate SBX surround while console gaming. If I really was MacGyver, I would kludge together Dolby or DTS decoding into the E5 to perfect it, but as-is I use the E5 everyday in all sorts of ways.

Before we start, I have to admit to a bias; the description of a Libra fits me pretty well. I love balance and an even-handed approach to everything. A little bit more about the libra personality: we are diplomatic, hospitable, peace-loving, and idealistic. We're also sometimes vain! Acoustically, I love many different kinds of sounds, I also play a lot of videogames, and I tend to have long listening marathons. Fortunately, the Oppo PM-2 is the Libra headphone!



Sound Signature
Balance. That's what the PM-2 is all about. I don't detect major spotlights on particular frequencies, mainly the headphone speaks honest-to-the-recording. This makes the PM-2 a sociable creature that can easily hang with the R&B crowd, speed along quickly with some metal, or recline dreamily with the parlor piano. This chameleon quality makes the PM-2 score pretty high on transparency, but without obvious colorations it doesn't obviously put on rose-tinted glasses to satisfy bass heads or treble heads. If I listen through a whole song or two, the Oppo's strengths in note separation, imaging, quick leading impact, and low distortion and note bloom really can draw in the listener.

Generally mids do have a bit of meat on them and are engaging, but still balanced and not "thick" like the mids on a Sennheiser HD700. Treble is slightly less hot than I'm used to from my AKGs, but in a nice "red wine audiophile" way; I don't find it veiled, and in fact I really appreciate the fatigue-free experience for 3+ hours of listening. Playing my favorite CoD4:MW, I used to hate it when someone called in a helicopter; of all the guns in that game, the staccato slicing sound of the chopper gun is the most irritating. My old Audio Technica ATH-AD700 could get irritating, the AKG Q701 was better but would still make me wince sometimes, the Beyerdynamic DT880 would leave my ears ringing, but the only irritation I feel with the Oppo is if the chopper kills me... I could hear it coming, I knew better! Bass is always low distortion and articulate, extending deeper than the PM-3 with "Undisclosed Desires of the Heart" by Muse and making a fairly strong showing in "Angel" by Massive Attack, but never bleeding over my ability to hear over other instruments and only thumping on the door when called on.







Tech/benefits
The PM-2 is the good child which plays well with home or portable systems. One way Oppo achieved this was with a double-sided diaphragm that's quite efficient, with relatively low impedance (32 Ohms) and high sensitivity (102 dB in 1mW). The other system "hospitable" aspect of the PM-2 is Planar Magnetic's purely resistive impedance, meaning that you can ignore the 1/8 output impedance amping guideline. If you don't know what that is, stay innocent – a whole can of worms is not an easy thing to swallow! With my iPhone 5s, I heard a surprisingly capable and full experience; plugging it into my home reference system (with a Theta Pro Basic II DAC) yielded a little better dynamic "impact," slightly more meat on the bass and mids, and extended soundstage depth, but the iPhone still had great resolution and extension without sounding harsh. I give any and all sonic improvements to the multibit DAC because the PM-2 doesn't need a special amp to "fix" flubby bass or grainy distortion. Oppo bucks the trends set by Audeze and HiFiman where Planar Magnetic drivers earned a reputation as some of the most power-hungry tech on the market among headphones.

It's also light weight for a Planar. Sure, the 385g PM-2 is heavier than my all-plastic headphones, but considering all the leather, metal, and plastic that goes into the build, the weight is an achievement and noticeably nicer than (again) the other Planar Magnetic headphones on the market. The weight and its distribution (Oppo even published the clamping force in the spec sheet: 5 newtons!) make for a headphone I can wear long-term during an Iron Banner event in Destiny. My casual-earclip-toting fiancée notices the weight, but ON HER OWN listened to three songs instead of just the usual 42 seconds and "That's nice dear."

The earpads and cables are easily swappable and Oppo (separately) offers pads of different materials and balanced cables (2.5mm jack in the headphone). Replaceable cables give peace-of-mind for a headphone of this price, and it's cool to customize cabling for my amp. I usually loathe leathery earpads, but these latex ones wrapped in pleather don't trap heat as much as some others, resist moisture absorption (I was like 15th in line for the loaner program, and the pads didn't feel grease city at all!), and were still nice and springy.

Apparently, these PM-2 "alt" pads helped bring out some treble which people complained was missing from the PM-1's default pad. My own cursory swap didn't immediately detect a huge drop in treble, but it probably would've taken more songs to really notice. I spent half of my time with the velour-wrapped earpads, which I found gloriously comfortable despite the front to back width being narrow enough that the back of my ears would often be slightly covered by the pads. The pads swap super easily, with plastic pegs reminiscent of reattaching speaker cover screens.






Cool Factor
The PM-2 won't get you a hot date or show off in a big way to your friends, but it is a headphone you could show your spouse (without getting slapped in the face), could be your best buddy at the office, or could help you let go of tension at the end of the day.

It has the functional "first kind of cool" of being a very capable headphone, in spades, but not cool in being specialized for "The phatest bass you've ever heard!" or "Massive amphitheater Soundstage". A Coworker, let's call him "tin-ears" to protect his dignity/anonymity, wore them for 2 minutes and remarked that they didn't sound "much different" from his EarPods (compared to going to his Beats Studios), but almost immediately after putting his earpods back on came back and suddenly rattled off a bunch of ways his earpods weren't as good.

Form and size-wise, it's maybe a bit bigger than would look great while walking down the street, but this full-sized headphone embraces a unique rounded-rectangular aesthetic that really sets it apart from most headphones. However, this is still the Libra headphone... the PM-2 isn't unique like the purple Audio Technica ATH-AD700 with head "wings." Oppo decided to balance the uniqueness by using traditional headband/yolk shapes, traditionally classy but low-key materials like black leather and brushed metal, and understated style accents. The Selvedge premium denim case is something new, encouraging me to fold the earcups flat and have it accompany me to work. So it's unique, but in a handsome and upscale way rather than unique in a wild way.

Not as collectible "Cool" as the PM-1 with all that model's included accessories, display case, and premium price, but the PM-2 saves a "cool" $400.



Best Use Scenario
The PM-2 is a gentlemanly headphone, transporting neatly to accompany you to the office or library. It's Forward and Musical, rather than brightly analytical, so this is probably not the choice headphone for mastering engineers. Suitable for long-relationships and a genre chameleon, I wore these for hours while gaming first person games with surround, but it's equally suited for hi-fi music listening marathons on "shuffle" mode. Finally, the Oppo might make your expensive, fancy amp seem redundant, make theaters seem overpriced, and make you contemplate raw denim jeans, but in the long run the PM-2 is a satisfying value that excels at showing off great audio files and a quality DAC.

Attractive, hospitable to playing off of most devices, skillful at diplomatically playing almost anything, almost ideal for extended listening... Now that's a Libra Headphone!

Creative's Sound Blaster E1

If you want to cover your bases with a do-all headphone accessory, the E1 is a good start. Affordable, well featured, inexpensive, the E1 is Creative's entry-level portable DSP, DAC, and amp all-in-one. Forgive the "classic" analogy, but this piece of equipment is very much like a Swiss Army knife... Each tool may not be the very best for every task, but it's small enough to always have around and very handy in many areas.



The E1 is built compact and thoughtfully, just like a Swiss Army Knife (SAK). Like a SAK's plastic side scales, the E1 is small and made of plastic. It has thoughtful design details that are obvious like a clip to attach to belts and clothes, and less obvious details like how the sides are angled and the clip is "just so" wide so that you can set the E1 down on a desk at a 45° angle so the mic points up at you (more on the Microphone later). The analogue input is TRRS, so on Android you can answer phone calls or pause music, and on iOS (or when plugged into a computer via USB) you can use all the buttons on the E1 to skip tracks and fast forward as well as everything you can do on Android. For volume control, they went with an analogue slider; At really low volumes this introduces some channel imbalances (different volume in each ear), but on the plus side it works with an analogue connection to Android and you can visually see what the volume is set at. The volume slider is also plastic so it's not the most precise thing to adjust, but it works.

The E1 is also festooned with multiple Audio tools and features. Just like people debate that you don't really need scissors (two blades) on a knife tool, sometimes it's just handy to have two headphone outputs (each with their own independent OpAmp buffer, so plugging in two headphones doesn't result in less volume than one headphone). The headphone outputs also have very low output impedance, which means multi-driver in-ear monitor (IEM) headphones won't suffer from bass bloat or rough transitions at the crossover point between drivers. The second headphone jack can also act as a mic input if you have a computer headset with two plugs, but not a TRRS passthrough if your headphone has a mic built-in. There's a mic built-in to the body of the E1, and I can confirm that it works with a Playstation 4's controller input/output if you don't have another mic solution. I've gotta say, the 3.5mm jacks on this device were really tight, I had to really push extra hard to "click" any cable into any of the ports. The DAC connects to your computer via USB (bypassing your motherboard audio). The E1's PC software suite includes the excellent SBX processing suite for tweaking audio and mic settings, including virtual surround processing for regular stereo headphones. To top off all those features, the amp is rated for about 22 hours of operation between charges.




Opinion on the design and features so far... With just one little little utility-belt contraption, the mobile audio-hero has all the parts needed for a full gaming-audio system. If you need portable audio often, the Creative E1 will set a higher baseline for audio quality than what you get built-in to a cheap laptop, very similar to the FiiO – brand E7 DAC/Amp combo that came out years ago (except Creative's products come with Virtual Surround, a key benefit to gamers and movie buffs). With such a buffet, it's hard to expect more, but I think it would've been awesome if the dual-headphone jacks had been configured to also make balanced-output possible like the Pono music player... crazy talk to the target market looking to buy an approximately $50 device. Crazy because a balanced headphone, conversion, or cable would be expensive, so why even write about it? 3 reasons: 1.) the power output of the E1 seems optimal for easy to drive headphones like IEMs, 2.) multi-driver IEMs recently became much more prevalent and the E1's output impedance seems optimal for those, and if you can easily make your IEM balanced then 3.) balanced amplification output ought to significantly improve the E1's sound quality, specifically soundstage and detail presentation.




Sound quality of the E1 is solidly entry-level, appropriate for it's price point. The frequency response is slightly warm, intimate, and has a smooth treble. Probably a great match with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and music with sharp treble, or to balance out a light and bright headphone like the Audio Technica AD700, the E1 does a great job keeping audio from being fatiguing, but on the flipside the sound has less "air" and sense of soundstage depth. Interference from being close to a phone is also very low. This is on par with what I heard from the FiiO E5 amp and comparably priced and spec'd FiiO E7, but the Creative adds to this the advantage of SBX surround processing while PC gaming over USB... but the elephant in the room is that Creative's E1 doesn't add anything to the sound quality over plugging my headphones straight into my iPhone 5S. The iPhone and E1 sound very close in quality (and could get deafening loud) with my V-Moda M-100, Koss KSC75, and Audeo PFE-022 IEMs, but my mid-impedance and low-sensitivity AKG K612 require more current than the E1 has to offer and sound weak in the bass regions. For perspective, my iPhone 5S would be a $550-$650 device today versus the $50 E1 and comparable amps, and the iPhone beats the sound quality coming from my PC that cost about as much as the phone and my family member's cheaper Android devices have weaker amps. Those would benefit more from the E1; for example, my $120 motherboard makes a little noise through headphones when I move my mouse and has a "veil" in front of the music that the E1 cleans away.
So, in total, what does the E1 offer, and who is it for? The E1 may not be a purpose built cheese knife or screwdriver, but it will save the day at a nice budget price. It has a very nice small physical enclosure with lots of features, it is well-suited for your average headphone and especially IEMs, and can "fix" bad audio from laptops, desktop motherboards, and cheap smartdevices, while also offering the bonus of headphone surround. If you have a flagship smartphone or nice DAP, all you should expect to gain is a mic, dual outputs, remote controls, and you can turn down the volume on your source and save battery life in that.

Creative Lab's Sound Blaster X7



As gamers, it's part of our hobby to seek "the next level". We're always looking for new adventures, new ideas, new graphics, and new ways to push the competitive edge. In the past few years, there has been a growing awareness (or for the hardcore, a resurgence) of how virtual surround combined with great headphones provides an ideal gaming experience: private, immersive, no speaker placement issues, and high value. Creative Lab's new Sound Blaster X7 is the result of a growing consumer awareness of these benefits and Creative’s taking note that there is a market for upgraded component quality and convenience.


Here's as shortest way to describe what the X7 has to offer: it weaves the web of practically all your audio sources into an all-in-one high fidelity component and plays them back (almost) however you want. The X7 offers a surround DSP, desktop DAC, desktop headphone amp, passive speaker (!) amp, and beamforming microphone. The X7 can connect to optical, USB, analog RCA line-in, mic line-in, and up to two Bluetooth sources. Plus, it looks awesome with its pyramid/prism shape, uncluttered front,volume/mute knob at the apex, and wire headphone stand/home above it. Overall the X7 is a smaller unit than I expected and it rated an "Oh, that's a tidy little setup" from my girlfriend.

My desktop setup, Before/After



Those qualities were enough to make me jump at trying out the X7 as soon as it was released... but if you're reading this, I suspect you are trying to find out if it's worth its $400 MSRP price tag.


The Specs & Sound

I want to point out right away that the specifications are all listed on www.soundblaster.com/x7, and except for one minor addition to that list I just want to focus on how each of those numbers benefit the sound.

Right now, I'm keeping the writing juices flowing by listening to Daft Punk's newest Random Access Memories (featured in Stuff.tv's "30 Greatest Audiophile Albums" article), and that Burr Brown 127dB S:N DAC and Texas Instruments' headphone amp is easily revealing detailed minutia such as reverb and the decay of drums, with solid, tight bass, mesmerizing mids, and clean clean clean clear treble. With good headphones, I can hear most of these details with the built-in DAC in a typical 86dB motherboard or 98dB DAC built into previous console-gamer DSPs, such as an Astro Mixamp or Creative Recon3D. Often, however, I won't NOTICE these details until the X7 (or my other DAC, a Schiit Bifrost Uber) seems to pull the wool out of my ears and reveals the details. Playing "Hooked on a Feeling," I never before noticed the organ that begins playing at 25 seconds. The X7 is a very good DAC, so much so that since I don't lose any entertainment value compared to the $420 Schiit Bifrost Uber and I gain all the extra features, I'd easily recommend it for gamers over the Bifrost.

Another shortcoming with a motherboard or Mixamp, those "entry-level" devices have merely "entry-level" amps. With higher quality headphones, which generally feature higher impedance (Ω, or Ohms) and lower sensitivity, I had to double-amp with a dedicated headphone amp to hear the true level of dynamic and controlled quality the headphones were capable of. Nothing extra is needed in the X7, thanks to the Texas Instruments TPA6120A2 solid-state headphone amp chip "capable of driving high-end 600Ω headphones." It certainly doesn't seem to be straining to supply my 150Ω Sennheiser HD700, 62Ω AKG K712, or 32Ω VMODA M-100; "Spirit in the Sky" digs really dynamically into the artist-intended distorted guitar and sounds awesome (and yup, I have the Guardians of the Galaxy OST).



One last specification that is Head-Fi popular but rarely published by amp manufacturers is the headphone output impedance; I asked Creative and they told me it was 2.2Ω, which is a very nice and pretty universal measurement that will allow for all but the most difficult IEMs to drive nicely without distorting. Oh, and the speaker taps? They happen to play nice with my antique Stax headphones and their transformer:


Okay okay, that is great and all, but how does it sound while gaming? Creative’s proprietary SBX processing for headphone surround, combined with a nice DAC, amp, and headphones, really makes a great recipe for console gaming – an example of something greater than the sum of its parts. Sure, it plays great from PC like top of the line soundcards, but the X7 is the first Dolby Digital Live surround decoder with a headphone DSP that has high-end parts.

In testing, I played CoD: Ghosts while streaming to Twitch. I often pointed out for my viewers when I was picking out enemies by sound alone, well before we saw the opponent (and I blasted 'em). Even though I was about 3 months rusty from competitive FPS, I dominated because my awareness was so good! I actually showed the streamers how I tracked opponents through walls and anticipated when we would see them come around corners. Playing a single-player game like Metro: First Light, it's easy to get caught up in the atmosphere and spook when you hear a monster climbing up the pillar off the screen to your right. If you've never gamed with headphone surround before, it really sucks you in and immerses your senses, even more than 3D. SBX processing sounds cleaner and more realistic than the rare headphone surround DSP built into any home theater receiver. Plus, it's adjustable...


Controls and Adjustments

The X7 has the best controls I've ever seen in an audio component. The PC control panel is logically laid out with different sections and icons in a sidebar, AND every control is also accessible from a similar layout on the smartphone/tablet app. I have iOS devices, and the PC control panel is replicated on my iPad, while my iPhone 5S has icons on the main screen that correlate with the sidebar sections on other devices. The connection is Bluetooth and there is a one second delay between making a change and the X7 changing to reflect that, but that doesn't diminish how cool it is to mess with SBX and Equalizer settings while the game is playing live on the main screen.

The first screen of the Sound Blaster X7 mobile app on my iPhone allows me to switch between speaker and headphone output (don't have to unplug anything!), change volume, choose if I want my iPhone's sound to play through the X7 or something else, and choose between the 9 control categories. I'll focus on just three for the scope of this review: SBX Pro Studio, Mixer, and Profile (in the Cinematic panel, just set it to "full" and leave it there).


SBX Pro Studio

I covered a lot of these functions in my Recon3D USB review, and they function essentially the same here. The sample video/sound clip built-in to the PC control panel is useless, but you can just play a real game while making adjustments.

"Surround" and its strength slider allow the virtual headphone surround goodness. I prefer personally to have this setting pretty high while gaming (~80%-100%) but getting used to 67% at first is a good baseline.

"Crystalizer" is supposed to "restore" the liveliness of compressed audio, maybe this would be great with the Sony MA900 or HD650 to "wake them up," but the headphones I prefer are already pretty lively and this setting is fatiguing to me, so I switch it off.

I actually like Creative's "bass" setting here and find a little boost pleasurable, I believe it makes an EQ adjustment and perhaps a little volume compression, the "crossover frequency" sub-setting is a cutoff point for where the bass boost stops having effect, so I can keep the bass from bleeding over the detail of the mids.

"Smart Volume" is a volume compression to "minimize sudden volume changes" and make quiet sounds not so quiet compared to the loudest sounds. I know a lot of people will switch it off and I find it situational, but sometimes I find it really useful when a movie or especially TV show is quiet then suddenly booming, or if I'm writing a review article for 6 hours and I just want to listen at quiet volumes.

"Dialog Plus" enhances voices, again something I quite enjoy with movies and TV shows.

On the mobile app, the SBX panel is also where the 10-band EQ lives – sometimes the EQ seems to hide from me, but then I remember that it's in this SBX panel, at the top of the screen.


Mixer

Astro Gaming, eat your heart out. The Astro Mixamp has two dials, a master volume dial and a game-to-chat balance knob. If you use any "chat" then the Mixamp actually loses some maximum volume output. The X7 has no such volume issues because it's all digital, and you can rebalance the volume of your overall output, mic monitoring (hear yourself echo in your headphone), line-in, SPDIF-in, Bluetooth, USB Host, and SPDIF Out. Any of those could also be muted, or change the balance of left/right ear in case you have any hearing loss or one speaker just sounds "off."

Oh, I guess this is as good a time as any to point out that ALL these sources can be playing at once (only one bluetooth at a time, you an pair two but switch which is feeding audio), so you can have your PS4 going, your iPad playing some music, your friend on PC chatting with you, and hear your phone ring and quickly switch to just that connection. Since these play simultaneously, you can get creative with your console connections, which I'll get back to in the setup section.


Profile

Yay for controls and options! Boo-hiss for having to change all the settings per-headphone or for each type of media. Luckily, the X7 can save a set of settings into different profiles so you can switch everything quickly, or use one of Creative's preset ones.


Connections and Microphone


Alright, I've already listed the types of connections on the X7, but I just wanted to go a bit more in-depth on a few things. First of all, the X7's built-in beamforming mic works on PC and bluetooth, but there isn't really a convenient way to use the X7's mic with a gaming console.

Second, when gaming on PC, my friends consistently preferred my dedicated Blue Snowball USB mic -- even my cheap HDE/Neewer clip-on mic I found on Amazon sounds a little cleaner. A big part of that quality can be attributed simply to the compromise of being further away from a mic and then the room acoustics come into play. But it must be said that I'm not compelled to use the x7's Beamforming mic much, and that hurts the "all-in-one" score a bit. On the bright side, I had my friend call my phone with bluetooth and it seamlessly changed the playback and mic audio to the call once I accepted, so that's a plus.

Xbox doesn’t support USB Audio at all, so you’ll need an optical connection to the X7 for game sound, and if you really want chat audio you’ll have to get fancy with the controller output, adapters, wires, and the X7’s mixing feature, or just use the Kinect mic.

Sony PS4 supports USB Audio Class 1 devices, but for some reason it can’t “see” the X7 at all. Now, the X7 has so many complicated features that I’m sure “generic drivers” wouldn’t cut it, and we still have a workaround to use the Optical output with Dolby Bitstream output selected in the PS4’s settings, but what about the mic? It would be great if the PS4 at least recognized the X7 as an input/output for chat audio, but alas, no. HOWEVER, if you want a clean setup with full chat support, you can work around this by using a USB Bluetooth dongle (Creative makes a good one) and instructing the PS4 to Route everything to do with chat through the USB and the game sound to go out through optical, and then pair the Bluetooth to the X7. This also lets you use the mixer feature to balance the volume of game audio and chat audio!

In the end, right now it's simpler and sounds great to just use the X7 for game audio duty, and plugging in a desktop USB mic into a computer or PS4/3, if you're the type of person who likes to chat. You could also do what the console manufacturers want you to do, and use a Kinect or PS Camera as your mic, the mic quality on those are basically the same as the X7 (because they pick up your voice from distance and get some of the sound of the room). You could also get more complicated with a y-splitter, lapel mic or ModMic, and route chat audio from controller to the X7; the Xbox One additionally requires the headset chat adapter if you mean to use the controller-wired method. Personally that's too much wire mess and I'd stick with a USB mic or Kinect. Here's a picture of how the PS4 controller-wired-to-the-X7 setup looks like:




Who Is This For?

The X7 has proved it's worth to me, performing some impressive feats of Alchemy while also being rather future-proof, and I'd buy it again if I had to. That said, I realize that some of it's features may not be worth it to my dear readers, in which case I'd recommend something like a Turtle Beach DSS, which fits pretty much in the middle between the 1Dimensional stereo sound from a console controller/PC motherboard and the high-end sound of the X7. I'd recommend saving up for the X7 if some of these points make sense to you:

•College dorms, apartments and condos.
•Best DSP on the market besides Beyerdynamic Headzone and Smith Realizer - realistically the X7 gets the max quality out of games and can produce better-than-CD music.
•Make use of 3 or more features (DAC, amp, surround DSP, Audio Source mixing, etc).
•"Next Level" quality, for those seeking better than a Mixamp.

- Review by Everett, special thanks to Stillhart for editing and encouragement, and Ryan and Susie of Creative Labs for the extra information and helping me get my hands on one of the early units.

 
Here's my long-delayed E12 review on an early pre-order model.
I waited to get a good feel with many songs before posting this, and a good feel for how the amp affects the sound presentation. I tested it with my standard playlist to get a reference point of view, but you'll see references to other songs sprinkled throughout the review that I think are relevant for illustration purposes. This is mostly a subjective review because I have few tools but my own ears, but I hope I provide enough data for others to make their own conclusions.
I tested mostly with my AKG Q701 headphones, because they are my primary headphones and notorious for their performance variability with different amps, and I also tested with my Etymotic ER-6i, because they have a remarkably flat frequency response through most of the range.
 
 
Build Quality:
Extremely nice. Think "Apple Unibody Macbook Pro" nice. The external shell is made up of 3 main parts: a solid, black, matte finish brushed metal tube, and two matching end caps. The only visible screws are two on the bottom piece. The seams between the end caps and main section have less than a hairline gap, evenly fit all the way around. Ports, switches, and the volume knob all have great looking chrome accents: the bass switch even has many concentric rings on the face of it, so you get that "CD" reflection shape on it. The volume knob is small but with a great volcanic grip, very stiffly dampened so you won't change volume in the pocket and small volume adjustments are easy. The "Power On" and "battery" LEDs are separate, the "battery" LED blinks when the battery starts to run low and "breathes" while charging, varying speed according to how much charging power the Mont Blanc is receiving.
 
Here is a video I took with my iPad of the E12 right after unboxing
[Video]http://youtube.com/watch?v=dk2vCfuWWL0[/VIDEO]
 
Power:
Feiao "Depend on the test of the engineer sample, the output power @32 ohms headphones is about 1.3w to 1.4w, and @16 ohms headphones is about 900mW, so I believe it can drive almost all hard to drive headphone except some " monster " headphone like the AKG K1000."
http://www.head-fi.org/t/620339/fiio-flagship-portable-amp-mont-blanc-e12-discussing-thread-the-pre-order-unit-arrives/300#post_8879770
 
Playing on 0 dB gain setting, listening volume for me is at about 11 O'clock with my AKG Q701, 10 O'Clock with my Audio Technica AD700, and with my Etymotic ER-6i IEMs (which I am listening to as I write this), is just a bit above 9 O'clock position on the volume dial. Off position is about 6:30-7 O'Clock, and the amp turns on at about 7 O'Clock. Max is at 5 O'Clock. Happily, I cannot humanly detect a channel imbalance at listening volume with my ER-6i.
 
The amp can be used while charging, though your typical mains power will introduce a little background noise. It charges with a USB port, I think a Micro "A," conveniently the same as my phone, drawing tablet, and many other devices, but unfortunately different from the Mini usb port used in the FiiO E11. Full charging varies with how much voltage is supplied (i.e. faster from a wall socket than a computer), but should be done in 4 hours or less.
 
Output Impedance:
>0.5Ω, very good and suitable for basically any headphone.
 
Portability:
124x65.5x14.5 (mm). 159g weight.
 
Portable, but a full-sized portable. It can slip into a pants pocket, but you might feel uncomfortable with a larger music player strapped to it. It's a smidge thinner than the E17, but a cm wider and 3 cm longer. Think of it as about the size of a large smartphone (My mom's Samsung Android is bigger). FiiO quotes >12 hours for the battery, in typical use I go days between charging (I use this to amp my gaming setup in addition to listening to music). The battery LED blinks when the battery is low, but I haven't noticed any degradation of audio quality right up until the moment the power goes dead.
 
There is a slight issue of organizing the connector cable between amp and PMP. I personally think two straight plugs is the answer, with the included right-angle plug male-to-male cable cramping up the "top" plate and sticking out a bit, perhaps making it tough to have strapped to a PMP, in a pocket, and in use at the same time. Still more portable than a cassette or CD player though!
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Subjective Sound opinion
 
Neutrality:
Dead honest, with almost no additional coloration over what the headphones already have (at least as these human ears can hear). My tube amp is a bit more revealing and brings your attention to micro detail and texture more, but… that might be over emphasizing, I can still hear that same detail (for example the backing sub-bass right now in Bjork's "All is Full of Love"), it's just perhaps more integrated with the rest of the sound character and thus more "musical" than "analytical." Me gusta, definitely belongs among high-tier amps.
 
Kick and Decay:
There is a nice tail off of reverb in classical songs (and obvious with the Radiohead - Lotus Flower song I'm listening to right now, sounds like it's in an empty opera hall instead of the warehouse I'm conditioned to expecting from the music video), but at the same time everything feels fast so I get a little of that "adrenaline feeling" where I can hear everything so clearly that time seems to slow down.
 
Since I got my PPU E12 on January 17, I noticed an increase in impact/kick to the urgency of notes with my Q701, but right now Van Morrison's "Oh the Warm Feeling" playing over my ER-6i sounds just "right." The Q701 varies the most with different amps, but overall with the Mont Blanc, I find the sound exciting and involving.
 
Soundstage (depth + width):
The presentation of soundstage seems to be a very good match with the Q701. I play video games with THX TruStudio Pro surround processing, and straight out of the USB sound card the soundstage seemed oval shaped, wider and not as deep, but adding the E12 rounded out the sound much more evenly circular. It does seem to stretch out and have more "air" than my iPod's headphone out. Not as emphasized as with my tube amp, but that amp may be "overemphasizing."
 
EMI & Hiss:
Mostly negligible with the Q701, hiss is inaudible until I switch to high gain mode (so quiet that the first time the E12 battery ran out, I thought my iPod had died and the amp was still on). With the 16 ohm, very sensitive ER-6i, I could hear hiss on low gain at around 12 O'clock on the volume dial… but that's way too loud for me to listen. I can't hear any noise when I call someone (with my basic phone…), even with my Ety's.
 
Comments:
There is a switch to enable a crossfeed (subtle but nice with hard panned songs), and a unique bass boost. 
 
The bass-boost is apparently under contention right now. Currently, the boost isn't about skewing the balance of frequencies towards bass... It's completely focused on the sub-bass region, reaching down to the limits of human hearing and mostly just making "atmospheric bass" more authoritative by 4 dB. It's very clean, too. Others have asked for a stronger boost that affects the mid-bass area. I like the E12's boost the way it is now, and here's why... It's unique. Atmospheric bass is a new thing to me (when I started following this thread last year, my main headphone was the AD700), and I don't know of any other amp (the E11 is close) with a hardware boost that focuses enirely on sub-bass, leaving the rest of the frequencies to ascribe to the "wire with gain" philosophy. It's a boost I feel I can leave on with almost any song or genre. With the bass boost of the E5 I also have, the boost was stronger and changes the tonal balance, but it introduced a distortion as well, and usually hurt songs with added grain instead of helping. What do you think?
 
There is also a relay circuit that causes a delay from the moment you switch on the amp to when it "connects" the headphone jack to power. This avoids the power on "POP!" and protects your headphone (and ears), a feature very common in speaker amps.
 
Lastly, when I first got the amp, I was honestly a little disappointed. It sounded technically very accurate, but there was a sort of "coldness" to the sound and I wasn't feeling very emotionally involved. Like the amp was holding back somehow. After 3 hours, I took a break and got some coffee, came back to the amp, and slowly (as I was typing to someone about it, in fact) "Q701's are digging in deeper and sounding much nicer... Ooh, right as I was typing that, the last track of "The Suburbs" was almost finished and softly hit me with a really low bass note, gave me a chill!" As I listen now, I just melted a bit at the intro to Muse's "Resistance" from the album of the same name. Back when I first heard the E12's "musical side" I put it down as my ears adjusting to the sound signature, but someone else in the E12 thread had a similar experience, and another, then JamesFiiO stated that the WIMA capacitor actually burns in over time. So, I guess now I'm a believer, lol.
 
Philosophy of Use:
So who is the E12 Mont Blanc for? 
Honestly, I think it's NOT for people who only own "made for iPod" headphones, you will hear very little improvement for your money, and something like a FiiO E5 or E11 will be more portable. If you are a bass head and you like the signature of your headphone, this E12 will drive it cleanly and with authority and perhaps with tighter detail, BUT the bass boost is subtle and won't transform a balanced headphone into a sub-monster, in the latter case another amp with more boost might be better for you. Also, someone with a hard to drive headphone may look at said high-impedance, power-hungry Studio Monitoring headphone and ask themselves, "Why do I need a portable amp for these?"
 
HOWEVER! I think the E12 is handy compared to a desktop amplifier of equal (or lesser) output power for transporting to work or packing for a vacation. The E12 is also handy if you have a lot of "listening spots" around the home, where you connect to different sources (for me: Desktop computer, Xbox, Laptop, iPod/iPad) or if you just want to listen while lying in bed. Finally, the E12 may be the only all-around amp needed, for current or future headphones (except for something like a STAX), and that, to me, represents real value.

Previously, I owned FiiO's L1, their cheapest LOD. It worked very well, and was perfect for plugging into an external amp. My iPod's headphone jack has shorting and distortion problems, this gave me a secondary output AND bypasses the somewhat bright internal amp of the iPod. I would plug the LOD into a FiiO E5, and that into a cassette adapter for my car stereo. The signal became much stronger, sound quality is clearer than and more articulate than before... It sounded like I replaced the speaker drivers, and better than the FM radio.

Unfortunately, I got line-out greedy, used the L1 portably while my iPod was in a pants pocket, and the L1's cable split and frayed quickly at the dock connection end (negligible strain relief). With the L11, I can

• plug in any cable with a 3.5mm plug without the LOD in danger of fraying and becoming useless.
• use the same mini-USB cable to charge my iPod & phone (and mini wifi router)
• have a "true" LOD functionality where volume is fixed at line level, leaving volume control and gain to an external amp.
• I can plug my cassette adapter directly into the LOD without double-amping through the E5 or using a female-to-female adapter.

This also works great connecting my iPod's library to my receiver or, of course, a headphone amp to use headphones with.

*Note for n00bs: this does not bypass the iPod's internal DAC, it outputs an analogue signal through the 3.5mm jack. I wouldn't be too concerned though: in a mobile environment, there will probably be enough environmental noise that you wouldn't be able to hear the difference made by an external DAC, and the iPod's DAC has good resolution anyway.

Recon3D (USB sound processor) findings

A little intro may help, as this first-impression review is adapted from a thread discussion.

Creative's relatively new Recon3D Surround Sound Processor is a USB sound card that's main function is to turn 5.1, 7.1, or PC 3D surround gaming audio into virtual surround for headphones/headsets and near-field PC speakers. It features adjustable "THX TruStudio Pro Surround" processing to replace Creative's precious CMSS-3D, Dolby Digital decoding, a "Scout Mode" to boost tactical sounds amongst the other sound effects, and Crystal Voice on PC. The hardware of this device allows connection to Windows & Mac PCs and Playstation 3 via USB, and the Xbox 360 or any other device by a combo Optical Audio/3.5mm-in port. I use this lapel mic for voice chat. All sound processing is handled within the Recon3D's hardware (powered by a propriety quad-core CPU), so it doesn't put any "extra" load on your system resources.

All that was a pretty compelling package; with the consideration that this is the only sub-$1000 sound card with native Mac drivers I know of AND spotting a temporary sale price of $69 shipped from J&R.com, I jumped on the sale. Now, let's run the device through an Xbox 360 gaming marathon to see if all those features add up to a device worth a hoot!

Update: I did a few experiments tweaking the THX settings for optimal results, read my post here for the juicy details.
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Setup was simple, once I figured out the necessity of removing the plastic "globe" covers on the tips of the optical cable. Included in the package were all the necessary cables, including a 2.5mm to 2.5mm cable to connect the Xbox Chat audio to a neat extension cable that organizes all your connections by your seat while reducing clutter between seat & Recon3D to a single, flat, ribbon style cord. I didn't use either of those two cables, since I already have an adapter to plug in a lapel mic directly into my controller and have my Xbox set to play chat audio through the "speakers." The headphones used for this marathon are the AKG Q701, extremely comfortable and known for having exceptional soundstage and detail.

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Oblivion

• 
   
• Listened to conversations and fireplace in a bar (Bruma), sounds accurately tracked around during fast and slow turning.
   
• Started ye olden bar brawl, used magic to aggro. 3D positioning and "heft" are ok with this game's somewhat "meek" (IMO) sound effects. EDIT: my opinion still stands, but I later found that adding an amp helps things sound more lively!
   
• Yielded to someone who joined the fight, amusingly they started fighting amongst eachother. Recon3D did it's part. Slight reverb to rear sounds but not like the echo I heard before with my Yamaha receiver's Silent Cinema, there also seems to be some pitch and "EQ" style gain adjustments based on direction. It's all subtle but realistic & more natural sounding. 3 o'clock, 5,6,7, and nine are all distinct; I say 5,6, & 7 because you can tell between directly behind as different from slightly to one side. Really, there are no imaging "holes."

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Halo: Reach

• 
   
• "swimming" distortion noise during intro movie of planets, with THX mode on. Fine if off.
   
• Definitely lacking power contrasted to receiver. Not quite natural authority & volume even when turned to max (this was an expected possibility, external amping even from lowly E5 helps) Update 3/2/2013: the FiiO E12 or Zigis' Rock 'n Glass tube amp make an even more awesome difference.
   
• Scout mode is interesting, helps in SWAT to concentrate on footsteps over the rest of the mix.
   
• Campaign intro is free of distortion with THX mode on, Heli fly-by is great, positioning is dimensional rather than merely directional. The dimension quality probably is more game dependent... Reach has some superior audio IMO, and I know they spent a lot developing the audio.
   
• THX mode is quite nice, I'm hearing the music at a nice level in campaign while also picking up NPC footsteps more distinctly than with Silent Cinema. Sound "whoring" is unnecessary in SP in my opinion, but here I'm hearing evidence that the presentation of detail is great while still being "musical" in the way that I absorb the mood ambiance.

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Batman: Arkham City

• 
   
• Surround works, but I definitely have to tweak THX mode because the treble is too harsh. Standard mode is fine tho.
   
• Surround isn't as much of a game-changer as in FPS. Recon3D is fine tho. Beautiful game.
   
• Still like having a little extra amp.

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Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

• 
   
• Positioning is good, but it never saved me, I didn't feel like it gave me an advantage. I am tired at this point, but I had a bunch of good-scoring games anyway. I just don't have a sonar-like detection while guns and grenades are going off, everything's so close because of the maps that I'm better off being careful at corners and judicious about sprinting.
   
• Scout mode made treble sounds hurt less. It's clearly designed to compress loud and quiet volumes into a smaller, more moderate range.
   
• I forgot that I had turned down the in-game volume, so I brought it up to 80%. Still used the E5 though to warm the sound and make the sound more lively and forgiving. Before I started using headphones with my Xbox, I played this game at quiet volumes, even when I didn't have to worry about others hearing it, because it gets fatiguing as the hours go by. I guess lots of games and sounds would get fatiguing after a marathon like I just had.

UPDATE 3/2/2013: Nowadays, I use a FiiO E12 as my amp, see my review on this amp here, and I'm fairly confident the "treble fatigue" I was experiencing was truely due to playing for over 5 hours until 3am when I wrote the review. After much more time with the Recon3D, there have definitely been times where I heard someone on the other side of the wall and I was able to get the jump on them, even a few cases where I shot them THROUGH the wall. There have also been a few cases where I heard someone, jumped around the corner while pre-firing, only to realize the enemy I heard was upstairs from me; that is more a limitation of 5.1 and 7.1 surround audio from consoles however, read this post for an explanation.
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Final Impressions and Thoughts.
About 5:30 hours is where I decided I was pushing unhealthy game time and called it quits. So, that was a pretty extreme marathon. I think the Recon3D works very well, a real bargain at almost half the price of a Mixamp (which you have to buy direct... is there tax and shipping on top of the $130?) but with more device flexibility & features.

The headphone virtual surround effect is very nicely implemented, much more even and refined than Silent Cinema. Another "pro" for it is the adjustability... I turned up the "surround" effect to Max in THX mode, and beyond a standard EQ adjustment panel you can also adjust things like chat voice Crystalizer (PC only) and bass crossover (what do on single-driver headphones??). I want to play with tweaking the THX mode some more, smooth out a little treble and find a nice sound balance for CoD4. On that note, Scout Mode was actually my savior towards the end of the night; though it skews the original game mix substantially, it's "smart volume" compression feature helped my tired ears pick up on smaller details while also taming louder, harsher sounds. I like that I didn't need additional adapters or cables.

I think the most significant "con," however, is the unit's relative lack of power. It performed pretty well on the computer connected via USB, but when connected to the Xbox via Optical, the Recon3D's internal amp was always maxed out for volume through the night, providing my (somewhat harder than typical to drive) AKG Q701 headphones with enough volume at best, but not enough on some games. In general, I feel the dynamics and soundstage will be improved by adding an external amp. I don't think it's a boat-sinking flaw however, as most headphones and headsets are much easier to drive, and my thought is if you have a hard-to-drive audiophile headphone, you'll have an audiophile amp. I could've again hooked up my receiver for more juice, but even my cheap FiiO E5 brought volume levels up to good levels and imparted (a little) more current to juice the AKGs and liven up the sound. If I used my 32 Ohm Audio Technica AD700s instead, I wouldn't bother with an extra amp.

So, the Recon3D USB sound processor is a device with a lot of features on paper for a price easily in reach, but actually performs well in the real world with quite a few of those features proving their worth in the right situations. The virtual surround feature is advanced and works quite well with detailed headphones and well-designed games, the DAC feature is useful with both computers AND consoles, the sound is good out-of-the-box but has extensive tweaking potential, and the package comes with all the cables and adapters needed to make for some gaming magic. Scaling up your headphones pretty much requires scaled-up amping, but I feel that's expected, and a good amp is always a boon to soundstage and liveliness. The Recon3D has my first recommendation for multi-platform gamers, and Creative should be applauded for a solid provision to the head-fi gaming niche.

I have an impression of this headphone made in a blog somewhere on this site, but I will update this review here at some point with my impressions and opinions.

Basically, I've owned this headphone for over 2 years, and it has aged pretty well. Out of all the headphones I've had the time to listen to at leisure, these have been my favorite.

The grille is a royal purple, though not as dark to be definitely masculine I would say it is gender neutral and definitely attractive, but perhaps weird to see on a headphone. The silvery-champagne part compliments it nicely. The support wings and double overarching frame wires are unique. Overall, a very large headphone that looks well-considered, but would attract strange looks in public.

Fit and comfort are good, the pads fit better now that they're broken in, but comfort was always high. I imagine using a rubber band to connect the wings and increase tension would have it's benefits (as long as your hair doesn't get stuck in the band - perhaps a hair-tie would be better), but I haven't found it necessary. The ear pads press more on your jawbone and cheek than at the top of the ear, so it doesn't feel like a perfect or custom fit BUT improved with wearing in the pads. The velour feels like cloth, not silk or microfiber (hey that might be a cool mod...), but are pretty much the most comfortable ear pads I've used besides the Bose quiet comfort 2 (which was that phones' best quality, but my ears got hot quickly). Personally, my ears get hot very quickly in general, but not so badly with these headphones and I can & have worn these for 5-7 hour listening marathons. To get an idea of my head size, adjustable ball caps usually fit me best when the straps are evenly overlapped, & my head is just shy of 6" wide from ear to ear.

Now, the sound.
I've passed listening to a thousand different songs through these headphones, and I've set up a playlist of songs with a range of dynamics for critical listening, but I'll just refer to my general experience here. So, it's very good. I've "broken ear-ginity" for many of my closest friends with these phones, which have genuinely elicited ecstatic expression and even brought tears to a music performing major when he heard Nocturne No. 2, Op. 9 in E-Minor (always long, almost technical names for what can be such beautiful music). When listening, the much-lauded soundstage allows an atmosphere of the performance around the music, and the instrument separation let's one hear the melody AND the harmony distinctly, as music should be heard. Though not my most- listened to genre (which is alt-rock in the vein of Arcade Fire, Wilco, Radiohead, The Decemberists, Muse, and many other little gems), listening to a well-recorded classical piece is a real treat because you get to feel the concert-hall experience and depth, which can make songs with each instrument recorded onto it's own track & mixed later feel flat in comparison. The detail and texture of these headphones, though a touch gritty and dry, is very addictive - listening to Muse's "Undisclosed Desires" on any other headphones or speaker system I have access to makes me wish to replay it on my Ad700s, just for the energetic and textured bass at the beginning... most other speakers mush it together into a tone, while the AD700 lends it so much character and the buzz it's supposed to have.

My one criticism with these headphones is the occasional feeling that the music lacks impact. I'm no boosted-basshead and I don't feel that a lack off bass volume/presence is the problem as I have read others state, I think the headphones literally don't provide the feeling of air pressing air pressure (type that 5 times fast) on my ears and eardrum. That's just a guess though... This just comes from how much I was jamming to the entire "the Suburbs" album while listening with a borrowed pair of Sennheiser HD-202's in a noisy environment during work, and a somber feeling afterwards listening on my headphones at home when, despite the HD-202's obvious lack of refinement, cleanliness, extension, physical heat, etc., I just didn't find the music as involving on my AD700. This may be a sort of thing tied to what genres the headphones are suited for, and giving the cans more juice via volume and an amp to increase the current seems to improve that aspect, but I can't help thinking "if only the design was semi-closed, or maybe if Audio Technica made a high-ohm version, or if I had a better amp..."
That may just be upgradeitis though, so weigh it accordingly. Regardless, this still stands as my overall favorite headphone that I really enjoy with my music.