 This video is brought to you by the Intel Core i7 4770K unlocked processor. If you're a speed freak, add an Intel 3500 series SSD to your Haswell system for a truly enthusiast class experience. Now I often get asked which sound card to buy, and the answer over the last couple years has been inevitably decide on a budget and then buy whatever Zonar card fits inside your budget because it's pretty much that simple. Back in the day, every sound card that was a sound card worth buying was creative, and then for a while it was Auzentec, and nowadays it really seems like it's just a soos is the way to go, but not all of their sound cards are built with the same things in mind. In fact, they have a couple of offerings at the same price point around that $200 range that do differ a little bit. So today we're going to be having a look at the Zonar Phoebus. This is the, as you may or may not have figured out based on the massive Republic of Gamers logo on the front of the box, this is the gaming oriented card. So it's not necessarily about, oh well we brought you the absolute best possible DAC and we brought you, you know, swappable op amps for, you know, the music listening audio files out there. It's more along the lines of the features that enhance the gaming experience. So why don't we start with the card itself physically, which has a very ROG look to it, as you can plainly see, at least you'll be able to once I finally get it out of the box. So it uses a PCI Express 1X interface, this is the same as the Zonar STX, which is actually for music listeners, maybe the better choice. It has dedicated 7.1 audio out using all 3.5mm jacks. This is again a more gaming oriented feature because many audio files are going to be using headphones that use the larger jack style, so they would have to adapt to get down to this, whereas many gamers are using gaming headsets which use standard 3.5mm jacks. Another thing that gamers often do is they'll have mic and headphones and then they'll have a separate speaker setup that they use sometimes. So that's why it has dedicated plugs for all of them. This is in contrast to my personal Zonar Zense, which is actually a very, very, very similar card, which uses a breakout cable in order to achieve those surround outputs. There's a link right here, so that's for the external control box, more on that in a moment. And other than that, you've got a pretty standard looking sound card. So the back of the card is a matte black PCB, which I've come to expect at this point from high end gaming gear. Then on the top of the card we find a PCI Express power connector. This is essential for the amped headphone port on this card. It can handle up to 600 ohm impedance headphones, so yeah, you need more power than can be delivered by a simple PCI Express slot. Other than that, speaking of 600 ohm impedance headphones, there's a Zonar Phoebus logo at the top that glows red when you're in high impedance headphone mode and blue when you're in low impedance headphone mode, which I think is kind of cool. And the rest of it is covered by a simple matte black shroud with ROG branding on it as well as a SUSE branding, and then some very cool aggressive looking lines. Now this actually has a functional purpose as well as looking nice. An EMI shield does exactly what you might think it does and reduces electromagnetic interference by shielding it. So there you go. We can remove that though by simply removing four screws, which gives us a better look at the actual guts of this card. Man, it just looks high-end. It's got all these components on it and stuff. So the processor itself is an Oxygen CMI8888. This is a slightly updated version of the controller that's in the Zents. And then for our DAC, we're using a TI-PCM1796A DAC, slightly slept, stepped, slept down. It's asleep over there. No, it's not asleep over there. Slightly stepped down versus the Zonar Essence STX. And speaking of things that are a stepped down versus the Zonar STX is what you're going to see looking closely at this card is that while it does use JRC2114 op amps, they are soldered. So you do not, unfortunately, have the option to change them out for different op amps. What op amps basically do is they can color the sound or they can, they could be more warm or more rich or more flat or whatever else. And some people have a very, their ears very tuned to a preference of what they want to hear. And they like being able to swap out op amps like you can on the Essence One or the Zonar Essence STX. Not possible on this card. It's sort of a take it or leave it. We've tuned it this way. And this is how you're going to experience it because this card is optimized for gaming. Not necessarily those discerning music, my screen turned off, those discerning music listeners and those audio files and those sorts who want that customizability. Also, there's a headphone amp built into this guy right here. So there's the that is a TPA6120A2 headphone amp able to handle, as I said before, up to 600 ohm headphones. The 7.1 circuitry is completely separate from the headphone circuitry. And while it's reasonably high end, it's not to nearly the same extent because, well, there's a lot more of it. And it's deemed less important from a gaming or even an audio file standpoint because you're bound to be using probably, there you go, there's your spit if out, probably a digital out to some kind of external decoder. Or you're going to be using headphones directly off of it. And if you're using something like powered speakers, they're not going to be so high end that you'd notice much of a difference anyhow. This brings us to the Phoebus ControlPod, which is maybe not that different from what you might find if you have a pair of speakers that includes one of these already. But it does have some cool functionality. So it allows you to extend your headphone and microphone jacks, meaning that you can, you know, plug in short cables. Some headphones come with the breakaway cables these days. You've also got a ControlPod cable. There you go. That goes right there. So you go ahead and plug all these in together and they're conveniently togetherly located locations just like that. And it allows you to do a few different things. You can adjust your volume with the knob on the top. You can mute your mic by pressing it. And then there you go. You plug in your front headphone and microphone. It's got a bit of weight to it. But this, this, my friends, is where the special sauce happens. Those are two microphones. And if you were someone who was not using this correctly, you can use this as a microphone. Please don't do that. That's get a real microphone. But what you can use this for is environmental noise cancellation. Now, I haven't used the Zonar Phoebus yet. I'm unboxing it now, but I have used their Thunder FX external sound card and I can tell you their environmental noise cancellation, at least on that one, I'm sure it's better on this. Like, yeah, thumbs up. Because what it does is it uses these mics to listen to the environment and then the microphone on your headset itself to listen to you. And it's able to cancel out what these ones here in a very, very cool, very effective. It works. It's awesome. It's actually really, really good. So that along with their Zonar software, which I personally really like, that's part of what makes their sound card so easy for me to recommend, are what makes this sound card so easy to recommend. So the Zonar software has gotten an ROG skin. I've actually used the skin version. I personally don't like it quite as much, but I'm not as used to it because the one that I use day to day is a Zense, which doesn't have the ROG skin. But this one comes with something that not all Zonar cards do, and that's Dolby Home Theater V4. So this allows you to add virtualized surround support to things like headphones, which is, from what I've read, haven't tried it yet, very, very effective. And a definite differentiating factor between this one and other Zonar cards. So there's a graphic equalizer as well built into the Dolby side of the software, and then there's the separate Zonar software. There's two separate applications for it. And there's also a tweak dialog option that allows you to, in movies and games particularly, enhance dialog and hear it more clearly, which, from what I've seen, apparently actually works, which is very, very cool. And probably part of the reason why this product has been on the market a year already by the time I'm actually doing this video and hasn't been replaced in any way yet. So, subjectively speaking, haven't used the card yet, but it is very, very similar to the Zonar Zense, which I've been using extensively for a long period of time. And with the Zonar Zense, I was never tempted in any way to upgrade the card personally. I'm not one of those audiophile guys who is swapping out op amps on a regular basis for the most tuned in possible music listening experience. That's not me. I do appreciate good audio. I do appreciate a high end sound card and a decent pair of cans and all of those things. I mean, who doesn't appreciate a decent pair of cans? But I'm not one of those super fussy guys. So based on my experience with the Zense, I can confidently recommend the Phoebus because it has, well, this additional benefit, which is nice. It also looks really cool and glows in your system, which is also nice. And with some of the more gaming oriented features such as the environmental noise cancellation can't underscore how important that is enough, especially in something like a crowded LAN hall, as well as the EAX emulation and Dolby home theater V4. Yeah, very excited to try this out. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for unboxings, reviews and other computer videos. And let me know in the comments, do you have a sound card yet? Because as much as I'm talking about a $200 sound card right now, Asus has Zonar cards that are like 30, 40 bucks. In fact, they have a headphone amp one that isn't that's under $50. And I get tweets at least probably once a week. I'll get a tweet or a message or something like that saying, hey, Linus, I didn't try a sound card until you told me to try one. And holy crap, I can't believe I wasn't doing this before. It makes such a big difference compared to onboard, unless we're talking about very high end on board, like what you might find on something like a Maximus six formula. Thanks for watching, guys. Don't forget to subscribe and we'll see you again next time.