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Have good audio gear but feel like it could still be just a bit better? Then you'll love the THX Onyx Audiophile DAC Amplifier. Tech expert and audio aficionado Dave Taylor auditioned the THX Onyx and found it a great addition to any setup. He tried them out with Audio-Technica ATH-WP900 headphones and source music from TIDAL and they're pretty spectacular. Check out his full review for details.
Pick up the THX Onyx at Amazon: https://amzn.to/3A86VMW
Dave's Tech Q&S Web site: https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/
#thx #audiophile #dac #amplifier
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This will make your headphones sound way better. Let's check it out
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Dave Taylor here and I'm checking out this. This is the THX Onyx DAC amplifier
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and it's a really amazing little device. Now you've heard of THX because they do
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the great sound in movie theaters, but you know what it stands for? It's
0:26
actually Tomlinson-Holman's experiment. So Holman was actually one of the sound engineers at Lucasfilm working on the sound for Star Wars and THX grew out of
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the company's desire to make sure the sound for the Star Wars movies sounded
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great in every movie theater and they've just continued to evolve and develop
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since then and this is one of their very first consumer products. So they have THX
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certified for other companies but this is their own product and it's pretty
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slick. Doesn't look like much but there's all sorts of chips in here
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Mostly the ES Sabre 9821 Pro DAC chip and this gives it some amazing
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characteristics. Now just so you know it's USB-C on one end and then there's a
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3.5 millimeter audio jack on the other. It does come with a USB-C to USB
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USB 3.0 adapter so if you have older USB you can use it with that but this will
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work with Android devices, it'll work with iOS if you bring your own lightning
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adapter, it'll work with Windows, it'll work with Mac. So if you want to take any
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headphones that you have and just make them sound way better that's what this
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does. Now what does that mean? Well let's give you some specs. It gives you
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impedance support for 22 to a thousand ohms with a total harmonic distortion of
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minus 110 dB and a hundred and eighteen decibels of dynamic range. This thing
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makes your music sound big and lush and the soundstage expands and everything
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just sounds fantastic. Now it's powered by something called THX AAA Tech
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What's AAA? It is Achromatic Audio Amplifier and this reduces your harmonic
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intermodulation and crossover distortion up to 40 decibels and what they say is
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that means you have a more pleasant listening experience with less fatigue
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What I can say is that when I'm using headphones like these, these are great
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these are my Audio Technica ATH-WP900s as you can see they're stunningly
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beautiful but more importantly they sound really good. So to take really nice
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sounding headphones and run them through the THX DAC is an amazing thing because
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it just makes everything that much better. It's like turning it up to 11
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maybe even 12. So it just does really good stuff. There are some lights here and
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the lights actually are color-coded. You see here's a little cheat sheet but at
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the top level you're getting Master Quality Authenticated or MQA audio and
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that just gives you the best possible sound. This is the sound you would get if
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you were in the studio with the musician and you were listening to all the
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masters. That's how good it is. It's a huge amount of data coming to your
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headphones and it just sounds fantastic. This is really the cornerstone of TIDAL
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so that's a great reason to have TIDAL if you have this sort of electronic setup
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to get the best benefit you can and it does sound really sweet. Now one more
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thing I'll mention is it does also work if you have a microphone it will pass
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through the microphone so if you have a gamer headset this will make your game
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sound amazing and you'll still be able to use your mic so it's not going to cut
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that feature out. If you don't have a mic it won't surpass it through. No big deal
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Now one thing that I think is funny and is absolutely accurate is when you open
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up the box the very first thing it says is warning high volume and that is no
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joke. I will tell you that when I hook this up and I use this with my
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headphones and with like my PC or something I have to turn the volume down
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to like 5% or 10% and it's loud at that level. This thing is a huge like a
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monster amp. It doesn't look like it but it will give you so much more power so
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much more out of your music that it is a remarkable experience. So really not
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much else to talk about I can just say that I wholeheartedly endorse this and
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it's a little spendy but if you're picky and want the best possible audio
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reproduction you can you're already going to have good headphones you're already going to have good audio gear you're already going to have good
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sources this will take you to the next level. It only works wired if you have
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Bluetooth this is not going to make a difference but a whole lot of Bluetooth
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headphones also work as wired headphones and you might be very surprised to take
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your Bluetooth headphones that you listen to all the time make them wired
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plug them into this and then you're like oh wow they sound even better than they
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do on Bluetooth so that's something to check out. Anyway only thing left to talk
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about is the price but before we get to the price I'm going to ask if you could
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subscribe to my channel click or tap on that little red box and boom you're
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subscribed really appreciate that and give me some feedback thumbs up if this
5:38
was useful leave me a comment let me know what else you wish I would have talked about pretty much I'm sure we've covered just about everything but maybe
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there's something else. Anyway this is the THX Onyx DAC amplifier and it's a
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hundred and ninety nine ninety at amazon.com and there's a couple other
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places you can pick it up so you can you know poke around a little bit see if you can find it a little bit less expensive but expect to pay about 200
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bucks and I'll tell you if you're looking for great audiophile experiences with your headphones from a variety of different music sources this
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is a solid option to consider and of course it's highly portable so you can
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use this at work you can use this on a trip you can use this in your car right
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so definitely lots of positives to this I'm a big fan in case that's not obvious
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so I'm gonna reassemble everything and I'm going back to my music so I'll hope
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to catch you in my next video
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