NZXT PODCAST - #161 - New NZXT Relay Audio! (Ft. Patrick)

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

On this week's episode of the NZXT Podcast... We have Patrick, Sr. Product Manager, help us talk about the new NZXT Relay Audio ecosystem! "LISTEN" here... Get it? Tune in live every Friday at 10AM PT on twitch.tv/nzxt

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 161 of the NCC podcast, the official podcast of the NCC community. This podcast recorded live every Friday at 10 a Pacific Center Time on the official NCC Twitch is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. My name is Mike. As me as always is Ivan. How are you doing, Ivan? I'm doing great, Mike. I'm very happy to be here for another wonderful NXT podcast product edition. of what we do here.

Before we introduce our guests, I do want to quickly mention a couple of things. We got two giveaways going on. So if you're tuned in live right now, do twitch.tv. ZXT, you type exclamation giveaway in the chat. You'll get a link to win some awesome NZXT merch. We're giving away a hoodie, a t-shirt,

and a lanyard slash sticker pack. And each winner today, since it's Pride Month, we'll also be getting a limited NZXT Pride Hat featuring our mascot Pucci right here. Really cool hat. It's a fitted snapback so you can look cool wherever you wear that. And then the other giveaway we got going on, we just announced this morning, and it's also the reason we're here today is for our new NZXT Relay Audio ecosystem here.

So you can see I'm wearing brand new NZXT Relay headset right here. And to get that giveaway, you can type Exclamation Relay giveaway in the chat. giveaway in the chat. And if you stick around to the end of the podcast today, you will get two secret words, one for each giveaway, which will give you a bunch of bonus entries into that. So stick around and wait for those secret words. So without further ado, now that I got the announcements out of the way, I want to introduce the one, the only Mr. J. Patrick Butler, Esquire. How are you, sir? I'm doing good, my friend. How are you today? I'm doing good, Pat. You You've been on this podcast several times.

You might actually have the world records now for guest appearances on here. But for those that don't know who you are and what you do, can you let people know? Yeah. So I am Patrick. I am the senior product manager for audio here at NZXT. I've been with the company now for five years. It's been a wild ride. and in fact, we'll talk about this here in a little bit,

but the whole reason I was invited to come on this, or to work at this company, is to actually launch this product line. So it's been five years in the making, and to say I'm excited and thrilled is definitely an understatement. So I'm really excited and really happy to talk to you guys about that today. Yeah, that's awesome, man. Congratulations on a successful launch.

I know you worked very hard on. on it and Mike and I are very excited to share with the world, you know, all your, all your hard work and very excited to have you in the podcast to ask you questions about that. Before we get into the questions though, I do want to also ask you to just tell people like what you did before you joined NZHT because, you know, you've been working on audio stuff for a really long time. Yeah, before I was at NZXT, I worked for Fender guitars. I was the product manager over there in Hollywood, California.

I'd live in Nashville now. So if you're wondering how I got the hook up on all these guitars, it's a nice little perk working out Fender. Before that, I was at Blue Microphones, who was the product manager for kind of new products and special products. So when they, for example, the Assassin's Creed people would come to us and say, we want to do a Yeti and red and like silver, it would be up to me to make like an Assassin's Creed.

Yeti, which was a lot of fun. And before that, I was at a company called Westlake Pro, and they designed studios for all sorts of production facilities around Los Angeles and New York and Nashville. And that's how I really got to know some of the bigger studios because we used to design their facilities for, like, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox, and we did Sony Computer Entertainment of America. So through that job, I got to know not only the same.

studio guys and the engineers that work on TV, film, and video games, but also the manufacturers of audio products. So through that long winding road, that's how I eventually got to NZXD. Well, and five years later, we launched the relay audio ecosystem. So can you explain what that is? Yeah, so the ecosystem is actually four products that all work together. to automatically and seamlessly switch between your connected headphones and connected speakers. Because in the past, before Switch Mix came around, what you would have to do if you wanted to go from headsets to speakers would be to wait for your game to be finished, alt tab into your

sound settings. You click Save, apply, get back into a lobby, and eventually one day you're gaming again. With Switch Mix, it's a stand that has a pressure. activated switch right on the top there that detects a weight. So there's no lasers, there's no sensors, there's no anything like that. It's just weight. When a headset is on the stand, it sends a signal down to the, excuse me, down to the mixer. And the mixer says, oh, obviously, you're not listening to your headset anymore because I detect weight on the stand. You probably want to listen to your speakers. So all the output that was in your headset gets soon switched and

sent right to your speakers. So you don't have to worry about any of that old tapping I was talking about. Now, it also works in reverse. So say you're gaming on your speakers or you're watching a Twitch stream or YouTube video, whatever, and in walks your little brother, your nosy little brother, and you don't want to hear him. So you lift it up off, hate that guy. Lift it up off your stand, put it on your head, and all the sound is automatically switch right to your headset. So you can instantly go from a big, expansive world of speakers to more private experience of a headset. So it's not only a stand, but it's also a mixer as well. And it comes together in one little package right here. We call it the Switch Mix. In addition to that, we have a gaming headset,

is the one I'm using right now and I'm talking to you as we speak. We also have a set of bookshelf style speakers that pack a hell of a punch and subwifor that comes altogether. So it's not just a stand in a mixer. It's not just a headset. It's not just speakers and subwifers. It's this whole system. And the whole idea is to automatically go from this world of kind of closed focus gaming to automatically to a big world of speakers instantaneously and seamlessly. That's a great explanation. I'm seeing some comments in the chat here saying like that's a great feature, I've been waiting for this for years, super useful, et cetera, et cetera.

And I have to agree. It's like, and I said this before we went live on the podcast and I mean this with all my heart. And I would say the exact same thing if I didn't work at NZXT. Now that I have a switch mix, I can't possibly imagine my life without one. It's like the most useful thing on my... on my desk and the easiest way I've ever had to like use a headset on my PC because one of the most annoying things is clicking that little icon in the right hand bottom right hand corner of windows and switching audio sources and all that every time you want to like you know play a game

or going to a meeting or a zoom call or twitch stream or whatever and the switch mix just eliminates all that and um yeah i can't imagine my life without it so uh i can't wait to dig deeper into that but before we start asking you questions and picking your brain about the speakers and the subwoofer and the switch mix and the headset i also want to ask you uh of i don't know if it's a hard question but it's it's a i think it's a good question and i think it might be on a lot of people's mind so for those i don't know this is actually our second attempt at launching audio we we tried launching audio i think it was a in 2019.

And we like, before launching, we decided, you know, we're not ready to launch this thing yet. So we put, pump the brakes and went back to the drawing board. So I guess my question is like, you know, what happened that first time?

And what is different now with this current lineup of NZXT audio products? Well, the original lineup was going to be, kind of look different than the lineup we have today. It was going to be two different headsets,

one, a close-back headset, another an open-back headset. Two different sized speakers. One would be a smaller speaker than a bigger speaker. And then the stand and the mixer. At the time, those were separated as two individual products, not one unit altogether. And when I first got to NZT, we were listening to early samples of speakers.

the big ones and the small ones and the big ones they they didn't they didn't have the the kind of umph that i think we were kind of expecting them to have and and the small ones sounded okay but the big ones didn't didn't have that kind of um so it was kind of decided that maybe okay maybe we'll we'll we'll kind of shelf speakers will come we'll come back to it so now we have two different headsets and then the stand in the mixer and uh and no subworth red that this time um but this again the stand in the mixer, separated. So we're going through development, stand in the mixer, they're coming along fine. There's some normal development kind of things that sort of took place, but it was coming along fine. In the process of building the headsets, there was

concern that the headsets weren't exactly up to the comfort levels that we really wanted them to be. We took a look at doing maybe a different kind of pad. We experimented. I have a very very very clear memory in my head of being in Taipei with the CEO Johnny and a couple other people, a couple of the product managers and all sorts of people putting different head pads on the current model of headsets and pads that are big and some small and some are sort of really kind angled at sort of weird sort of angles and things like that and it's just it didn't really quite work and it didn't really come up to the the standards that we wanted to but we kind of got to something that we thought was that we thought was okay and

sort of passable but then we then we went on and we were still developing the product and we felt that the we discovered an issue with the the actual sound in the microphone connection at the same time, what was basically happening is the ground. There's like a weird ground loop effect happening, and it was due to a special feature that we was just kind of really hard to implement in the product. And so between that and the fact that we had to can the speakers and all sorts of things, we basically decided, okay, let's shelf the whole entire relay product altogether,

and then let's come back to, let's come back to it at some other point in time. And instead, let's pivot to microphones. And so that's what we did. We instead launched the, we pivoted all the efforts to launching the capsule microphone. And I think September of 2020. And then we launched capsule mini a couple months ago. And then we thought, okay, well, this would be a good time to really take another look at the headphone,

really focus on the comfort, which I think we nailed tremendously well. still make sure that we have good sound, which we obviously do. And let's see if we can make some kick-off speakers this time. And now, instead of selling the stand in the mixer independently, why don't we put it together for a price point that makes it much more valuable for our customers and unlocks a whole new feature set by simply just combining them together. So that's what we did. And that took all from start to finish.

That took about five years to do. And that's where we are now. Yeah, it's been a wild ride, man. And I'm holding right here in my hands, like, one of the original air headsets we made, Purple Edition. We actually made purple headsets. And I have to admit, like, I did like the original headset. I thought it looked cool, and I thought it fit fine, whatever.

But not comparing it to this new one, this new one definitely sounds better. definitely feels a lot better on my head too. I haven't noticed any dent yet, so hopefully it stays that way. But yeah, man, you definitely, I think, did a, you know, did a good job the second time around, and I'm glad that you learned a lot from the first experience, you know, that didn't go so well because, you know, you didn't give up and it might have been easier to just throw in the towel and say, screw it, you know, we can't get this right. Let's just forget about it and stick to me.

making cases like like everyone everyone might think we should be doing so I'm glad you you stuck with it and you know five years later you know here we here we are yeah you know the thing is uh I think we could have launched it I think that we could have launched it back in the day and it would have been maybe okay but the at the end of the day you know I was talking to Johnny and it was just kind of talking to everybody and we're like yeah but can't we do a little better? Can we make this just a little, just a, a lot better if we, if we really, like, got strategic about it? And we did. And so we, we, we, we, we did exactly that and everything we, we set out to achieve with this, uh, launch we achieved. So I'm very, I'm very pleased with

how this all ended up. I'm good. So let's, let's dive a little deeper into each of the products themselves. Uh, so we have, first we have the actual really heads. the one we're talking about. Do you want to go into like all the schematics and the price and everything like that real quick? Yeah, yeah. So this is a $99 and this by the way, all the MSRPs, I'm about to give you all US MSRPs. It's 99 US, closeback wired headset, $99 MSRP. It has high-res certified 40 millimeter drivers and what it means to be high.

REST certified is you have to, the high-rest certification is from a organization in Japan called the Japanese Audio Society, and it's pretty rigorous in order to get, to get Japanese Audio Society High Res certified. You have to basically send in your headset. They put it on a system that you sweeps. They measure the distortion ratings of the headset. They also measured the headset's ability to reproduce frequencies up to 40,000 kolahertz, which is well beyond the range of human hearing. Why is that important? Well, if I can't hear it, then why is that important? It would be a question to ask. The answer is a lot of headsets, a lot of gaming headsets, kind of roll off the high end around kind of 15, 14,000 hertz. And what you end up getting

in some gaming headsets is a very muddy, not a very clean, not a very detailed sort of listening experience. But because this headset can accurately, it doesn't have a roll off, it just keeps going, and going and going and going and going. What you get is all the nuance, all the shimmer, all the sparkle throughout, not just the high end, but also the detailed mid-range vocal sounds, gunfire, all the low end,

and without any of the muddiness that you could get with that kind of masking effect that you would find on other kinds of gaming headsets. And because we went with that, we got approved by the Japanese Audio Society to be high-rest certified. Then we also have DTS, 7.1 surround sound in this headset with a bunch of cool features. Three different modes of surround sound with this headset.

There's like a traditional surround, and then there's like a really wide surround, and then there's a third one as well in there. And then we have EQ presets. We have microphone suppression as well. A couple of other features in there. as well side tone so that's

where we are with that and then we also have a really really comfortable headset again like I mentioned in the earlier part of this call we really went back to the drawing board to make sure that this thing is comfortable so we have faux leather

pads here memory film on the inside memory film on the top this is also glasses friendly too I've had friends and users who wear glasses so if you are glasses wearers, this shouldn't be any kind of problem for you as well. This also has low distortion drivers. Other microphone or other headset companies have a kind of low distortion, but this has a really low distortion less than 0.1 harmonic distortion, which means that the less distortion that you have inside of a headset, the less ear fatigue

you're going to be receiving over the course of a long gaming session. So if you're gaming for three to five hours on a headset that might have more distortion. What you may notice is that your sense of acoustic spatiality may start to drift left and right a little bit more than what's actually being seen on the screen. So a gunfire that might come from here might actually be coming a little bit more from here. And that's basically your brain being pounded by acoustic distortion and over the course of time, you just, it starts to distort and you kind of have this ear fatigue effect happening. It's actually pretty common in the recording world, in the music recording world, if you have a studio that has speakers that are just okay, or even

pretty decent speakers, recording engineers who record for eight or nine hours, they'll record a whole entire session, they'll go home. Then the next day they'll go back and they'll listen. to it in the morning and everything they thought acoustically was separated from a, from a music perspective, from a stereo imaging perspective, will have drifted way far, you know, the guitars will be way panned farther right than what they want it to be. And this is because they're, they're just overcompensating for the fatigue that they're getting from their ear. So by going with the low distortion drivers and going with the high-risk certified headset, but going with the 40 millimeter drivers.

What we really wanted to do, and the super comfortable paths, what we really wanted to provide was a headset that you could game on for a long period of time with lessening this acoustic ear fatigue effect and be able to not only game long, but for long sessions, but also be able to clearly pick up

every little nuance of detail imaginable with this headset. And also if you wanted to kind of color the headset it in a little bit of a different way if you want a little bit more base or maybe a little less base a little bit more high we can do that through our uh our ds uh our ds uh 7.1 surround software feature yeah i'm gonna show off the software real quick just to show that there's like different presets here and you can pretty much change it all there you go and then you can change the side tones here's the this is my mic one into switch mix you can have change the side tones up here it's really awesome and honestly i've been using the fps one a lot and

in the game that I play for Hunt Showdown sound is super important and you know you'll listen and you'll need to know because what I used to use were I don't have them right now I used to use like my Bluetooth Sony headphones but the only issue is that like it is not surround sound so I'll hear from the left side

but like Patrick said I had no idea if it's like front left back left or just like direct left so I just like I was kind of handicapped in the game But ever since I started using these, they pretty much now I'm actually understanding like, oh, it's Northwest or oh, it's 360, you know, that way. And it's a lot easier to figure out, especially in surround sound. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And again, I think we have a pretty unique surround sound feature set because there's multiple surround modes.

It's not just like because in some software, you'll see surround sound on off and that's it. But we have surround sound on off and then you can like really get tweaky with. it depending on what you're playing and or just your preferences uh actually we can uh should we answer uh we'll answer some of the questions i see from chat right now uh on the headset uh so for the headset right here i see uh some questions uh from laser laser 528 uh is the mic removable The microphone is removable. So if you are a streamer and you wanted to, and in fact I'll show you what that looks like now,

if you can see my screen on that, it comes in white and black, I should say that. And the microphone is removable. Once you remove it, it's a nice, clean, very beautiful looking, you know, headset that you would be proud to wear on stream. So if you had a USB microphone, obviously, the capsule, because you're all loyal, Well, my NXT fans, or if you had an XLR rig and you had an XLR interface, you could plug in your relay headset into that and integrate that in your stream, and it will work tremendously well.

Here, I got a couple more questions coming in for you. So let's see. Oh, does this headset work on consoles as well? It does work on consoles. It actually sounds really good on PS5. I was just using this the other day for modern warfare and it is awesome

awesome let's see oh now's from Panta what was that Panta Citrom PentaCtram Pentactrom Thank you

From oh ginger nutted How does this How is this headset powered? This passive powered headset It just plugs into Any 3.5 millimeter outlet comes with the dual jack legacy adapters as well and it has a USB DAC and that's actually

the USB DAC is how actually you unlock the software features awesome do you have any plans for a wireless version in the in the future from Blowentie Blowentay? You know that's about the 90th time I've been asked that question you know that would be a lot of fun wouldn't it It would be fun. Let's see. What's the next one? Oh, how long is the wire of the headset?

Do you know the exact length of it? I mean, I have it on my desk and I can... Oh, yeah, here it is. Cable length is almost six and a half feet, I think, two meters. Yep. It's really long. Like, I have all this right here, and I have it leading all the way to my switch mix,

and I still have a ton of room. Like, I actually wrapped it around my mic. Couch Campers actually has an interesting comment slash question. I haven't even seen anyone bring us up before on social media, which is why I find so interesting. But they say, I am a woman and it is hard for me to find a headset that doesn't look gigantic on my small head. How big is this thing? So it's 40 millimeter drivers. So they're smaller drivers than other headsets.

And we did that because for a couple of reasons. that sounds better, and two, the Japanese Audio Society would only approve 40mm headset specifically, these exact drivers. From exactable size and dimensions,

we have them online. It's the height of about six and a half inches, a width of seven and a half, and a kind of a depth of three and a half. They're not the biggest headsets in the world. There are bigger ones out there, for sure. The specs are online. It's like six by seven by three and a half,

I think, something like that. But what I really like about the, so we have a white skew and a black, a white model and a black model. The white version has, it might be hard to see, but the black kind of blends in to at least my hair a little bit. So it gives kind of effect of having real small white cups with actually out, with actually, they're bigger than what they actually look like. So for someone who's worried about how they might look on stream, that's something to maybe take note. We designed it to look smaller on camera than what they are in reality.

And you mentioned the specs are online, so I just want to briefly just go over those real quick, since we do have a few questions in the chat about, you know, the table length and the weight and how big they are. So the dimensions are 6.6 inches in height, 7.7 inches in width, 3.7 inches in depth, 9.52 ounces in weight with the mic, 9.28 ounces in weight without the mic and the cable is exactly 6.56 feet which is 2 meters.

As someone that's been using this headset yeah as someone just using the headset for like large times gaming like I would go home and then it would be like you know maybe like from 7 to 9 10 so 2 to 3 hours of gaming I barely notice it. actually I went to go grab my Sony headphones. So I'd be the XM-4s. The only issue is this because I have piercings. This would like squeeze on my head and be very uncomfortable after a while. But because of these, these are so much like wider and more depth. Like you can actually see like it has so much room in it.

I literally can wear this the entire time. And I've never had like an issue or anything like that. Yeah, again, we really focused on on making sure that these these can be worn comfortably for long periods of time and and again not only worn comfortably but also used from comfortably from an acoustic perspective because we did everything we could minimize again that ear fatigue so you'd be able to game longer and and and i guess in theory better unless you suck at games like me no to you guys you guys are all great but um that's that's the idea that you can wear these for a long long long time uh okay and then we'll

Let's go on. Oh, oh, yes, from Weapon X. I'm sorry, if I missed it, can this headset be used with the software without the speaker system? Can this headset? Yes. Perfect.

Yes, in fact, in fact, in fact, important to note here, unless I didn't make this clear, you don't have to buy all of these altogether. You can buy them kind of, if you just want the headset, you can buy just the headset. If you just want to switch mix,

say you have, say you're one of, say you have your favorite, headset and you know I like my headset but I really want the switch mix will the switch mix work with my current headset yes it long as a 3.5 millimeter so uh or maybe you just want speakers you can you can just buy the speakers and uh you don't have to again you don't have to buy everything kind of all together uh you can buy them uh one at a time you can buy you know if you want to just the headset and the switch mix but not the speakers you could do that um and uh yeah but to answer your question specifically yes what if i just want the headset case

Well, if you just want the headset cable, then you have to make all sorts of phone calls. And then we'll move on to this last question and then we'll move on to the next portion. From both Miko Anton and from TTCBEPO, are the patch replaceable? Um, I, I, we have, I believe we have customer service skews should the customer find themselves in that event. event, I believe. But I'd have to get back to him on that one to answer the specifics. Sounds good. All right.

So let's move on to the next one. So let's talk about a little bit about the switch mix. This is what I'm actually the most excited about, because this is actually one of my favorite. Yeah. So the switch mix is not just a stand. It's a stand that has a mechanical weight to take. element here on the top. So again, this isn't like a laser, this isn't a magnet, there's no weird sensors. This is just a weight detection system that goes, oh, there's a headset here. It's obviously not on your head because I am detecting weight here. You obviously are not wearing the headset. You probably want to listen to your speakers. So then it sends a signal down this tube here and then the back plugs into the included mixer. And the mixer also has connected to it. You are speakers. So there's a speaker jack in the back and the headset port in the front here.

So then once you're in speaker mode, this lights up in 11 LEDs and this nice little ring here is your volume control right there. You can press it and all the LEDs turn red. That means there obviously the sound is muted, press it again and it goes right back to your volume state. So then it walks our best friend, our old buddy, little brother, he walks in and you go, you know what, I don't want to listen to him. He's being annoying, so I want to go back to headset mode. You lift your headset off the stand, and all that audio is immediately cut from your speakers, and then it's rerouted right to your headphones.

And the volume knob here now is in headphone mode. So you can turn this up and down, and you can adjust your volume right there. This also comes with a voice game mixer right on the right, so you can blend all your voice game needs to taste. It mutes as well. And this is also not just a mixer, but a 24-bit 96 kHz deck or a sound card. So not only will you get the switching feature, not only would you get your mixing feature, not only will you get your volume control mixer, but you also get a nice high resolution upgrade to your audio. And also there's DTS software in this as well, so everything that you know and love about the headset,

you can actually, comes with this, which is great. is great and you can adjust the colors of your LED so if you wanted to have your speaker volume be green for example and your headset to be blue you can adjust that in cam as well so you can customize the RGB there and when you do go to switch from your headset to your speaker mode the volume is this remembers the volume that you were had at the last known state so it kind of saves everything right there and it comes with the freaking stand on top of all that so this is a 129 MSRP product comes with the stand comes with the mixer works with all 3.5 millimeter headsets and all 3.5

millimeter speakers so say you're one of these people who has a you know you have your favorite your favorite wired headset you love it swear by it you've had it since you were a little kid you're not gonna use any other headset that's totally fine as long as it's 3.5 millimeter and let's say you have a sound bar Let's say you have a soundbar that connects via 3.5 millimeter. You can connect your soundbar to this as well and switch between your favorite headset and your soundbar and instantly go between those two worlds as well.

The thing to remember, though, is that every device you would have to have in order to switch would need to be connected to this box here. But it's really handy, 129, and it comes with a stand. Here's another question some of you might be wondering. Do I have to keep the stand and the mixer together? What if I wanted to have the stand over here and the mixer over there? You can do that, but obviously that won't connect because the cable that connects to the to the mixer's only

I think it's like six or seven inches or something. So no, you won't be able to use the automatic switching feature, but you can still use manual switching. The way you do manual switching is you press and hold the volume knob and all the LEDs will change colors to the to the opposite device. So we call that manual switching mode. So if you're like, you know what, I actually really just like the stand and I like the mixer, but I probably won't use that automatic switching feature. No worries. You can separate them.

You can put your stand here. You can put your mixer there. And you can manually switch. Actually, you got a show real quick. I actually made a video just to show how the switch mix works. And it's really awesome. So here, for those that are here, let me show you. so

music's playing through the speakers right now all you do is lift it goes to the headset and you can kind of see the LEDs activating right there just to show and then right here to LED so you can show that

oh what you say I'm saying I've seen a lot of comments in the chat that are they have their mind blown I guess by the switch mix yeah 414 made Eli is saying charge my card right now

And I have to agree, like I said earlier, like I'm not just saying this because I work here. Like I can't imagine my life ever again without a switch mix. And I think the coolest comment I saw about the switch mix on social media is someone quote retweeted us and they said, I can't believe nobody has ever thought about this before. And yeah, it's just, it's like it's something that is so simple when you really think about it. It's like it's just a mechanical switch that you put your headset on and take it off. But at the same time, it's like so simple that it's like so, like, I don't know, cool, I guess, because it's so convenient, you know, like you don't have to fiddle with anything on your desktop.

You don't have to do anything. It's just literally lift up the headset and you're good to go. So I'm super excited that we have this thing out there. I love that people love it too. And I'm excited to see people set up with it because I think it's going to look really. cool on deskness here in ZXTPC as well. Yeah, and again, it's really important to remember that we understand that there are people who have their favorite, most favoriteest, favoriteest, you know, headset that they've known and loved since they, you know, for a thousand years. And that's totally cool. We totally respect that. We, we, one of our, one of our pillars here is to serve the gaming community.

And we definitely know that gamers have a sort of emotional attachment. with the headsets. I definitely do. And so, this product works with within your ecosystem. It kind of, you don't need to buy the entire NZXT speakers to work with the NZXT switchmix. You don't need to buy the NZXT headset

to work with the NZXT switchmix. You just need to buy the NZT switchmix and we'll just work with whatever you have, assuming you can connect it over 3.5. Yeah. And I want to, I want to throw back like how simple. Yet,

I, that's like, like some people said, It's like, how has no one thought of this before? Because like for me, I kind of want to break down like just how much. So I have a wireless headset and then I had speaker. So what I have to do is I would have to turn it on, wait for it to connect. Sometimes it doesn't connect to have to go into my Bluetooth settings. Connect there. Then from there, I have to wait for it to like activate.

Then I would switch over to the headset. But then also the headset volume will be wonky. So I have to change it from here. And then when I'm done, I would have to do the whole thing over. we're going through to sound settings, but now it's just literally just click, done, click done, and I don't have to worry about anything anymore. It's real easy.

This is why I'm like super excited about this product. It just makes everything just much, much easier to use. All right, I guess we'll go straight into the next one about the speakers. Oh yes. This, the speakers

have been getting a ton, a ton of love and a ton of praise and the reviews that have been either written about it or online on some tech review blogs, things like that. So the speakers are bookshelf style speakers. They are not your, it's not a soundbar. They're not 2.1 style systems where it has just one little speaker,

another little speaker, and then kind of like a sub-wifor that call comes together in one package. These actually have an independent tweeter and an independent woofer that can do both the job of the high-end, high-end sounds and the mid-range, low-mid-range sounds, all at the same time very efficiently. Comes in white and black, as does the headset. The switch mix, by the way, only comes in black, and we'll talk about that in a minute

that only comes in black as well. It's 80 watts, so it's pretty powerful for what it is. They connect with normal speaker wire as well from left channel to right channel, so you can, and that's pretty long as well, you can separate these out for a nice big wide stereo image if you want them to. It's also MDF-braced cabinetry, meaning that it is,

that stands for medium-density fiberboard. It's not plastic-y or any kind of, you're not going to hear any kind of rattling when you really crank this up. You're going to hear just the nice, or weird resonances or anything like that, just the nice solid tone of the actual tweeter and Wolfer. as well. And it's universally connected. So on the back, we have a 3.5 millimeter connection

and RCA-style connection. So if you wanted to use these with obviously your switch mix, you can. If you have a, you can go to the back of your tower, you can go to a, if you have an independent DAC that has an RCA-style output, you can use that. If you have an XLR interface, for example, that has RCA-style output. So some people may have Beringer, like XLR rigs or some Yamaha XLR rigs and they have an RCA style output you can use that here as well 24999 US MSRP and they sound freaking awesome really really stoked about these pretty powerful for what they are they're not the the the big huge speakers they're three-inch wolfers so from a size perspective they have a height of height of about seven and a half inches,

width of about four inches and a depth of, I think, six inches, six and a half inches. They are powered, again, 80 watts, and they sound awesome. And again, of these have been getting a lot of praise, a lot of praise in the media. Yeah, they do sound awesome. And I think the number one comment that we're seeing on social media about these

is how awesome they look too. Like, they look. A lot of people are saying that they look very NZXT, you know, very clean, very sleek, very minimal. And I have to agree, like, I'm looking at them right now next to my H5 flow and it just like it blends right into my setup. I love them as well. And like you said, they do sound great.

Yep, they sound absolutely incredible. I love the look of them. They definitely punch above their wave. class too and they're a lot they got a lot of you know a lot of umph to them uh and because they are um uh bookshelf style speakers you're going to get a nice balanced full uh sound a nice wide stereo image uh competitive products competitive gaming speakers uh what they're doing is they're putting uh two what they call satellite speakers two little they almost look like Campbell soup can style things that just one little tweeter or woofer and then another little tweeter or

woofer right here and then most of the time they'll kind of connect all to like a subwoofer unit um and what you get is a subwoofer that's just kind of meh and sound that uh is very you're you know you're you're you're asking a lot out of your speakers to put all the sound of that full sonic range out of one little one little woofer but if you have two woofers one that handles the highs on one that handles the mids and the low mids, you can have a nice clean sonic experience with ours. So that's what we did. We do have a few questions about the speakers, so might as well ask them now. Ginger Nutted is asking, I only have one question about the speakers. Is there further input

to add my additional systems? Further input to add your additional. I suppose I would need clarity as to what she would mean by that. I assume she means that if I have a sound bar, can I use the sound bar with these? Maybe depending on the sound bar, depending on how you have it hooked up, there would probably need to be some adapters involved or maybe a separate mixer unit involved in between that we don't make, but you might be able to do it.

They clarify, they have a surround system at home. I guess they want to hook up with it. Is it a surround, depending on what kind of surround unit they have, it may or may not work. So the thing to do would probably be, if you can, you can give her my email, and she can email me with kind of specifics, and maybe I can, maybe draw out a diagram of what I think might work best for her or something like that. All right, Ginger noted. You can email podcast at nzht.com. We'll forward questions to Pat if you have more. I will say it's all the products we make here are designed for like the PC gamer in mind.

So I guess it might not be impossible to do, but it probably the optimal thing would be a PC gaming setup, right? That would be the optimal. Yeah. Miko Anton asked, can I connect two pairs of these two pairs of these two? together? Two pairs? No, that's an interesting question, though. No, because it only has the one.

So these would connect it with the back of a, over 3.5 millimeter, these connect the back of the mixer. We would need to make a mixer unit in the future, and this is an interesting idea, we would need to make a mixer unit in the future that would have multiple outputs to connect multiple speakers. but you wouldn't be able to connect multiple speakers to other speakers in this setup. And no one has ever asked that before, but now that they asked that, I kind of want to do it. I just have like a half stack of speakers on the speakers. Yeah, at least an interesting idea. I, you know, there's obviously audio interfaces that have like multiple outputs for like 7.1 so you can connect like seven speakers and do an actual 7.1 mix with 7 speakers with

subover. And same with like the Ginger user was asking. She probably has a home theater system that has multiple, obviously multiple outputs on it. But nothing like that really exists in the gaming space. That's an interesting idea. Yeah. One more question about these speakers is from Blue and T. 3. How far can the distance of these be? Like, can I place them on both edges of my three meter depth? So the width of the cable, you probably could. I don't know the actual width of the cable that it ships with, but I will tell you that it ships with standard speaker wire cable. So if you had, if the cable wire that we ship with isn't wide enough for your application, you could buy a really long speaker wire run and it'll work just fine. And anime Hater 16, great username. Do the speakers work without the subwifer?

Yes, they do. The subwifer is an additional, optional add-on that you can get with the, with your speakers, if you would like to do that. And we can talk about that, actually, now if you want. The subwifers itself is MSRP-1999. it's a cheaper than a lot of subwifers that you'll find that are that are kind of similarly designed to be companion products for other bookshelf style speaker manufacturers. I will say that the bookshelf speakers connect to a subwifor, our subwifor, via the RCA style subwifor input. So what you could do is buy the speakers first and then maybe in a couple months or like now.

next year or something if you wanted to upgrade to a subwifer, you can buy our subwifor. And then if you're like, you know what, I want like a really, really, really crazy subwifor, like a thousand dollar subwifur, you can swap out our subwifor for that because it just uses a universal RCA-style connector. So there's actually like multiple ways to upgrade your sound system by going with our system. It's pretty universally, one of the features is that it has this universal connectivity to it. So the answer to your question, no, you don't need to use our subwifor with it. You can just buy the bookshelf style speakers, and that's a setup I have right now for this, and it sounds just great without it.

But if you want a little bit more low end or a little bit more extension into the low, the low sounding and into the base frequencies, then you would buy our 140 watt, 14999 MSRP, 6.5 inch downfiring, front ported, some word. Actually, that's actually a great segue into it. Do you want to go a little bit more to the specifics of the subwifor real quick, just all those tech specs and everything? Yeah, absolutely. So subwifor is, again, optional, 149-99 MSRP product.

As far as subwifers go, that's a pretty reasonably priced of subwifur, to be honest with you. Universally connected with that RCA-style connectivity. When you combine the power from the subwifers, and the power from the for the relay speakers, it's a total combined output of 220 watts, which is pretty freaking booming. It is adjustable for any environment. So we have a sweepable crossover.

So if you have your relay speakers and your bookshelf style speakers, and depending on the relay speakers and your subwifor, depending on the depth of your room, the height of your ceilings, the width of your walls apart, from one another, where the speakers are placed in relation to the walls themselves, various materials you have in your room, if you have a carpeted room, or if you have like a hardwood floor room, if you have a lot of soft kind of not reflective surfaces inside of your room, you may want to adjust your crossover frequency on your subwoofer to accommodate for all these features or to accommodate for a different pair of speakers. So you can really dial in your speakers that way.

We also have a sweepable phase, which is very, very unique because most face switches are, it's kind of on and off at 0-180, but we have a sweepable phase. So depending on if you're using relay speakers with ours, or if you're using a, or if you're using, I guess, there's some soundbars out there that actually have RCA-style sub-war outputs. I think the, which one is it? One of the sound blaster soundbars? There's a couple of soundbars that have RCA-style output.

So depending on it, you could be using a soundbar if it has an RCA style subwifor output, you can really like mix and match the subwifer to a wide variety of speakers as well. And it's 6.5 inch wulfur, so reasonably sized wulfur, and it's downfiring. So it's going to go straight down, some are front firing. So you're really going to feel that base, you know, kind of really hit you. It's front ported as well. So all the air that will be displacing from the speaker is going to be going this way. It's not going to be going against a wall.

So you're not going to get any wall rattling effect. You're going to get just the nice presence of the base without any of the nastiness of the base. It does make a huge difference in my opinion. I don't turn the volume up too loud because I have my relay system set up here at the office. And I'm right next to the human resources. metal one air them so I can't be too loud but um like I have it like on a really low I think it's probably the lowest setting actually and I can feel the bass I can definitely feel my feet tingling whenever I'm listening to listening to lo-fi girl I'm working here so I think the fact that it is

downfiring makes a huge difference and um I I never once in a million years thought we would ever make a sub woofer but I'm super super happy that we did because I love I love me some bass the first song I played with my relay was Everlasting Bass. You're familiar with that song? Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, it's awesome, man. It definitely bumps, and I wish I had this in my car

because I could imagine myself just, you know, listening to some cool, cool dope beats. Yeah, and it's really, it's reasonably priced a sub-lifer. I mean, some other bookshelf-style speakers, if you wanted to get, because what competitive products will, companies will do, right?

is they'll make bookshelf style speakers that are like ours, the three inches, and they have similar wattage rating. Then their subwifers, 6.5 inches, similar to ours, they'll sell them for like $350. And it's like, whoa, that's like a lot of money. But for 150 bucks, I mean, that's such an instant upgrade to your sound.

Optional, don't need to have it. Maybe you just don't have the space for it or maybe you are sharing a room with somebody or something, like a college dorm, for example, and you don't want to upset your neighbors. Completely fine, you don't have to use it. But if you wanted to get that, just that deep or low-end extension,

this is the one for you. Personal question from me, did you consider making the subwoofer in white? We tried. We tried to do it. it. It, uh, it, it, so it turns out that doing black as far as the, uh, how paint takes to different surfaces and different materials, uh, is easier to do than the color white. What we wanted to do was, we wanted to make sure that the white of the speakers match the white of the headset, match the white

of the capsule, which white matched the white of the capsule mini, which matches the white of the cases and and there's some uniform uh it's kind of a sense of uniformness to it the the trouble with the subwifor is we we uh we couldn't quite get it to where it needed to be it ended up it kind of looked a little and it was just a hair off too it sucked but it was just it had this like kind of almost a just ever so slight yellow kind of tint to it uh it was pretty damn close and you know it would obviously these are going to be under people's desk and stuff, but that's not good enough for us. That's not good enough.

It needs to be a precise match of the speakers to the sub, to the capsule, to the headset, to everything we can possibly do. Follow-up question from Harley Hart. This has actually been asked a few times on social media, so might as well ask it, since we have the man himself here. Did you also consider making the switch mix in white? Same thing. Same thing. We, you know, the other thing, too, to remember about the switch mix is there's different materials as kind of a rubberized material here, same with the on the fader.

Gloss levels, fingerprints, all sorts of stuff go into play. But we definitely wanted to do it. It was definitely talked about. Some of these things are cost-related too. But I would love to do multiple-color switch mix and, and, and, white and a stand in white I would love to do multiple color headsets and purple and green and red and all sorts of things but the the problem is being able to do it in a way that meets nzxte's quality um um um uh standards and and and and definitely be on the lookout for for that in the future i could definitely i definitely see us doing that down the road for sure Now I want a purple sublifer. Hell yeah, I would love a purple everything, honestly.

I really would. That book covers all the deep dives into each audio products. And I'm going to ask you another question here. You kind of touched this a little bit, but what was your vision that you had in mind when you developed this audio system? Well, we wanted to solve the problem that customers have with audio of going from speakers to headset. It's just a pain in the ass to do. Go from headsets to speakers. Again, you have to wait until your game's done.

You have to all tab into this thing. You have to, it's a whole thing. We wanted to make that experience of going from the private, intimate world of wearing a headset for competitive gamers to a more leisurely kind of playing experience with speakers, but a lot of fun because speakers can get loud and a low extension, and be able to enter both of those worlds instantaneously and automatically. That was kind of the vision of being able to serve this kind of gamer. as they turn into that kind of gamer instantaneously

and develop an entire system, an entire rig that can live at their desk, can integrate with things that maybe products they already have, but also feel right at home with them, to kind of coexist peacefully. And that was, I think it was the vision. And to really own the desk, from an audio perspective.

That was the vision. And during this process, what was like the hardest part about launching this whole really audio system? Oh, I guess I could go back five years and tell you.

Just getting it right. We had a pretty good sounding headset and a comfortable-ish headset, but that wasn't enough for us. We needed to make it as comfortable as we could make it. We needed to make it a sound as good as we could possibly make it. And it was the very first time that we ever did any kind of audio. This was well before we launched the capsule.

Many well before we launched the capsule. And we learned together that, okay, well, it turns out that if you wanted to have dual-sided placement, that you might get a ground coupling issue if you have this situation, or if you wanted to make an open back headset, then that means, that the pads need to be like this, but now the pads aren't as comfortable as it could be. So maybe we need to make the pads a little wider, but then that translates to more tension on the head.

So it was kind of a whack-a-mole. You solve for one problem, and then two more problems come up, and then you solve for those two problems, and then the problem you had solved goes haywire now. And that was challenging. It was challenging to learn how to make audio products, starting from zero. That was challenging.

That was challenging. But we did it. We did it. And the thing I'm most proud about for this organization and for my team, my design and engineering team, is every product that we've launched in the audio space from the capsule to the capsule mini, there's like a sense that we're like actually taking, it's like 10x improvements. Every single product we launch, it's like, this sounds good. Capsum mini, a little bit better. People are loving the speakers and the switch mix. So every step we make along the way is getting better and better and better and better. And it's making it's making for really exciting stuff and I'm so immensely proud of this team. It couldn't be prouder. Follow-up question. What was the funnest part about launching this stuff? The funnest part is is when you finally see it work and you finally see it all together working the way it's supposed to work, it's just that's just the most rewarding. you know, thing.

It's like when you first put the headset down on the stand and everything comes to life, it's like, yes. That's, that's, that's, I get it now. I finally understand that. And then, and then the funest part is showing that to other people. And seeing people's faces light up, you know, we were at, where were we? We had a Computech show in, and, uh, in Taiwan and Taipei. And I remember showing early press, uh, what the switch mix does and seeing everybody,

everybody everyone's face go oh shit i get it now i understand that it just like seeing the light bulb go off and uh everyone was like smile in another head it's like have you ever like showed someone like a song that like you really like and and you show it to like a friend of yours and then they start to really like the song they start like popping their head like this and you like it makes you feel good because you're like yeah i got good music taste you know it was like that but for a product uh and it was like yeah this is this is cool man we're really on to something here and uh that was fun literally Mike literally shows me a brand new AI song every single day like he has to pick a whole playlist of like the the dumbest eight artificial intelligence music you can think of so yes i can relate

yeah that's getting that's getting scary by the way AI stuff especially AI music like the AI they're about to release another i don't know if you saw this we're about to release another um paul mccarney put out they're about to release another AI a beetle song in a Oh, really? He posted all over Twitter. He said, this is going to be, he said, it's the last Beatles record that's ever going to be made, ever. And it's all AI.

I love that. Anyway, that was fun. I guess, uh, continuing along about, like, the whole process. What was the proudest moment that you, like, like, this was like the moment where you're like, oh, my God, yes, about this entire line. Wednesday, this past Wednesday was my proudest moment. It finally happened.

We were finally here. Again, I was hired on to do this, this launch specifically. And then we had to pivot, and then we did another follow-up product. We pivoted to microphones, and we did another microphone. And now we're back to here. So finally seeing this thing come to life and all the reviews. And again, seeing people go, oh, yeah, how could I? not live without this, like I could not be prouder.

That was that was the most, my most proud moment of, of probably all of NZXT, my time at NZXT was this past Wednesday, to be, to be quite honest with you. Watching this thing, seeing this thing come to life. The correct answer was being on the podcast, but we'll accept yours. Anyway, all right, last question before we wrap this baby up and get into the announcements here and give out the secret codes, because I know some people are waiting for those. It's actually from ginger nutted I have one more question

Will we see more audio products from you in the future Oh yeah I can't wait We're cooking up some really really crazy stuff Now that the team let him cook Now that the team is like the gears are really turning now And we're like really figuring out how to make good sounding stuff Now the crazy stuff is going to start coming

So stay tuned we got we're cooking up something that's really gonna knock your socks off by the way I can't wait to show you that thank you I'm sorry to that effect of course yeah no it's like I replied to them in chat and I just told them you know we're just getting started with audio I mean we just came out with microphones just came out with headsets just came out with speakers so I'm I myself am looking forward to see what the

Patrick and the team can come up with, so let him cook, y'all. Let him cook. We're working on something right now that is pretty... It's going to knock your socks off, man. You just wait. Awesome. I guess that is all the questions. I guess we'll go into announcements.

And then we'll give the super secret code for those I hear. Because I know a lot of people are excited about. the NCC swag and the relay giveaway we'll talk a little bit more about that after but first going into announcements yep we have luckily Patrick was here to explain a lot of technical lingo that I definitely would not have been able to explain but we have a new audio ecosystem called a relay so guys go to ncc.com we have the relay speakers the subwoofer the headset and the switch mix like all these are awesome If you guys need to ask you any questions, you guys can mention or DM us on Twitter as well or any social media platforms.

If you guys have any questions. But honestly, guys, these products are awesome. As someone that wasn't a big audio file and are now getting into it, I understand why people really like good sounding things. I understand now. So take a look at nzc.com, take out all the switch mix, the subwoofer, the speakers, and the headsets. and to also go along with the audio train, we also released a new capsule mini and a boom arm mini. If you guys want to make the most of your desk space

while, you know, keeping a performance, I'm actually using it right now. I'll show you guys like, this thing is so nice because I don't have this like blaring boom arm that I'm not using any, like, room for it. It blocks literally my monitor to my right with the boom arm mini. It literally goes underneath it. I don't even notice it.

It's awesome. So take it. What is that mini microphone look so big next to your head, Mike? Honestly, the mini mic, I still feel like it's a little above average. You know, maybe it's a little too big, you know? Andre, how do you feel about all the jokes that we've made about that? I love it. I think that's, I think more of that, please.

I think that's the, I look forward to that kind of stuff every day. We have some spicy ones that we're too scared to pose, to be honest. Do it, do it. Listen, the spicier the better, man. Get people talking. Get stir it up, man. Let's do it. It has a great personality from blah.

Yep, exactly. And like we just talked about, we are releasing a bunch of new products. We have new keyboards, mice, crackens, cases, our whole new audio setup, headset, speakers, everything. You guys, take a look at ncc.com.

We are releasing more stuff as it goes on. and just keep an eye out on socials because we got we got plenty of plans and items coming out soon so keep an eye out and yes so let's go into the giveaway so we have two giveaways going on right now so the first one as we do every Friday for a hoodie a t-shirt and a sticker and landing pack each of them will come with a pride hat as well go ahead and do a estimation point giveaway in the chat and you can basically join in on that. The code, there's two codes for each of these giveaways for those that are here.

And let me grab the code for the swag giveaway. Thank you guys for doing it's a 50 minutes of code. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. The code is only for those on the podcast, so we'll be giving that to everyone right now. The entries is about, let me pull up the code. That is. The swag giveaway code is iPod stuck on replay.

I was trying to do some sort of replay pun with all these codes. This gives you 500 extra entries into the thing. This is our thank you for listening live and joining us. So that is for the swag giveaway. Now let me show the other tweets. We are doing a relay like a whole setup giveaway right now, a whole audio suite, everything from the speakers, the subwoofer, the headset, and the switchpix. We are giving it away.

You can go to ncc.co slash relay giveaway. It will be for about a week, and then we'll announce the winner after that. There is a code. This is, again, a special code for those that are listening in. Code doesn't work. Let me double check because it should work. If it doesn't, can you refresh? Yeah, it works.

So refresh your, refresh your page if it's not working. Sometimes it does that. There is the NSDC.co. Oh yeah, I need to show this first. Let me prep the code because I have a very special thing I have to do first. I pull it up. Okay, so I need everyone here to listen very closely. I'm only going to tell you just once.

So please listen to the code. Okay, sorry, I just wanted to get a small little joke about Rick rolling because that is because that is the code for the thank you thank you for the collapse thank you for to collapse

the code for the audio giveaway is Rickroll Relay Rick Roll Relay thank you Ivan for the sound effects I had to do that because I was just like what would be something funny

and then Ivan said oh Rickroll I'm like perfect worked out perfect and then just message great and just got Rick rolled. Wow. Well, that is a thing. So there is Rickroll Relay for the giveaway and iPod stock on replay for the code for

the glean giveaways. And that is our thank you for everyone here. We also want to say thank you, Patrick, for joining us live today and explaining everything because honestly I could do, I was not capable of explaining anything. Yeah. Yeah. And like someone said at the very beginning of the podcast, I wish I could give him a shout out.

I didn't grab their name. But they said, Patrick is a great guest on the podcast because I learned so much from him. And I have to agree, man. Every time you're on here, we learn something new. So thank you for your time. And thank you for spitting, spitting knowledge and letting people know about all the cool stuff you've been working on, man. I really appreciate you being here.

Oh, no worries, man. No worries. I'm always happy to do it. I love you guys, man. I love this podcast. I love NZT, I love our fans, nothing but love for me, and to the whole entire crew. It's the best job I've ever had, and there's no place I'd rather be.

And by the way, if anyone has any other questions for me, we can probably give away my social media information if you have any kind of technical question, or if you just want to say hey and just kind of, you know, Talk shop about audio or whatever, man. I'm always down. I'm always open. And, yeah, for sure.

Follow J. Patrick Butler on Instagram. Or I don't want to give out your work email address, but you can email podcast at nzac.com, and we will forward your email and questions to Pat so you can get back to you. Yes, sir. I think that is it. So thank you guys for joining us.

I remember tuning in a library Friday at 10. specific standard time on the official nzc t twitch and don't forget to listen to previous episodes on apple podcast google podcast spotify and sound cloud leave us pause for you if you like what you hear or if you didn't got any questions for us and email to at uh podcast at nccccom or tag at nzxt on all social media platforms thank you patrick for being so insightful today and thank you guys also for listening live and please uh keep an eye out on socials for any new products coming out so thank you guys have a wonderful weekend stay safe Bye bye.

Okay, never right. I won't do that anymore. Bye bye.