Real-World Testing and Noise Reduction Performance

Sound Cards and External DAC/Amps

Onboard integrated sound card (ASUS SupremeFX S1220)

Creative Sound Blaster X3

EVGA NU Audio Pro

Simaudio Moon 230HAD

Astell&Kern Acro L1000

Microphones, Headsets and Speakers

Rode NT-USB

Antlion ModMic Uni

V-Moda BoomPro

SteelSeries Arctis 1

Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless

Patriot Viper V380

Shure SRH840

Sennheiser HD 660 S

Philips Fidelio X2

Edifier S2000 Pro

Adam A7X

Test Results

To test the RTX Voice technology in various real-world scenarios, as well as analyze and compare the recorded samples, I used the following hardware, which spans a huge range of cost and capabilities.Let's start off with a sound sample recorded with the Rode NT-USB, a studio-grade USB microphone. This sample was recorded with the RTX Voice technology turned off, and I'm simply talking into the microphone. No effects or background noise removal filters are applied—what you hear is the sound from the microphone in its purest form. This is essentially a reference sample; the closer my voice sounds to this one after I turn the RTX Voice wizardry on, the better.Next is a sample recorded with the same microphone, in the same room and same environmental conditions, only this time with the RTX Voice technology turned on. The goal is to find out if NVIDIA's tech does anything bad to my voice. Nope, all good, it doesn't sound tinny, compressed, or anything of the sort.So far so good—my voice sounds identical to the first sample without the RTX Voice technology activated. Let's move on to a more difficult task. This time around, we'll examine what happens when I'm talking into the Rode NT-USB microphone while simultaneously typing on the Logitech G Pro mechanical keyboard equipped with clicky Romer G switches. The first sample is recorded without and the second one with the RTX Voice tech in action.Some light, barely audible artifacting is introduced (you'll have to use a pair of high-quality headphones to hear it), but my voice kept its natural timbre and wasn't changed in any significant way. At the same time, the noise of the mechanical key switches is reduced to a very tolerable level. Do keep in mind I'm really smashing the keyboard in this test, way more than you ever will while gaming.The next two samples simulate a situation familiar to anyone who doesn't have the luxury of having a dedicated gaming room: I'm using the microphone with a group of people having a loud conversation in the background. Play the samples to hear what happens when the RTX Voice tech is off and on.What sorcery is this? The background noise is practically completely inaudible, and the quality of my voice is fully preserved. Quite impressive, I must say.Finally, here's a test I did just for the fun of it: I whipped out my Dyson vacuum cleaner, turned it on and recorded two voice samples, with the RTX Voice technology off and on.Slightly more artifacting is introduced than in the previous scenario, but the difference is still pretty amazing. The vacuum cleaner is pretty much completely gone, and my voice is still perfectly understandable, with good dynamics and natural timbre.To see if all of this holds up with lower-quality microphones and different sound cards, I first plugged the V-Moda BoomPro microphone into my integrated sound card which uses the ASUS SupremeFX S1220 audio codec. Listen the following samples starting with a "pure" one and moving on to two pairs of samples comparing the tested scenarios with the RTX Voice technology off and on.As you can easily hear, everything mentioned in the Rode NT-USB test result analysis holds true with this sound card/microphone combination as well. Great stuff!I repeated my tests with the EVGA NU Audio Pro and Antlion ModMic Uni combo, just to verify everything learned above.Once again, we get the same consistent results, which goes to show that the RTX Voice technology is microphone agnostic—you can count on it doing its magic regardless of the quality of your headset/standalone microphone.Finally, I wanted to find out how NVIDIA's RTX Voice technology compares to existing ENC (Environmental Noise Cancelling) solutions offered by any remotely serious sound card. For this test I again used my integrated sound card (SupremeFX S1220) and the excellent (and very expensive) EVGA NU Audio Pro. I grouped the samples into pairs, so you can easily hear how the RTX Voice tech demolishes the supplied ENC feature of both tested sound cards.