so today I'll be having a look at a fairly unique product this is the ASUS
Essence St the essence of sound it's a Zonar line of product product and it
features 124 dbel sound of noise ratio and a headphone amp so they're saying
this card is for audio files in here we will find an excellent presentation for
this card and let's go through some of the main features of it first of all it
does require an external power connector so that should give you some idea that
this is a either a fairly high powered card or what they say about it which is
far more likely is the fact that it offers independent power supply directly
from the PSU for sensitive analog signals so rather than taking power from
the motherboard where there can be a lot of interference it takes power directly
from your power supply awesome okay so it uses Superior Dax it uses the bur PCM
1792 a digital analog converter which converts signals at 127 DB sing to noise
ratio excellent okay so that's a feature that you're going to find over other
high-end even sound card it has swappable Opa socket so you can
actually tune it to your unique sound preference all right built-in headphone
app this is huge so many sound cards do
not have a headphone amp and so many users are using headphones or headsets
that they don't even know is not properly driven by the sound card that
they're using for example the Sennheiser PC 350s have a high impedance for a
gaming headphone given that so many gaming cards don't have a headphone amp
so unless you're using a dedicated amp with it you're not getting the most out
of it next perfectly sealed analog output path so Emi and copper shielding
sealed the RCA and headphone signals from noise offering Distortion free
audio enjoyment excellent Precision clock tuning world's first sound card
with Precision clock to minimize audio Jitter okay hyper grounding circuitry
design utilizing PCB design to separate signal and noise ensuring only the cleanest signals possible and okay fine
gold professional audio capacitors okay so basically this card is built from the
ground up to give you the best possible
get this stereo audio so this is not a
multi- channel sound card it uses either two RCA for left and right signal or one
headphone jack that's it that's all you can get a uh an addin daughter board
that sits next to it that gives you 7.1 audio but this card is all about the
stereo experience so actually here's the details about the uh Zonar H6 multi
Channel extension board offering 20 DB signal to noise ratio etc etc the
reality of it is most audio files who are using very high-end headphones are
using stereo they are not using surround sound headphones or any of that because
many of them perceive it as as a more of a gimmicky thing rather than a true
audio experience uh feature so whether
that's true or not I am not the judge but I'm just giving you the fact so here
we find the card itself and let's get the accessories going first here so
here's a little black box that gives us the accessories first of all we have an
adapter oh excellent okay so this is an RCA left and right to normal headphone
adapter because the one that's actually built into the card is the larger kind
okay then we have oh then we have an adapter for smaller headphone jack to
bigger headphone jack thank you for that then we have
uhoh okay this seems to be some kind of like an optical audio thing of some sort
yeah okay okay so that's what that is some
kind of converts from the little tiny optical jack to a to a larger one I hope
okay audio Precision test report oh cool so you get the audio Precision test
report which shows you all of the different uh noise level frequency
response uh you know what I have to confess I know so little about this
stuff that it's making me look kind of bad right now but what are you going to do something about cross talk dynamic
range very cool oh it explains what it all is excellent okay so they actually
tell you what all of this stuff means so just because you don't understand what
it all means doesn't mean you can't be prepared to get good enjoyment out of
the card here is a big picture of the
card okay and then okay so this is just a little mini
poster goldplated on the Emi Shield the 4,000 years old chime of tiger
represents not only Mankind's endless pursuit of the essence of sound but also
Zonar Essence stx's commitment to offer the best quality ever from an audio card
so that's the little tiger guy there very cool got that symbolic miss going
on okay and this is the same poster but
in Black just in case you prefer that you know once you go black you
never go back quick start guide so
that's giving you the basics how to install your card how to install the
drivers awesome thank you for that then you have the driver CD don't use this
download the latest drivers off the assus website and that pretty much does
it for the accessories that are included with this card so why don't we have a
look at the card itself it I've got to tell you it feels very highend here
okay so first of all here we go you've
got your front right front left headphone line in and spiff out that is
all for the in uh for the inputs and outputs on this sound card it is all
about the stereo experience okay under this Shield you will find the the Dack
which is I believe right there okay so that's the bur Brown dock right there
and then also the uh user replaceable op amps are under there as well here is an
nus blah blah blah audio Processing Unit you can actually see this is a fairly
simple PCB compared to some of the more high-end sound cards that you'd see I
mean creative used to have like fire wire joystick ports all kinds of crazy
things on their sound cards they are not going for that kind of approach here
here you will find the power input that you will need to operate this card I'm
guessing this is required partially for the headphone amp and also like they
said to minimize the amount of interference you're going to get from taking motherboard power here is the
output I believe for the 7.1 interface now we can go to the top of the card
there is the output for your front panel audio as well as one of those CD
connectors if anyone still uses those then we have the back of the card you
can see this is a PCI card rather than a PCI Express card I'm not sure what the
reasoning is for that but it is a slightly older card so that could be why
and thank you for checking out my unboxing of the essence St from ASUS