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so today I'll be having a look at a fairly unique product this is the ASUS

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Essence St the essence of sound it's a Zonar line of product product and it

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features 124 dbel sound of noise ratio and a headphone amp so they're saying

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this card is for audio files in here we will find an excellent presentation for

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this card and let's go through some of the main features of it first of all it

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does require an external power connector so that should give you some idea that

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this is a either a fairly high powered card or what they say about it which is

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far more likely is the fact that it offers independent power supply directly

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from the PSU for sensitive analog signals so rather than taking power from

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the motherboard where there can be a lot of interference it takes power directly

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from your power supply awesome okay so it uses Superior Dax it uses the bur PCM

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1792 a digital analog converter which converts signals at 127 DB sing to noise

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ratio excellent okay so that's a feature that you're going to find over other

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high-end even sound card it has swappable Opa socket so you can

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actually tune it to your unique sound preference all right built-in headphone

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app this is huge so many sound cards do

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not have a headphone amp and so many users are using headphones or headsets

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that they don't even know is not properly driven by the sound card that

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they're using for example the Sennheiser PC 350s have a high impedance for a

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gaming headphone given that so many gaming cards don't have a headphone amp

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so unless you're using a dedicated amp with it you're not getting the most out

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of it next perfectly sealed analog output path so Emi and copper shielding

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sealed the RCA and headphone signals from noise offering Distortion free

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audio enjoyment excellent Precision clock tuning world's first sound card

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with Precision clock to minimize audio Jitter okay hyper grounding circuitry

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design utilizing PCB design to separate signal and noise ensuring only the cleanest signals possible and okay fine

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gold professional audio capacitors okay so basically this card is built from the

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ground up to give you the best possible

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get this stereo audio so this is not a

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multi- channel sound card it uses either two RCA for left and right signal or one

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headphone jack that's it that's all you can get a uh an addin daughter board

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that sits next to it that gives you 7.1 audio but this card is all about the

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stereo experience so actually here's the details about the uh Zonar H6 multi

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Channel extension board offering 20 DB signal to noise ratio etc etc the

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reality of it is most audio files who are using very high-end headphones are

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using stereo they are not using surround sound headphones or any of that because

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many of them perceive it as as a more of a gimmicky thing rather than a true

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audio experience uh feature so whether

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that's true or not I am not the judge but I'm just giving you the fact so here

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we find the card itself and let's get the accessories going first here so

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here's a little black box that gives us the accessories first of all we have an

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adapter oh excellent okay so this is an RCA left and right to normal headphone

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adapter because the one that's actually built into the card is the larger kind

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okay then we have oh then we have an adapter for smaller headphone jack to

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bigger headphone jack thank you for that then we have

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uhoh okay this seems to be some kind of like an optical audio thing of some sort

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yeah okay okay so that's what that is some

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kind of converts from the little tiny optical jack to a to a larger one I hope

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okay audio Precision test report oh cool so you get the audio Precision test

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report which shows you all of the different uh noise level frequency

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response uh you know what I have to confess I know so little about this

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stuff that it's making me look kind of bad right now but what are you going to do something about cross talk dynamic

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range very cool oh it explains what it all is excellent okay so they actually

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tell you what all of this stuff means so just because you don't understand what

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it all means doesn't mean you can't be prepared to get good enjoyment out of

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the card here is a big picture of the

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card okay and then okay so this is just a little mini

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poster goldplated on the Emi Shield the 4,000 years old chime of tiger

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represents not only Mankind's endless pursuit of the essence of sound but also

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Zonar Essence stx's commitment to offer the best quality ever from an audio card

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so that's the little tiger guy there very cool got that symbolic miss going

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on okay and this is the same poster but

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in Black just in case you prefer that you know once you go black you

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never go back quick start guide so

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that's giving you the basics how to install your card how to install the

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drivers awesome thank you for that then you have the driver CD don't use this

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download the latest drivers off the assus website and that pretty much does

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it for the accessories that are included with this card so why don't we have a

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look at the card itself it I've got to tell you it feels very highend here

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okay so first of all here we go you've

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got your front right front left headphone line in and spiff out that is

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all for the in uh for the inputs and outputs on this sound card it is all

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about the stereo experience okay under this Shield you will find the the Dack

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which is I believe right there okay so that's the bur Brown dock right there

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and then also the uh user replaceable op amps are under there as well here is an

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nus blah blah blah audio Processing Unit you can actually see this is a fairly

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simple PCB compared to some of the more high-end sound cards that you'd see I

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mean creative used to have like fire wire joystick ports all kinds of crazy

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things on their sound cards they are not going for that kind of approach here

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here you will find the power input that you will need to operate this card I'm

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guessing this is required partially for the headphone amp and also like they

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said to minimize the amount of interference you're going to get from taking motherboard power here is the

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output I believe for the 7.1 interface now we can go to the top of the card

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there is the output for your front panel audio as well as one of those CD

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connectors if anyone still uses those then we have the back of the card you

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can see this is a PCI card rather than a PCI Express card I'm not sure what the

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reasoning is for that but it is a slightly older card so that could be why

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and thank you for checking out my unboxing of the essence St from ASUS