Welcome to an unboxing of something that is honestly a little bit outside the
scope of my expertise. Let me start by saying I love good sounding audio
whether it's music, movies, or games. But this is a in a completely different
class from anything that I have experienced before. This is the Zonar
Essence 1 USB DAC and headphone amplifier. It is, according to ASUS, the
world's first 8X symmetrical upsampling DAC. And we're going to go ahead, we're
going to flip it around. I'm just going to be doing a very, very high-level sort
of coverage of exactly what this thing is and why you might care. And then
we're going to be following this up on my NCIXCOM channel with a more detailed
look at exactly what it is and why it's so special. So this is uh the the zonar
sort of symbol that uh uh the tiger that
is sort of representing according to ASUS the mankind's endless pursuit of
the essence of sound and also Zonar Essence STX's commitment to offer the
best quality ever from an audio card. So that is what ASUS believes they've done
here. This is your ultimate DAX solution. Extreme audio clarity with 120
decel sound to noise ratio. The difference between this and other 120
decel sound to noise ratio devices we've seen in the past is this one has the
testing to back it up. So I would actually believe it. It has a built-in
headphone amp which powers up to audio file class headphones. That is up to 600
ohm impedance headphones. No big deal,
right? User customizable tone characters with 11 swappable op amps. So two of
those are on the headphones and the others are not. So you can change
completely the way that the DAC sounds just by changing out to different op
amps. Cleanest sound thanks to dedicated internal power supply. So ASUS has put a
lot of effort into the power supply that is inside this unit in order to minimize
any interference or electrical noise that might be transmitted to the sound
that you are listening to. So we'll check out the packaging here. We've got foam on the top there to keep it from
getting damaged in any way. This unfolds here.
This is a very expensive piece of kit. I should probably, you know, preface this
entire unboxing by saying that this is not something for your average Joe
computer user at all. It is very, very
hefty. And this is not an internal device, as I probably should not have to
explain at this point in time. This is
meant to sit next to your computer and it is ASUS's response to other high-end
audio file class OP uh optics
USB DAX, but in their estimation should pretty
much turn the entire rest of that market on its ear because it'll pretty much
blow away everything else in their estimation. If you guys are interested
in specs, they are here. Although I would, like I said, I haven't done as
much sort of reading as I would be required to do in order to understand
exactly what all of that stuff means. I mean, what I do see here is that they've
specified every component they're using. So, for the audio file guys out there
who are really interesting in pairing this up with, you know, like a Sennheiser HD800 or something along
those lines, you're going to know exactly what chipset it's using, exactly
which op amps it comes preconfigured with, and exactly what this thing is
capable of. So, package contents. Let's
move on here to the accessories.
All right. So, we have a headphone jack
adapter. We have a power cord inside
just like Oh, look at that. I got a uh
an international one. Well, it's okay. It's just a standard PC one. So, it is
capable accepting. Actually, that's one of the cool things about the power supply. It is capable of accepting any
um any voltage input. So, you can use it in North America, you
can use it in Asia, you can use it in Europe, doesn't really matter. Includes
a USB A to B cable. And then what's in the other box here?
Fascinating. So, they managed to include
only Yeah. Not Yeah, they managed to not
include only the one that I would be using with this particular device. So,
there you go. Okay, let's have a look at the unit itself
then, shall we? Man, that's heavy. So,
here we have our power switch. We have our upsampling button. We have
our input selector, so we can use coax, toss link, or USB mute button. This is
your volume adjustment. And this guy right here, nice big knobs,
is your headphone volume. Finally, here is your headphone jack on the front. The
build quality of this thing is outstanding. Actually, it's just feels
like a piece of audio equipment, which is uh a far cry from what you get with
your typical PC equipment. All right, so
here is your unbalanced output. Here is your balanced output. So, you do have
the option of using either. And they're each connected to a different set of op
amps, so you can customize how you want each of these outputs to sound. Here's
your coax output. Here's your toast link or rather input. Here's your toast link
or your optical input. And finally, here's your USB input. You're going to
want to make sure you select the correct voltage. In this case, I'm going to have
to change that to 115 before using the device. And then it comes with a little
sticker covering up the power port. And I'm going to leave that so that I don't
accidentally screw this up when I uh when I go to plug it into power. So,
who is this for? total audio enthusiasts who want to use
it on their PC. Although you are not bound to using a PC, you can use any
digital audio source. And I would I
would sort of suggest that most of the
users who are going to be interested in a product like this are going to be using that port and not the stereo
outputs that are here on the back, be it the XLR or the coax out. I would suggest
most people are going to be using this as a way to drive their high-end
headphones and deliver the most pure sound regardless of the volume level.
So, the thing about a high sound to noise ratio is that even at a very low
volume level, you should still be able to enjoy all the different aspects of
the music and hear the entire range very, very clearly. However, if you do
prefer more of a warm sound or if you prefer more emphasis on the bass, then
you can actually customize this guy. Whether you're using the ASUS software
or whether you're actually changing the hardware of the unit itself, it's fully
user customizable and there are no warranty void if removed stickers. Yeah,
you can take the whole thing apart if you really want to. Um, so you can
actually color the sound that way to match your preferences. Now, ASUS is
comparing this to DAXs that are in the neighborhood of $1,000 to $1,500 that
exist on the market right now and are quite well regarded. However, uh this
guy is going to be coming in at a significantly lower price point.
So, 8x symmetrical upsampling. ASUS is
is touting the upsampling as a huge feature of this deck, and I can see why
they do that for a number of reasons. Number one, they have the hardware to
back it up. Number two is the fact that so much of the digital audio that you
can obtain these days is very low quality. But not everyone necessarily
wants to go to the trouble or the expense. Although if you're really that
worried about the expense, I don't think you're buying one of these. But neither
here nor there. No, not everyone wants to go to the trouble or the expense of
purchasing or finding the high quality
audio that they require. So here's a little quick lesson on bit rate and
sample rate. And so the bit rate is basically how um how high quality of a
sample you're taking of the audio. We didn't really have this with analog
because it doesn't really work quite the same way. But with digital, everything
is in terms of hard to find numbers. Kind of like how pixels don't
necessarily equate to the image quality we saw on an analog screen. It's just a
different way of doing things. Okay? And then the sample rate is how many samples
at that quality that we're taking per second. So ideally you would have a very
high sample rate and a very high bit rate. So upsampling takes your how many
samples and your bit rate here and tries
to smooth it out to make it more like how the artist would have intended for
you to hear the audio.
So why is 8x symmetrical upsampling important and what exactly does that
mean? What it means is that it can upsample eight times
from a variety of different sources. So,
I'm going to equate this to actually
more of a video example. So, when you're
when you were playing older games that didn't support high resolutions,
especially when LCD monitors first came out. So, I got a 24 in 1920x
1200 monitor. And I did that for a very specific reason. The reason for that was
that when I took older content that was running at 800 by 600 or was running at
1600 x 1200 and I upsampled particularly
from 800 by 600 to 1,600 x 1200 with
black bars, I was getting exactly a 1
to4 relationship between the pixels that
I have and the pixels that it's being upsampled to. So this is not a perfect
example because that resolution change
doesn't add any additional quality to the image. But what it does do is it is
an even multiple. So we're not going to lose any quality by dithering one pixel
between sort of the surrounding ones and blending the colors and using cheats and
hacks like that in order to increase the resolution. So think of this as your
audio resolution. So ASUS's explanation here is that common upscaling USB DAXs
transfer whatever audio source to 192 kHz indistinguishably. However, some
audio sources that are lower quality and
you would want to upsample do not evenly
multiply to 192 kHz. So that's why the
symmetrical AEX upsampling allows you to have two different destinations. So two
different upsampling um quality levels for the different
audio sources. So it's kind of like the display example I'm giving you guys
where you want to not lose any quality while you are trying to increase the
quality. So as I mentioned before here we have a slide about the sound to noise
ratio which is bas or signal to noise ratio whichever you prefer. And that is
basically ASUS comparing to some other well-known USB DAXs. Like I said you
have so many sound cards. I mean, you can go back as as long ago as an Odigy 2
ZS and they're claiming well in excess of 100 decel signal to noise ratio. It's
kind of nonsense. Um, my expectation for
an audio file grade product like this is that this would be the actual signal to
noise ratio that they have achieved, but I haven't tested it yet.
Now, the higher up you get in terms of headphone quality, the more power is
required to drive the I mean, they become speakers at a certain point
rather than being just, you know, headphone
doodads. So, yes, you require an incredible amount of power to drive very
very high-end headphones. And they're saying basically, I mean, this is sort
of iffy whether or not a regular uh
normal headphone amplifier can drive a 300 ohm or you know, anything above 32
ohms. But the point of this is that they're saying theirs is capable of up
to 600 ohm impedance headphones, which is pretty much getting up there about as
high as it goes. So, this is a fascinating way to do product
development, and I think it is such a step in the right direction that it
definitely merits a mention. Check this out. So they actually besides testing
I'm sure they tested them besides testing them they actually selected the
capacitors that they were using on the PCB based on what would interfere the
least with the quality of the audio based on checking out hi-fi forums like
DIY audio and headfi.org sorry headfi.org. So that is uh a one way of
taking user feedback and integrating that very closely with the development
of a product because the reality of it is the guys who they're going to try and
sell one of these to already know that they want these particular capacitors
which kinds of opamps they want to throw into the device and you're not going to
sell it to them unless you're using exactly what they want and ASUS went and
figured that out ahead of time. So, in short, guys, if you don't already know
that you need one of these, and if you don't know what all of these numbers meant, and if you don't have the money
to spend on a highquality audio solution, then this is pretty much not
for you. This is a very niche, very high-end product. Is it a replacement
for a sound card? Yes. Is it a replacement for a sound card for every
gamer and every guy who sits and listens to their iTunes library on their
computer? No. This is a very specialty product. It will deliver better audio
quality than almost anything else you can hook up to your PC, but you got to
pay to play. And I got to say, I'm definitely looking forward to checking
this out. But for myself personally, I don't think I would be running out
buying one of these because if you don't have the hardware to properly take
advantage of it, and by hardware, I don't mean your PC because your PC is
irrelevant. It uses the onboard chipset in order to completely eliminate any
uh quality interference that could come from a lowquality PC or low quality
sound card, whatever the case may be. But I'm talking hardware in terms of the
headphones you're using, the I mean, it's not really hardware, but the audio
sources that you're listening to, you're going to want to make sure that you're
properly equipped to take advantage of a guy like this before you go and set one
up in your home. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing online tech
tips and don't forget to subscribe to my NCIXCOM channel as well because once
I've had a chance to actually play around with this a little bit, I would love to give you my impressions.