ASUS Xonar Essence One Audiophile Grade USB DAC Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,648 words · ~13 min read
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Welcome to an unboxing of something that is honestly a little bit outside the
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scope of my expertise. Let me start by saying I love good sounding audio
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whether it's music, movies, or games. But this is a in a completely different
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class from anything that I have experienced before. This is the Zonar
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Essence 1 USB DAC and headphone amplifier. It is, according to ASUS, the
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world's first 8X symmetrical upsampling DAC. And we're going to go ahead, we're
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going to flip it around. I'm just going to be doing a very, very high-level sort
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of coverage of exactly what this thing is and why you might care. And then
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we're going to be following this up on my NCIXCOM channel with a more detailed
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look at exactly what it is and why it's so special. So this is uh the the zonar
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sort of symbol that uh uh the tiger that
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is sort of representing according to ASUS the mankind's endless pursuit of
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the essence of sound and also Zonar Essence STX's commitment to offer the
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best quality ever from an audio card. So that is what ASUS believes they've done
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here. This is your ultimate DAX solution. Extreme audio clarity with 120
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decel sound to noise ratio. The difference between this and other 120
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decel sound to noise ratio devices we've seen in the past is this one has the
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testing to back it up. So I would actually believe it. It has a built-in
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headphone amp which powers up to audio file class headphones. That is up to 600
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ohm impedance headphones. No big deal,
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right? User customizable tone characters with 11 swappable op amps. So two of
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those are on the headphones and the others are not. So you can change
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completely the way that the DAC sounds just by changing out to different op
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amps. Cleanest sound thanks to dedicated internal power supply. So ASUS has put a
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lot of effort into the power supply that is inside this unit in order to minimize
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any interference or electrical noise that might be transmitted to the sound
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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
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getting damaged in any way. This unfolds here.
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This is a very expensive piece of kit. I should probably, you know, preface this
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entire unboxing by saying that this is not something for your average Joe
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computer user at all. It is very, very
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hefty. And this is not an internal device, as I probably should not have to
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explain at this point in time. This is
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meant to sit next to your computer and it is ASUS's response to other high-end
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audio file class OP uh optics
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USB DAX, but in their estimation should pretty
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much turn the entire rest of that market on its ear because it'll pretty much
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blow away everything else in their estimation. If you guys are interested
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in specs, they are here. Although I would, like I said, I haven't done as
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much sort of reading as I would be required to do in order to understand
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exactly what all of that stuff means. I mean, what I do see here is that they've
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specified every component they're using. So, for the audio file guys out there
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who are really interesting in pairing this up with, you know, like a Sennheiser HD800 or something along
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those lines, you're going to know exactly what chipset it's using, exactly
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which op amps it comes preconfigured with, and exactly what this thing is
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capable of. So, package contents. Let's
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move on here to the accessories.
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All right. So, we have a headphone jack
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adapter. We have a power cord inside
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just like Oh, look at that. I got a uh
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an international one. Well, it's okay. It's just a standard PC one. So, it is
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capable accepting. Actually, that's one of the cool things about the power supply. It is capable of accepting any
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um any voltage input. So, you can use it in North America, you
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can use it in Asia, you can use it in Europe, doesn't really matter. Includes
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a USB A to B cable. And then what's in the other box here?
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Fascinating. So, they managed to include
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only Yeah. Not Yeah, they managed to not
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include only the one that I would be using with this particular device. So,
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there you go. Okay, let's have a look at the unit itself
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then, shall we? Man, that's heavy. So,
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here we have our power switch. We have our upsampling button. We have
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our input selector, so we can use coax, toss link, or USB mute button. This is
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your volume adjustment. And this guy right here, nice big knobs,
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is your headphone volume. Finally, here is your headphone jack on the front. The
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build quality of this thing is outstanding. Actually, it's just feels
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like a piece of audio equipment, which is uh a far cry from what you get with
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your typical PC equipment. All right, so
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here is your unbalanced output. Here is your balanced output. So, you do have
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the option of using either. And they're each connected to a different set of op
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amps, so you can customize how you want each of these outputs to sound. Here's
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your coax output. Here's your toast link or rather input. Here's your toast link
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or your optical input. And finally, here's your USB input. You're going to
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want to make sure you select the correct voltage. In this case, I'm going to have
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to change that to 115 before using the device. And then it comes with a little
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sticker covering up the power port. And I'm going to leave that so that I don't
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accidentally screw this up when I uh when I go to plug it into power. So,
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who is this for? total audio enthusiasts who want to use
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it on their PC. Although you are not bound to using a PC, you can use any
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digital audio source. And I would I
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would sort of suggest that most of the
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users who are going to be interested in a product like this are going to be using that port and not the stereo
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outputs that are here on the back, be it the XLR or the coax out. I would suggest
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most people are going to be using this as a way to drive their high-end
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headphones and deliver the most pure sound regardless of the volume level.
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So, the thing about a high sound to noise ratio is that even at a very low
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volume level, you should still be able to enjoy all the different aspects of
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the music and hear the entire range very, very clearly. However, if you do
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prefer more of a warm sound or if you prefer more emphasis on the bass, then
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you can actually customize this guy. Whether you're using the ASUS software
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or whether you're actually changing the hardware of the unit itself, it's fully
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user customizable and there are no warranty void if removed stickers. Yeah,
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you can take the whole thing apart if you really want to. Um, so you can
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actually color the sound that way to match your preferences. Now, ASUS is
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comparing this to DAXs that are in the neighborhood of $1,000 to $1,500 that
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exist on the market right now and are quite well regarded. However, uh this
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guy is going to be coming in at a significantly lower price point.
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So, 8x symmetrical upsampling. ASUS is
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is touting the upsampling as a huge feature of this deck, and I can see why
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they do that for a number of reasons. Number one, they have the hardware to
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back it up. Number two is the fact that so much of the digital audio that you
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can obtain these days is very low quality. But not everyone necessarily
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wants to go to the trouble or the expense. Although if you're really that
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worried about the expense, I don't think you're buying one of these. But neither
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here nor there. No, not everyone wants to go to the trouble or the expense of
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purchasing or finding the high quality
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audio that they require. So here's a little quick lesson on bit rate and
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sample rate. And so the bit rate is basically how um how high quality of a
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sample you're taking of the audio. We didn't really have this with analog
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because it doesn't really work quite the same way. But with digital, everything
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is in terms of hard to find numbers. Kind of like how pixels don't
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necessarily equate to the image quality we saw on an analog screen. It's just a
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different way of doing things. Okay? And then the sample rate is how many samples
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at that quality that we're taking per second. So ideally you would have a very
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high sample rate and a very high bit rate. So upsampling takes your how many
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samples and your bit rate here and tries
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to smooth it out to make it more like how the artist would have intended for
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you to hear the audio.
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So why is 8x symmetrical upsampling important and what exactly does that
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mean? What it means is that it can upsample eight times
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from a variety of different sources. So,
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I'm going to equate this to actually
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more of a video example. So, when you're
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when you were playing older games that didn't support high resolutions,
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especially when LCD monitors first came out. So, I got a 24 in 1920x
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1200 monitor. And I did that for a very specific reason. The reason for that was
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that when I took older content that was running at 800 by 600 or was running at
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1600 x 1200 and I upsampled particularly
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from 800 by 600 to 1,600 x 1200 with
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black bars, I was getting exactly a 1
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to4 relationship between the pixels that
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I have and the pixels that it's being upsampled to. So this is not a perfect
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example because that resolution change
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doesn't add any additional quality to the image. But what it does do is it is
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an even multiple. So we're not going to lose any quality by dithering one pixel
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between sort of the surrounding ones and blending the colors and using cheats and
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hacks like that in order to increase the resolution. So think of this as your
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audio resolution. So ASUS's explanation here is that common upscaling USB DAXs
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transfer whatever audio source to 192 kHz indistinguishably. However, some
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audio sources that are lower quality and
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you would want to upsample do not evenly
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multiply to 192 kHz. So that's why the
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symmetrical AEX upsampling allows you to have two different destinations. So two
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different upsampling um quality levels for the different
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audio sources. So it's kind of like the display example I'm giving you guys
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where you want to not lose any quality while you are trying to increase the
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quality. So as I mentioned before here we have a slide about the sound to noise
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ratio which is bas or signal to noise ratio whichever you prefer. And that is
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basically ASUS comparing to some other well-known USB DAXs. Like I said you
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have so many sound cards. I mean, you can go back as as long ago as an Odigy 2
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ZS and they're claiming well in excess of 100 decel signal to noise ratio. It's
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kind of nonsense. Um, my expectation for
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an audio file grade product like this is that this would be the actual signal to
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noise ratio that they have achieved, but I haven't tested it yet.
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Now, the higher up you get in terms of headphone quality, the more power is
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required to drive the I mean, they become speakers at a certain point
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rather than being just, you know, headphone
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doodads. So, yes, you require an incredible amount of power to drive very
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very high-end headphones. And they're saying basically, I mean, this is sort
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of iffy whether or not a regular uh
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normal headphone amplifier can drive a 300 ohm or you know, anything above 32
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ohms. But the point of this is that they're saying theirs is capable of up
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to 600 ohm impedance headphones, which is pretty much getting up there about as
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high as it goes. So, this is a fascinating way to do product
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development, and I think it is such a step in the right direction that it
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definitely merits a mention. Check this out. So they actually besides testing
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I'm sure they tested them besides testing them they actually selected the
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capacitors that they were using on the PCB based on what would interfere the
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least with the quality of the audio based on checking out hi-fi forums like
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DIY audio and headfi.org sorry headfi.org. So that is uh a one way of
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taking user feedback and integrating that very closely with the development
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of a product because the reality of it is the guys who they're going to try and
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sell one of these to already know that they want these particular capacitors
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which kinds of opamps they want to throw into the device and you're not going to
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sell it to them unless you're using exactly what they want and ASUS went and
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figured that out ahead of time. So, in short, guys, if you don't already know
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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
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to spend on a highquality audio solution, then this is pretty much not
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for you. This is a very niche, very high-end product. Is it a replacement
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for a sound card? Yes. Is it a replacement for a sound card for every
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gamer and every guy who sits and listens to their iTunes library on their
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computer? No. This is a very specialty product. It will deliver better audio
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quality than almost anything else you can hook up to your PC, but you got to
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pay to play. And I got to say, I'm definitely looking forward to checking
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this out. But for myself personally, I don't think I would be running out
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buying one of these because if you don't have the hardware to properly take
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advantage of it, and by hardware, I don't mean your PC because your PC is
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irrelevant. It uses the onboard chipset in order to completely eliminate any
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uh quality interference that could come from a lowquality PC or low quality
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sound card, whatever the case may be. But I'm talking hardware in terms of the
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headphones you're using, the I mean, it's not really hardware, but the audio
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sources that you're listening to, you're going to want to make sure that you're
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properly equipped to take advantage of a guy like this before you go and set one
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up in your home. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing online tech
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tips and don't forget to subscribe to my NCIXCOM channel as well because once
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I've had a chance to actually play around with this a little bit, I would love to give you my impressions.