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Asus Xonar DG Audio Card (Review)
Asus Xonar DG Audio Card
Xonar DG PCB
Plugged in PCI slot
In Work
After a lot of research & web hunting I finally came to the conclusion that Asus Xonar DG is the best VFM sound card out there & yes it beats the crap out of similarly priced Creative sound cards & onboard audio for sure.
I bought the DG from Kolkata @ INR 1,475 + VAT. The card is truly truly great in terms audio sound quality. Also my PC audio rig is very non PC type
hyeah:, it consists of my mighty Yamaha DSP-A2070 audio amp + Sony bookshelf speakers which can pluck even very sensitive & minute imperfections in sound quality.
Since I am just an audiophyte and thus tend to belong to the camp of so called "purist", I generally give next to no importance to features like Dolby headphone, GX2.5 gaming engine with latest EAX audio, Smart Volume normalizer, VocalFX, FlexBass & DSP features that this card comes laden with.
I am in music i.e. 2 channel analog audio to be precise, so I simply open the DG interface and click the Hi-Fi button, and the sound card simply shuts down all those above features & the audio signal is delivered to the amp in the reference level (the graphic equalizer in default position).
Just after installing the card I immediately found the difference between the three sound sources my PC audio setup was plugged into:
Realtek ALC888 [onboard audio] : These realtek's produce prodigious bass with high gain. I mean you will be really happy if you are a bass head like me who always wants stomping bass but this comes at a cost, weak mids & very poor highs. The resolution & separation of highs is almost non existent and mids are just ok. The background instrumentation sounded a little lost on the Realtek codec & the sound appeared sort of mashed things together under a heavy bass line.
VIA VT1705 [onboard Audio] : The VIA's have much better mids & highs with much more detailing & separation. But what it lacked is bass, it seems the lower audio frequencies have been deliberately cut off. The gain of this chip is very low & it seems that your system is anemic and have no volume.
Asus Xonar DG : It is just amazing that after cashing a mere sum of INR 1.5K you get a real boost in sound quality. I mean it is worth every penny of its worth & I highly recommend it to anyone who have at least a half decent audio setup or head phone.
The best aspect of DG is its nature of bordering on neutrality with a little amount of programmed extra excitement. Simply put this card is designed to give things like drums, base guitar and vocals a little extra pop & I'm a total sucker for pop, too, especially since it often amplifies my favorite elements of a given song. The ALC888 & the VIA has some extra kick of its own, but not like the DG.
Here, the question isn't whether there's bias, but what, if anything, that bias costs you. On the DG, I'm left with the impression that Asus has nudged up the volume on a couple of instruments without messing with the rest of the band. With the Realtek codec, it sounds like the drums and vocals have been turned way up, robbing focus and bandwidth from the rest of the spectrum while the VIA codec have toned down bass while the highs are turned way up. All the three solutions are guilty of massaging the sound a little before passing it to my ears, but the DG's touch doesn't disturb the surroundings, while the onboard audio can trample on background instrumentals and other subtleties.
For the first time ever I was able to hear bass 'tone' from my PC audio setup. The DG may not produce heaven on earth all robbing bass, but it produces base which is much tighter, focused & precise with a tone in it. Not just "boom boom" of realtek. I noticed now there is a dead space or vacuum between two consecutive drum kicks and this serene silence between two consequent drums beats points out that the bass is way tighter than realteks. The mids & highs are exemplary on DG, each instruments is given its space in the audio spectrum not to mention the distinct clear vocals. The separation & detailing in sound are immediately perceivable and boy-o-boy i want to rock.
You may suppose my enthusiasm for the DG is some what over whelming & yes this budget Xonar DG may have had features clipped here and there, but it still retains a few key ingredients that should have widespread appeal: headphone amp & excellent sound output quality. Most folks can do without support for 192kHz sampling rates(DG maxes out at 24bit 96Hz), I mean for me CD quality 16 bit resolution & 44.1khz sampling rate is more than enough & surely this card is best paired with analog output devices, anyway.
Perhaps the most surprising positive aspect about the Xonar DG is how well it performed in different subjective & objective audio tests as found in the web. In one review most of the time, the majority of their blind test listeners thought the low end Asus DG($30) sounded better than the top of the range & way more expensive Asus Xense($280). Well DG for sure do not posses better bit-perfect reproduction of the original source than Xense, but sounded much better & more pleasing to their ears, anyway. The extra pop Asus programmed into the DG is sure to aggravate purists. After reading quite & few reviews of the Xonar lineup, I came to the conclusion that DG has more bass than all the other models.
Asus also included a headphone amp in this card in order to power up and feed more current to big headphones having impedance of over 150 ohms. Getting to this mode will cause my DSP-A2070 go back to "gorilla mode" from the "connoisseur mode" & with this amount of current feeding the amp, I immediately get back my so loved stupendous balls to the walls bass. And amazingly, this time around the prodigious bass does not mask the mids & highs.
Still i rate the normal 2 channel "connoisseur mode" overall better at having more detail. I am changing & training my ears to listen to HiFi mode only with headphone amp switched off, I want quality over quantity this time around.
That brings us to the question whether one really need a sound card at all. The simple answer is no. One can get by with integrated audio and live blissfully unaware of what you're missing or stubbornly claim that no difference exists. The question is not whether you need those upgrades, but if they're worth the additional expense. In the case of the INR 1.5K Xonar DG, the answer is a definitive yes. If anybody have a halfway decent headphones or speakers, the DG offers a very real step up in sound quality for what amounts to a pittance.
Asus Xonar DG Audio Card
Xonar DG PCB
Plugged in PCI slot
In Work
After a lot of research & web hunting I finally came to the conclusion that Asus Xonar DG is the best VFM sound card out there & yes it beats the crap out of similarly priced Creative sound cards & onboard audio for sure.
I bought the DG from Kolkata @ INR 1,475 + VAT. The card is truly truly great in terms audio sound quality. Also my PC audio rig is very non PC type
hyeah:, it consists of my mighty Yamaha DSP-A2070 audio amp + Sony bookshelf speakers which can pluck even very sensitive & minute imperfections in sound quality.Since I am just an audiophyte and thus tend to belong to the camp of so called "purist", I generally give next to no importance to features like Dolby headphone, GX2.5 gaming engine with latest EAX audio, Smart Volume normalizer, VocalFX, FlexBass & DSP features that this card comes laden with.
I am in music i.e. 2 channel analog audio to be precise, so I simply open the DG interface and click the Hi-Fi button, and the sound card simply shuts down all those above features & the audio signal is delivered to the amp in the reference level (the graphic equalizer in default position).
Just after installing the card I immediately found the difference between the three sound sources my PC audio setup was plugged into:
Realtek ALC888 [onboard audio] : These realtek's produce prodigious bass with high gain. I mean you will be really happy if you are a bass head like me who always wants stomping bass but this comes at a cost, weak mids & very poor highs. The resolution & separation of highs is almost non existent and mids are just ok. The background instrumentation sounded a little lost on the Realtek codec & the sound appeared sort of mashed things together under a heavy bass line.
VIA VT1705 [onboard Audio] : The VIA's have much better mids & highs with much more detailing & separation. But what it lacked is bass, it seems the lower audio frequencies have been deliberately cut off. The gain of this chip is very low & it seems that your system is anemic and have no volume.
Asus Xonar DG : It is just amazing that after cashing a mere sum of INR 1.5K you get a real boost in sound quality. I mean it is worth every penny of its worth & I highly recommend it to anyone who have at least a half decent audio setup or head phone.
The best aspect of DG is its nature of bordering on neutrality with a little amount of programmed extra excitement. Simply put this card is designed to give things like drums, base guitar and vocals a little extra pop & I'm a total sucker for pop, too, especially since it often amplifies my favorite elements of a given song. The ALC888 & the VIA has some extra kick of its own, but not like the DG.
Here, the question isn't whether there's bias, but what, if anything, that bias costs you. On the DG, I'm left with the impression that Asus has nudged up the volume on a couple of instruments without messing with the rest of the band. With the Realtek codec, it sounds like the drums and vocals have been turned way up, robbing focus and bandwidth from the rest of the spectrum while the VIA codec have toned down bass while the highs are turned way up. All the three solutions are guilty of massaging the sound a little before passing it to my ears, but the DG's touch doesn't disturb the surroundings, while the onboard audio can trample on background instrumentals and other subtleties.
For the first time ever I was able to hear bass 'tone' from my PC audio setup. The DG may not produce heaven on earth all robbing bass, but it produces base which is much tighter, focused & precise with a tone in it. Not just "boom boom" of realtek. I noticed now there is a dead space or vacuum between two consecutive drum kicks and this serene silence between two consequent drums beats points out that the bass is way tighter than realteks. The mids & highs are exemplary on DG, each instruments is given its space in the audio spectrum not to mention the distinct clear vocals. The separation & detailing in sound are immediately perceivable and boy-o-boy i want to rock.
You may suppose my enthusiasm for the DG is some what over whelming & yes this budget Xonar DG may have had features clipped here and there, but it still retains a few key ingredients that should have widespread appeal: headphone amp & excellent sound output quality. Most folks can do without support for 192kHz sampling rates(DG maxes out at 24bit 96Hz), I mean for me CD quality 16 bit resolution & 44.1khz sampling rate is more than enough & surely this card is best paired with analog output devices, anyway.
Perhaps the most surprising positive aspect about the Xonar DG is how well it performed in different subjective & objective audio tests as found in the web. In one review most of the time, the majority of their blind test listeners thought the low end Asus DG($30) sounded better than the top of the range & way more expensive Asus Xense($280). Well DG for sure do not posses better bit-perfect reproduction of the original source than Xense, but sounded much better & more pleasing to their ears, anyway. The extra pop Asus programmed into the DG is sure to aggravate purists. After reading quite & few reviews of the Xonar lineup, I came to the conclusion that DG has more bass than all the other models.
Asus also included a headphone amp in this card in order to power up and feed more current to big headphones having impedance of over 150 ohms. Getting to this mode will cause my DSP-A2070 go back to "gorilla mode" from the "connoisseur mode" & with this amount of current feeding the amp, I immediately get back my so loved stupendous balls to the walls bass. And amazingly, this time around the prodigious bass does not mask the mids & highs.
Still i rate the normal 2 channel "connoisseur mode" overall better at having more detail. I am changing & training my ears to listen to HiFi mode only with headphone amp switched off, I want quality over quantity this time around.
That brings us to the question whether one really need a sound card at all. The simple answer is no. One can get by with integrated audio and live blissfully unaware of what you're missing or stubbornly claim that no difference exists. The question is not whether you need those upgrades, but if they're worth the additional expense. In the case of the INR 1.5K Xonar DG, the answer is a definitive yes. If anybody have a halfway decent headphones or speakers, the DG offers a very real step up in sound quality for what amounts to a pittance.