Audio ASUS Xonar Essence STX Sound Card with 124dB SNR Now Official

manuvikraman

manuvikraman

Adept
Aimed as the culmination of searching for the very essence of sound, the new ASUS Xonar Essence STX range of audio cards delivers the purest, cleanest audio to offer users the ultimate audio experience ever from a sound card. Equipped with carefully-selected components, and ASUS’ exclusive Hyper-grounding and EMI Shield design, the Xonar Essence STX is capable of achieving an industry-leading 124dB SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) in signal clarity. Furthermore, full-driving for any available headphone is provided through the built-in headphone amplifier—presenting unprecedented audio quality and under 0.001% of distortion to sate even the most demanding audiophile. Interestingly enough, the design for this audio card is based on a paradigm that is forty centuries old.

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Preview

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Sounds interesting. Wonder how good the SPDIF output of the thing would be. I'm guessing it'll cost a minimum of ~300 USD.
 
The SNR at Headphone out is only 110dB and 124dB for the Front out.By front out they don't mean front panel audio do they?

Anyways a worthy competitor for the HT Claro Halo has finally arrived.
 
Front out = line out. This is just a 2 channel card unless you use spdif. The SNR on the headphone out will obviously be lower as its going thru an extra stage of amplification. Frankly though SNR is immaterial. My external DAC measures some 100dB SNR and my xfi analog outs measure 112dB. Needless to say the DAC sounds way way way better than the xfi :p.
 
Update: Got an Essence STX today for a super awesome 8k price. Thats 20% less than the US price. First impressions - it sounds beautiful. Very open, detailed, musical and absolutely no digital harshness. Its truly stunning that an internal sound card can sound this good. I'm very very impressed.

To give you a yardstick, the EMU 1212M which costs the same and has very well reviewed analog outputs is absolutely no way close to this.
 
@Chaos: how is it in comparison to ESI Juli@ soundcard? if you have used it by the way .not in terms of technical comparison as I'm considering this ,as I' using Juli@ right now .
 
Interesting. How does it (or does it, at all) compare to the PD DAC or the Citypulse you were using earlier? The PCM1794 in the Essence is supposed to be a pretty fantastic chip, also the card uses a bunch of exotic caps - Nichicon FG and some Oscons. Nice stuff, and great value for 8K.

A few quick questions:

Is its digital output much better than the 1212m? I'm currently using the SPDIF out from a 1212m into a Buffalo, and I was looking at the Juli@ (but it does not replace the Windows Volume Control like Patchmix does)

Does it lose quality when you reduce volume, or is the mixer independent of kmixer?

Is the monitor control available from a Control applet only, or also as a part of the system tray? The latter will allow a multimedia keyboard to control the volume, in the former case the only way is to crack open the application and adjust volume from there.

Last Q: Does the card pop audibly when you switch outputs between digital and analog? This has been a gripe I've had about the Asus/cMedia processor, and I'd like to know if that is fixed.
 
Chaos said:
Update: Got an Essence STX today for a super awesome 8k price. Thats 20% less than the US price. First impressions - it sounds beautiful. Very open, detailed, musical and absolutely no digital harshness. Its truly stunning that an internal sound card can sound this good. I'm very very impressed.
To give you a yardstick, the EMU 1212M which costs the same and has very well reviewed analog outputs is absolutely no way close to this.
Click to expand...
@ Chaos,

Please give more details from where you bought it @8K. I would like to get one.
 
sangram said:
Interesting. How does it (or does it, at all) compare to the PD DAC or the Citypulse you were using earlier? The PCM1794 in the Essence is supposed to be a pretty fantastic chip, also the card uses a bunch of exotic caps - Nichicon FG and some Oscons. Nice stuff, and great value for 8K.
Click to expand...
A tiny correction - it has a PCM1792A not 1794. The former is better in specs than the latter. I can't really compare it to the old citypulse as I don't have it anymore but I'm guesstimating the Xonar is better. Yup the component selection is really good. Infact I'm amazed as to how asus is managing to produce it so cheap. While PD's dac obviously has better depth, soundstaging, reproduces human voices better, I feel the Xonar analog outs have a slight edge in treble detail when being fed a 24/192 upsampled signal. This is inspite of me using a less resolving audio art cable for the xonar while the dac being fed with a transparent audio music link+. The difference might be even more once I replace the JRCs with LM4562s.
A few quick questions:

Is its digital output much better than the 1212m? I'm currently using the SPDIF out from a 1212m into a Buffalo, and I was looking at the Juli@ (but it does not replace the Windows Volume Control like Patchmix does)

Does it lose quality when you reduce volume, or is the mixer independent of kmixer?

Is the monitor control available from a Control applet only, or also as a part of the system tray? The latter will allow a multimedia keyboard to control the volume, in the former case the only way is to crack open the application and adjust volume from there.

Last Q: Does the card pop audibly when you switch outputs between digital and analog? This has been a gripe I've had about the Asus/cMedia processor, and I'd like to know if that is fixed.
Click to expand...

I haven't used the volume control on the card. Not sure how it'll sound. I'll try and let you know later. Haven't managed to test the digital out either as my media rig doesn't have a PCI-E slot. The asus marketing morons should have just left the card as PCI instead of that useless PCI-E bridge appendage. The card does pop when changing to digital outputs. Shall check the monitor thing too and update this thread.
 
Stuge said:
@Chaos: how is it in comparison to ESI Juli@ soundcard? if you have used it by the way .not in terms of technical comparison as I'm considering this ,as I' using Juli@ right now .
Click to expand...

Its a no contest if its for music listening. The EMU 1212M has better analog outs than the Juli@ and the EMU get its rear handed to it by the Xonar.
 
I'll try and let you know later.
Click to expand...

No problem, keep us posted. I don't like that pop, it's too loud (way too loud as all my analog outputs are hardwired to the amp without the benefit of a volume control).
 
^^Didn't find it to be very loud at all. Its there but I didn't feel concerned about it. I intend to change the JRC2114D opamps to LM4562 tonight. Lets see if its of any use.
 
@Chaos: great buy there, keep us posted. iirc you can change the Op-amps on the xonar, any update on that feature?

@Sangram: wow that means the scavengers can soon fight among themselves for the 1212 ;)
 
Damn! Where was the headphone guru on this thread??

Anyway, I should be getting one soon if I can source the darn thing - so far no luck with Mumbai vendors.

BTW ^^Amarbir is no longer selling it at 8K. I was quoted something about US dollar rate changes, so the prices are "higher" now. I'm looking for alternative options.
 
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