New Xonar Essence "One"

[JAG87]

From what I've read, the default USB drivers only do up to 96Khz. If you make custom drivers, you can have USB do higher Khz.



I'm not talking about just CD quality music. But also SACD and games that can output higher than 44.1/96Khz.

What games are 96K? I'm curious because I've never ran into any.

And also how exactly do you play an SACD (DSD) on a computer?

I'm really curious as to what you need even 96K for on a computer... You can count 24/96 music and movie tracks on two hands.

[mattkosem]

From what I've read, the default USB drivers only do up to 96Khz. If you make custom drivers, you can have USB do higher Khz.

You actually need custom drivers for anything over 44.1, that's why most USB->SPDIF converting devices are limited. There are quite a few new ones that can do up to 192 easily, such as my M2Tech Hiface.

I'm not talking about just CD quality music. But also SACD and games that can output higher than 44.1/96Khz.

SACD on computer eh? It's not even PCM, and most DACs that you can find don't even support DSD. Might be able to play the CD-Quality compatibility layer on a PC but that's about it. I've seen some tricks for ripping the DSD to PCM that involve a PS3 and some converting hardware, but never seen a drive that can read the DSD data from an SACD.

I'm really curious as to what you need even 96K for on a computer... You can count 24/96 music and movie tracks on two hands.

I've actually got quite a bit of 24/96 content (maybe 1000 tracks or so) from Vinyl rips and DVD-A disks. It's out there, but definitely not common. Heck, and Ipod can't even play it without down-converting it. I believe movies do generally have 96k and 192k streams though, especially nowadays.


--Matt

[lowfat]

I'm really curious as to what you need even 96K for on a computer... You can count 24/96 music and movie tracks on two hands.

How about damn near all blurays w/ a TrueHD or DTS HD Master track?

[JAG87]

How about damn near all blurays w/ a TrueHD or DTS HD Master track?

Rofl, you clearly don't tinker much with Blurays. They are almost all 16/48K, with a few being 24/48K. 24/96K is a rarity.

[SabreWulf69]

A little bit of useful information --> http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=760714

I used to use 24/96 in the studio all the time for music production in Pro Tools, and sample capturing.

SACD can be ISO'd and read using KMPlayer.

Upsampling, noise shaping and dithering all help when using software EQ's.

Regarding Xonar drivers, try the 'Uni Xonar' drivers, they work great for me, and reduce latency.



For more general audio related reading, visit some of the links here --> General Audio Guides, Tips and Interesting Information @ NRNL

[MrToad]

A little bit of useful information --> http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=760714

I used to use 24/96 in the studio all the time for music production in Pro Tools, and sample capturing.

SACD can be ISO'd and read using KMPlayer.

Upsampling, noise shaping and dithering all help when using software EQ's.

Regarding Xonar drivers, try the 'Uni Xonar' drivers, they work great for me, and reduce latency.

Agreed. The Uni Xonar drivers worked good for me too (that's the third party I mentioned in my post). They reduced the latency to acceptable levels and did away with other niggles

[Kallenator]

There should be tubes sticking out of it. :p

I wonder, is it able to drive power amps from the XLR/RCA contacts?

[SabreWulf69]

Should be able to do this as one of it's most basic functions, I would hope.

[SabreWulf69]

Line out: RCA & XLR, unlike ST/STX, line out doesn’t share thesame DAC with headphone out. (XLR is balanced I/O and RCA is unbalanced)

Any news as to what DAC is powering these then?

[emoners]

well i do hope it would be less than speculated price of $300

[Callsign_Vega]

Any news as to what DAC is powering these then?

Its listed in the photo of the display card. I am not sure of the quality of that DAC. Maybe someone with more knowledge can comment.

[grimREEFER]

Yes but you realize that 99% of content is still at 44.1K and 48K right? Upsampling to 192K doesn't do anything except tamper with the source.

the dacs work better when accepting the 192k stuff, so you get a net gain in audio quality. and since it's processing in 32 bit, it lessens the damage of messing with the source.
but it does have the option for bit perfect, which appears to just mean no resampling.

for those using mpc hc, you can get an audio renderer called reclock to do something similiar in software.

Rofl, you clearly don't tinker much with Blurays. They are almost all 16/48K, with a few being 24/48K. 24/96K is a rarity.

I would say most are 24/48k lossless audio actually. but for blurays, most will be better with just a home theater receiver since you will be better off with a hardware dts-hd decoder and bitstreaming the audio data to it over hdmi.

[MattiasNYC]

Rofl, you clearly don't tinker much with Blurays. They are almost all 16/48K, with a few being 24/48K. 24/96K is a rarity.

How do you know? (Not to be a jerk, I'm actually curious where you see this.... on the cover? reading online?)

[grimREEFER]

How do you know? (Not to be a jerk, I'm actually curious where you see this.... on the cover? reading online?)

well, alot of receivers can tell you the bit depth and the sampling frequency.

if you are using a computer, you can run a program called bdinfo to get all the specs of the disc.

i think the ps3 also reports the audio on the disc, im not sure.

[JAG87]

the dacs work better when accepting the 192k stuff, so you get a net gain in audio quality. and since it's processing in 32 bit, it lessens the damage of messing with the source.
but it does have the option for bit perfect, which appears to just mean no resampling.

for those using mpc hc, you can get an audio renderer called reclock to do something similiar in software.



I would say most are 24/48k lossless audio actually. but for blurays, most will be better with just a home theater receiver since you will be better off with a hardware dts-hd decoder and bitstreaming the audio data to it over hdmi.

Actually you're right, most are 24/48K. Just looked through a few of my remuxes. Point is though it's still 48K

[SabreWulf69]

Its listed in the photo of the display card. I am not sure of the quality of that DAC. Maybe someone with more knowledge can comment.

It lists only one DAC, where the information provided indicates there would be 2 - one for the Headphone Amp and another for both the RCA and XLR outputs.

[Mech0z]

I know its not part of a DAC but it would be nice if it had a Microphone port just so you can dont have to use onboard soundcard for just microphone or have a usb microphone.

[RejZoR]

ASUS, great sound, crappy drivers. Had Xonar Essence STX and even though sound was awesome i hated their fragile drivers. And the GX thingie worked like 1/3 of the time and other 2/3's it caused crappy crashes, sound issues etc. Also i prefer 3D sound positioning on X-Fi cards more. It's just more precise.

Only thing that is interesting for me here is the 32bit upsampling. I wonder what kind of post processing they use on this thing...

[SabreWulf69]

Use the 'Uni Xonar drivers'. They work great, and fix all those problems ASUS never seemed to have addressed

[G3XC]

Like someone said before me.

I'm new at these things. If one wanted to use a microphone with this, they would have to either get a USB one or use the onboard card?

Use this and the onboard at the same time?

[Callsign_Vega]

I've never had any issues with Asus STX drivers.

As for microphone, yes you would need to use a USB or build-in MB sound card.

[zanzabar]

Like someone said before me.

I'm new at these things. If one wanted to use a microphone with this, they would have to either get a USB one or use the onboard card?

Use this and the onboard at the same time?

i would assume that u would use onboard for all audio, but u rout the out through the SPDIF onboard into this box and use it as a receiver.

[lowfat]

Use the 'Uni Xonar drivers'. They work great, and fix all those problems ASUS never seemed to have addressed

First I have heard of this but I will definitely give it a try.

[joshd]

As if any PC audio playback system needs to use a sample rate above 44.1k...

[Halk]

Erm. Uh. This plugs into a USB slot, and it's not a disaster emare? Is USB capable of doing sound cards to any degree... at the moment I've got a Xonar Essence STX, I love the sound quality over the stuff I had before, but there's a little hiss on the line when there's no sound. I'm using decent earphones though so I'm perhaps hearing what other people may not. Is there going to be less noise with a USB thing rather than a PCIe card? I'm afraid I just found out what the best card was and bought it, I'm not an expert.