ASUS Xonar Essence One Review(s)

[SabreWulf69]

Read the full review HERE @ KitGuru...



Not the most detailed of reviews and no technical measurements were taken but I suppose this may be an indicator of these units now becoming available to the general public after such a long wait. Expect to see more reviews soon I reckon...

[Nikolasz]

I say lol omg, nice box tho

[EniGmA1987]

meh

[3lfk1ng]

Looks like a great solution for people with a desktop and a laptop who demand high quality audio for everything.

That guy has some really beautiful audio equipment, I'm pretty envious of those Little Dot tube amps. Parts of his equipment however, are just plain ridiculous (Look at the prices on the very bottom). It's nice to see that he went through every effort to ensure that nothing degraded/ hampered the quality of audio being produced by the Xonar for this review. Props to him.

[SabreWulf69]

Definitely some pretty nuts equipment he tested it with for sure....

[hurleybird]

Sounds like a great little package, but I'll keep my Grace m903.

[bamtan2]

Sounds like a great little package, but I'll keep my Grace m903.

rather than give it to me? damn I wish you would change your mind, I had my heart set on it.

[the finisher]

Grace m903=$1900, that's serious

[M.Beier]

would love to read the review, but by god that is one sh1tty site....
Everytime you want to scroll on a laptop, you click some annoying commercial and enters another page...

Added to the list of most sh1tty pages on the web, and wont visit kitguru again.

[XSAlliN]

would love to read the review, but by god that is one sh1tty site....
Everytime you want to scroll on a laptop, you click some annoying commercial and enters another page...

Added to the list of most sh1tty pages on the web, and wont visit kitguru again.

Works fine with NoScript + Adblock. :P

====

At that price you might find better alternatives (can't say which cause i haven't played the audiophile game for quite some time - but i doubt this is the best option in this price...). Unless you specifically need an external DAC and all the extra options it has to offer - you could do just fine with an ASUS Xonar Essence STX which is around 30% the price of Essence One.

[AliG]

Holy hell, what a well done review! How did those guys even afford the other audio equipment? Just ballparking it, it seems they totaled around $10k not including Xonar

[D749]

I've used USB audio, which doesn't require custom drivers, for years now as I'm tired of the POS driver situation with sound cards. Unfortunately, everyone who has used XEO via USB has had bad things to say about it. More and more I'm tempted to just go with the tried and true DAC1 USB. The only thing that has stopped me is the price as it would merely be used on my gaming rig.

[Bojamijams]

USB in general is pretty weak compared to S/PDIF.. coax is best, then optical 2nd.

As far as DAC1, get the Anedio instead... much fuller and not as digital sound as DAC1 (I compared against DAC1-PRE which is higher model then DAC1 USB)

http://www.anedio.com/index.php/product/d2_overview

[ChaosMinionX]

Zardon has always had some high end equipment... known him from waaay back in the Driverheaven days when I used to mod there.

[Bojamijams]

I love my Anedio D1 but I'm too scared to move it around... Essence One might be my 'take to work/take when travelling' option for headphone/speaker listening.

It does suck that they included balanced line out for speakers but left out the balanced amp circuitry.. they had 80% of the groundwork already done.. just a few extra IC's and you'd have a 4 pin balanced headphone out. But thats another $50.

[Bojamijams]

I love my Anedio D1 but I'm too scared to move it around... Essence One might be my 'take to work/take when travelling' option for headphone/speaker listening.

It does suck that they included balanced line out for speakers but left out the balanced amp circuitry.. they had 80% of the groundwork already done.. just a few extra IC's and you'd have a 4 pin balanced headphone out. But thats another $50.

[antiacid]

in my book, as soon as you start showing bias for cabling (with no link whatsoever with real life, physics and established power theory... I'm an engineer so you have to have some kind of numbers/graphs to convince me), you showed that you're a clueless fool and the review becomes pointless. Might as well say that painting the box red makes it sound better...

To elaborate, those expensive cables offer no appreciable benefit. The only difference is that you're left with a 1600$ cable that you can't differentiate from a 16$ cable in a true double-blind test. So yeah, of course you're going to want to brag that it is better, otherwise you're admitting that you just threw money out the window... This was true in the 70s, it is still true today. Snake oil, people, snake oil.

Also, I don't know any other review sites worth its salt that has such a retarded layout/ads situation. Think about it, if the guy wasn't spending so much on useless gear, would he need to throw so much advertisement at his readers? Half the review is "So I spent X on other unrelated gear, look at me, I'm so cool!" and the other half is subjective crap.

Not XS worthy by any stretch of the imagination.

[ChaosMinionX]

in my book, as soon as you start showing bias for cabling (with no link whatsoever with real life, physics and established power theory... I'm an engineer so you have to have some kind of numbers/graphs to convince me), you showed that you're a clueless fool and the review becomes pointless. Might as well say that painting the box red makes it sound better...

To elaborate, those expensive cables offer no appreciable benefit. The only difference is that you're left with a 1600$ cable that you can't differentiate from a 16$ cable in a true double-blind test. So yeah, of course you're going to want to brag that it is better, otherwise you're admitting that you just threw money out the window... This was true in the 70s, it is still true today. Snake oil, people, snake oil.

Also, I don't know any other review sites worth its salt that has such a retarded layout/ads situation. Think about it, if the guy wasn't spending so much on useless gear, would he need to throw so much advertisement at his readers? Half the review is "So I spent X on other unrelated gear, look at me, I'm so cool!" and the other half is subjective crap.

Not XS worthy by any stretch of the imagination.

Advertising? You must still be in the 70s if you still see ads on webpages.

And as far as the cables go, while it might not be needed but you're not going to hook up a pair of Sony cables or the like when you are trying to achieve the best possible sound even if you cannot hear it (hence what most audiophiles do; they waste lots of money to achieve sound nirvana).

If you have several thousand invested in audio equipment, whats another $1600 for a cable? Even if it is subjective, a perceived difference in sound just from getting a "expensive cable" will make it all worth it in the end to an Audiophile.

EDIT: http://www.doublehelixcables.com/ is the site, read through some of the stuff on there.

[SabreWulf69]

I think he was referring to something like those Audioquest cables vs something like some decent Bluejeans cables for example. Sure there is some actual cheap junk out there but still you don't have to go nuts in price to get some decent cabling. As I mentioned these aren't the sort of reviews I like, I prefer ones that have both objective and subjective results such as any reputable site that deals in audio reviews such as AVS and Audioholics for example.

[ChaosMinionX]

I think he was referring to something like those Audioquest cables vs something like some decent Bluejeans cables for example. Sure there is some actual cheap junk out there but still you don't have to go nuts in price to get some decent cabling. As I mentioned these aren't the sort of reviews I like, I prefer ones that have both objective and subjective results such as any reputable site that deals in audio reviews such as AVS and Audioholics for example.

Fair enough... I will say I agree with your comment on AVS and Audioholics.

[Bojamijams]

Just because you don't hear a difference, doesn't mean there is one. There's a VERY wide variety in hearing quality. Some people can identify the pitch of a note by hearing it. Most cannot. Thus, do you think those two people really hear the same thing when they listen to a musical piece?

in my book, as soon as you start showing bias for cabling (with no link whatsoever with real life, physics and established power theory... I'm an engineer so you have to have some kind of numbers/graphs to convince me), you showed that you're a clueless fool and the review becomes pointless. Might as well say that painting the box red makes it sound better...

To elaborate, those expensive cables offer no appreciable benefit. The only difference is that you're left with a 1600$ cable that you can't differentiate from a 16$ cable in a true double-blind test. So yeah, of course you're going to want to brag that it is better, otherwise you're admitting that you just threw money out the window... This was true in the 70s, it is still true today. Snake oil, people, snake oil.

Also, I don't know any other review sites worth its salt that has such a retarded layout/ads situation. Think about it, if the guy wasn't spending so much on useless gear, would he need to throw so much advertisement at his readers? Half the review is "So I spent X on other unrelated gear, look at me, I'm so cool!" and the other half is subjective crap.

Not XS worthy by any stretch of the imagination.

[Andrew LB]

in my book, as soon as you start showing bias for cabling (with no link whatsoever with real life, physics and established power theory... I'm an engineer so you have to have some kind of numbers/graphs to convince me), you showed that you're a clueless fool and the review becomes pointless. Might as well say that painting the box red makes it sound better...

There is some truth to quality cables equating to quality sound, but obviously not to the tune of $1600.

http://gizmodo.com/5210904/giz-expla...t-all-the-same
http://www.head-fi.org/t/564978/13-c...dded-1-03-2012
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/humrejection.htm
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/whatwiredoes.htm
http://outlawaudio.com/products/cab_about.html

[AliG]

in my book, as soon as you start showing bias for cabling (with no link whatsoever with real life, physics and established power theory... I'm an engineer so you have to have some kind of numbers/graphs to convince me), you showed that you're a clueless fool and the review becomes pointless. Might as well say that painting the box red makes it sound better...

To elaborate, those expensive cables offer no appreciable benefit. The only difference is that you're left with a 1600$ cable that you can't differentiate from a 16$ cable in a true double-blind test. So yeah, of course you're going to want to brag that it is better, otherwise you're admitting that you just threw money out the window... This was true in the 70s, it is still true today. Snake oil, people, snake oil.

Also, I don't know any other review sites worth its salt that has such a retarded layout/ads situation. Think about it, if the guy wasn't spending so much on useless gear, would he need to throw so much advertisement at his readers? Half the review is "So I spent X on other unrelated gear, look at me, I'm so cool!" and the other half is subjective crap.

Not XS worthy by any stretch of the imagination.

What kind of engineer though? I'm bio-electrical (hybrid concentration at Michigan that combines biomedical and electrical) and I can easily prove to you how conductance is related to power and noise

[SabreWulf69]

Subjectively speaking no one won the competition to be able to provide a decent scientific explanation in a double blind test to explain the audible difference(s) between uber expensive cables and cheap ones. I think the guy was offering up to the tune of $1 Million to prove such differences.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Does this thing support Dolby headphone?