Last year at COMPUTEX, I came across a product at the ASUS booth known as the “Stereo X“. My interest in this product led to an enthusiastic conversation with one of the project team members about how excited they were to have a chance to make things right for those of us interested only in using headphones with their systems.
Although he wasn’t sure if it would even make it to market, I assured him that all we were looking for was a high quality solution that was priced right and blew us away at the first note. He seemed very motivated by my words and said he’d keep me up to date on the project.
Less than a year later, I got an email from the same team member, Ives Chiu, and he said it was ready. Today, the “Stereo X” is known as the Xonar Essence STX Headphone Amp Card and I have it in my hands. Since I know our friend Ives is a huge headphone nut, I’m expecting the world out of this card and I have a feeling his team won’t disappoint us.
What’s Up With the Lion King?
So, what’s up with the Lion King? Well, symbolism is very important in Chinese culture and the Essence STX Team chose a symbol that best represented what they were trying to accomplish. “Qing” the tiger is over 4000 years old and in Chinese Legend, represents mankind’s endless pursuit of the essence of sound. This search led to instruments that not only pay homage to the gods, but also represent the harmony between man and nature. The crystallization of this knowledge became the Chime of the Tiger or “Qing”. Deep stuff, I know.
The Essence STX team committed itself in this spirit to creating the Essence STX. They even gold plated this symbol onto the EMI shield on the card, reminding us that this is truly something special.
What’s Inside the Box?
The Essence STX team is proud of this card. It shows because even the machine tests in the audio precision report are dressed like something you’d find as a wedding program. I don’t even think a presidential inauguration gets anything this impressive. Every member of the team is also listed on the last page including our friend Ives.
They even included posters so that you can show off your audio geekiness for this card. No, I’m not kidding. They are full sized jobs that you can tack to your walls and I wouldn’t be surprised if every team member had a set at home and at his/her cubicle at ASUS Taiwan HQ. If you’re still single, I recommend that you DO NOT put these up in your room.
As for accessories, it is pretty bare bones. You do get an RCA to 3.5 mm converter for hooking up to a set of powered speakers, a TOSLINK adapter and a headphone adapter to take them from 3.5mm to the standard 6.3mm size. This is rounded out by a software CD and a quick start guide in a multitude of languages.
Features and Specifications
In order to live up to this pursuit of the essence of sound, ASUS has given the Essence STX a number of features that are not found in your average run of the mill sound card. In fact, even their XONAR D2X Sound Card, which is a spectacular product by any measure, doesn’t go nearly as far as this card goes in creating audio nirvana.
For starters, this card has no 7.1 analog audio output jacks and is two channel only. In fact, they’ve done away with the puny 3.5mm audio jacks and have opted for two 6.3mm full sized audio jacks; one acting as a headphone jack and the other is a MIC In/Line In jack used for things like instruments and high end mics. The headphone jack, which is the heart of this card is driven by a high-quality TI TPA6120A2 headphone amp. Audio geeks will also recognize the Burr-Brown PCM 1792A Digital Analog Converter (DAC) that is onboard and is responsible for an impressive 127dB signal to noise ratio.
Analog RCA outputs are also included and feature an ultra-clean 124dB SNR (signal to noise ratio) and ultra low distortion (0.0004%), which is great for hooking the card up to a quality outboard power amplifier or even a tube amp. This output is driven separately from the headphone jack to eliminate interference.
Rounding this out is a COAX/TOSLINK Combo digital output jack that gives you 192KHz/24bit output. This is perfect for hooking the card up to an AV receiver for surround sound decoding. However, I have a feeling that this was more of an afterthought because headphones is what this card is all about. The top of the card has connectors for front panel jacks, which I would probably skip and go direct on this one.
If you’re after even more detailed specifications, you can find them on the product home page. For the rest of you, upward and onward to the good stuff.
Underneath The Tiger…
Removing the EMI and Copper shield (a large piece I might add), which seals the RCA and Headphone outputs from noise, reveals some more interesting features about this card that are distinctly audiophile…
Because audiophiles tend to tinker with their gear, soldering in components to tune the sound to their specifications, ASUS decided to include a set of socketed OPAMPS that you can swap out if you don’t like the sound of the stock LM4562 and JRC2114D units. This also does away with the soldering for an easy swap to get the sound that you like whether it be colder or warmer like a tube.
You’ll also notice an abundant amount of these Nichicon “Fine Gold” professional audio capacitors. These are far larger than the ones seen on other sound cards and responsible for creating the deep clear bass and crystal clear high frequencies that we will be experiencing shortly.
Installation and Setup
Physical installation was a breeze and merely required locating an empty PCI-Express slot and dropping the card in. You will need to plug in a four pin MOLEX power connector to supply power to the card. Installation of the software follows and you should be greeted by a fairly uneventful and quick process of hitting the next button till the end. Once that’s done, a reboot of the system is required and you’re off to the races.
The only thing left to setup upon reboot is the impedance of your headphones through a drop down in the software once you’ve selected the two channel option. The card supports tiny earbuds to full sized audiophile cans that require a 600 ohm impedance.
I did find it strange that there were options for multichannel configurations. Hopefully a future software revision could remove them and create a decidedly more two channel audiophile tuned UI as it looked no different than the control panel for my ASUS XONAR D2 Audio Card, minus the headphone impedance drop down. As an audiophile card, I also found the different manipulated audio modes distracting, but different strokes for different folks.
Which Ones To Wear Today
I tested the ASUS Essence STX Headphone Amp Card with three sets of headphones. First up was my trusty and comfortable SONY MDR-7506’s, which are industry standard for broadcast and known for lots of fat bass on the bottom. They also produce a fairly warm sound that’s easy to listen to on most sources, though not particularly super detailed. Next, I used the recently reviewed Futuresonics Atrios buds to see how smaller headphones did with a properly driven source like this sound card.
Finally, I listened some more using a set of Ultrasone HFI-680 Headphones which have a nice wide open sound stage, good separation of instruments and plenty of sparkle in the mids and highs. They don’t have the bass that the aforementioned headphones have though but do have a natural sounding surround effect.
Music
Starting with music, I went with Norah Jone’s – Come Away With Me, which I ripped tracks at the highest quality WMA format from. From the first few seconds, I was impressed with just how much authority the bottom end was driven out on all headphones. Highs were crystal clear and mids were warm and inviting all around. They were a bit darker of course on the Atrios but the MDR-7506’s really ate that up revealing quite a bit more detail than I’ve heard from them on my other cards like the Xonar D2 and the X-Fi XtremeMusic.
The big 3D soundstage on the Ultrasones just took on a life that wasn’t there before. Norah’s raspy vocals really bloomed and I started to feel myself in the room with the band. The bottom end, typically weaker on the other cards with this headphone, became much beefier as result of the proper power supplied by the Essence STX. This resulted in me quickly rambling through my whole music collection for hours, from Linkin Park to Diana Krall to Kanye West. I haven’t enjoyed music like this (especially on a PC) in such a long time.
The MDR-7506’s really came to life on bass heavy music. With such a great bottom end authority, I was almost afraid of overextending the drivers. There is a crossover adjustment in the settings just in case you do match the card up with headphones that just can’t keep up. This came in handy with the smaller Atrios headphones.
Movies and Lower Quality Sources
Lower quality sources like streaming audio also became quite a bit more listenable due to the level of warmth injected by the Essence STX. This made the typically flat sounding streams a little more three dimensional. They weren’t great to begin with, but were made more enjoyable on all the headphones. Even movies were extremely enjoyable for a non surround sound representation, especially through the Ultrasone’s because they do have technology inside that gives you a natural surround effect. I did prefer the MDR-7506’s overall because of the extra bass for the action flicks that I love like “The Matrix” and “Saving Private Ryan”.
Gaming
In gaming, the card’s support for Direct3D and EAX 2.0 offers decent gaming performance for most titles that I played like Command & Conquer 3, UT, Portal and even a bit of MMORPG with Age of Conan. The sound was the best that I’ve heard, quality wise, but I almost felt like I was wasting it here, even though it was by no means, unenjoyable. Quite the opposite really.
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
One thing that annoys me most about PC audio is just how noisy and dirty sounding it is, especially with good headphones. The most startling thing about the ASUS Xonar Essence STX Headphone Amp Card was just how dark the background was. There was absolutely no backgound noise and I had to double check to make sure that my levels were set correctly. All I heard was silence from the Essence STX and in the harsh realm of a PC, this is a great achievement in itself.
The other part that blew me away was just how truly enjoyable the audio experience was. Typically, I get products that boast all these great specs (some not cheap), but I always get deflated when I can hardly hear the difference. The Essence STX is not one of these products and it really delivers. I applaud Ives and his team of headphone nuts for stepping up and making what they promised come true. The essence of music is what this card was designed to deliver and it delivered it with strong well driven bass notes that bloomed, warm and detailed mids and crystal highs with all my headphones. They really brought out the best in anything I threw at it.
At around $200 US, this card is definitely not for everyone. However, anyone that enjoys music, or who wants to enjoy it all over again should be hitting the stores for this. It’s truly a high performance product.
Pros
- The best music experience you’ll ever have on a set of headphones on a PC
- Extremely high quality audiophile build with swappable OPAMPS for those with a need to tweak
Cons
- Not for gamers or casual listeners
- Price may be hard to justify for some
Overall Rating: 9.5 / 10.0
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