Life with a laptop doesn’t usually come without some sacrifices when it comes to performance. We give up the powerful graphics, faster hard drives, and faster processors in exchange for portability. Not to mention, laptops are typically much more difficult to upgrade than their desktop counterparts. One area that seems commonly neglected on both desktop and laptops is the audio. Now granted, onboard motherboard audio has improved by leaps and bounds over the last couple years, but still don’t match the performance of a good quality discrete audio solution. Laptops suffer even more because by design, audio components are shoe-horned into a tiny chassis.
This year, ASUS has decided that it was time to up the ante for audio. ASUS introduced two balls to the wall sound card solutions for the desktop PC known as the D2 and D2x, featuring high quality parts, an EMI shielded bolted to the PCB, and a crazy 116 db signal to noise ratio. Since ASUS also manufacturers some particularly high quality laptops, they didn’t leave those customers behind and introduced the ASUS Xonar U1, an external USB Audio Station built specifically for laptops. The Xonar U1 is also suitable for small form factor desktop systems that lack space to upgrade to a discrete PCI or PCI-E audio solution like their D2 or D2X.
Features
The ASUS Xonar U1 Audio Station features:
- Complete audio technologies from Dolby Studio
- EAX and DirectSound HW Support
- High quality headphone amplifier
- Advanced array microphone bundled
Although the Xonar U1 works for desktop systems, I feel that this device is really aimed squarely at the mobile computing crowd. The small size of the unit coupled with a built in headphone amplifier and Dolby Headphone Surround technology all scream “take me with you on the road”. With high quality audio on the road, movies as well as music should be less of a sound quality compromise while on the road. For the fashion conscious, the Xonar U1 also comes in a number of high gloss colours to match your mobile gear.
What’s in the Box?
The Xonar U1 comes with the following stuff in the box…
- ASUS U1 Xonar USB Audio Station (White, as tested)
- Advanced Array Microphone
- Optical/SPDIF adapter
- Manual and Software CD
- Demo DVD Disc
In order to educate people on what they are missing out on, ASUS included a demo DVD disc with a load of demos to dazzle you with the increased audio quality. The manual was really well laid out and is printed in a number of languages. ASUS normally does a good job with their manuals, and this one was no exception.
The optical/SPDIF adapter turns the headphone jack into a receptacle for an optical cable, allowing you to hook the Xonar U1 into your home theatre receive to extract a digital audio signal.
Finally, an array mic is also included to help you take advantage of some of the more colorful entertainment features of the Xonar U1. Karaoke anyone?
First Impressions
Don’t let the size of the Xonar U1 fool you. It may be small, but there’s enough weight there to keep it from blowing off the desk. This is due to the Xonar U1’s use of metal in its construction. Both the top piece, which acts as a volume dial when you turn it, and mute button when you push it down, and the bottom piece are constructed of metal. A rubber base keeps the device from sliding around while you’re bopping away to your tunes. I really liked the inline velcro tie that they attached to the short USB cable, making it easy to bundle up and stow in a laptop bag. I also discovered that if you hit it with a spoon, it makes one heckuva loud “ring”. This could be good for getting the attention of the waittress to come warm up that coffee cup.
The Xonar U1 only has two connections: microphone and headphone. As mentioned earlier, the headphone jack doubles as an optical output when used with the included adapter. The microphone jack is for use with the included advanced array mic, but you can use pretty much any high quality microphone with it. The included array mic does have some great tricks like noise cancellation and the ability to be placed between two speakers without being affected by the background noise.
Software and Setup
Installing the Xonar U1 pretty much only involves plugging in the USB cable and away you go. The LED on top of the device will glow solid blue once it is ready to go. The included software only supports Windows XP and Vista in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavours so if you want to take advantage of the additional features, you’re out of luck if you’re a Mac user. However, even without the software installed, the device works just fine as an external, two channel, USB audio device using generic drivers, so in a pinch, you can plug it in anywhere.
The software and drivers install easily and once finished, you’ll be greeted with lots of easy to use customizable features that are well laid out and easy to access. Even if you don’t like fluffy software, I recommend giving it a chance and playing around with it. It also enables all the additional cool support for the whole suite of Dolby features as well as EAX and DirectSound.
Hitting the menu button on the control panel flips up to reveal even more features to monkey around with. You’ll find different sound effects to mess with including a KARAOKE mode if you get lonely on the road and want to lock yourself in the room with a six pack. It does do a pretty good job removing Britney from her music.
Performance
In order to test out the Xonar U1, we kept it simple. We took our ASUS U1F laptop out on the road with the Xonar U1 and a set of SONY Professional MDR-7506 Headphones. The choice of the SONY MDR-7506 headphones isn’t a mistake. We know that they are as big as the laptop, but they are industry standard studio monitoring headphones and we’ll need them to discern any difference in sound quality between the Xonar U1 and the onboard audio. Not to mention, I love them to death. Material ranged from MP3’s and WMA files to movies from the ole DVD collection. We also robbed the car for CD’s.
Music: I listened to a bunch of music, from CD’s, to MP3’s and used both the “Hi-Fi” setting and the “Music” setting in the control panel in addition to nothing at all. Although “Hi-FI” and “Music” settings are both user adjustable, I preferred to just rock out naked. I’m not a fan of processing, however, I did run into people that listened to my setup with the Xonar U1 and really liked what the settings did to the music so to each his/her own. It’s nice that ASUS gives you a choice. Compared to what the onboard audio offered, the Xonar U1 showed you everything you were missing without the funny background noise from adjacent components.
Movies: Where the processing didn’t bother me so much was in movies. From “The 300” to “The Matrix”, the Dolby Headphone Surround was really enjoyable and did a good job of giving you that virtual 5.1 surround sound in your head effect. The the other settings, you can adjust the Dolby Headphone Surround to suit your tastes, and my taste was somewhere in the middle. Of course, you can always reset everything to factory settings if you end up turning it into something muddy and unlistenable, and start again. It’s not true 5.1 surround, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.
Overall, what you will notice most about running the Xonar U1 vs the onboard audio is the fact that the audio is just a lot cleaner and clearer. It will also sound a lot less flat and you will hear the bass that wasn’t there before start to bloom from the music, even without any processing. Most of these things mirror what you would hear when plugging in a modest headphone amplifier, which is part of the U1’s secret recipe. With 47mW x 2 @ 32 ohms and 88mW x 2 @ 16 ohms, it puts out a bit more juice than most headphone jacks, allowing you to drive higher end headphones that need more of a push. Even more effiicent headphones like the SONY MDR-7506’s really enjoy having more clean power. Compared to the stock audio of my ASUS U1F laptop, the Xonar U1 really brings out the audio beast within. As far as taking the load off the CPU, I did observe 1 – 2% less load when playing the same tracks or movie clips, which isn’t a huge deal.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
With high end graphics being the center of attention, even in the mobile computing space, audio seems to have taken a backseat. I’m pleased to see ASUS taking steps to bring up the level of audio quality with their new line of products. No longer will people have to settle for audio that is simply “Good Enough”. The Xonar U1 brings back clarity and presence to audio on laptops, a place where it seems like sound is usually the last thing on the priority list.
The Xonar U1 is super easy to setup and provides quite a bit of customization depending on how dressed (or naked) you want your audio to sound. It can take flat sounding MP3’s and beef them up, or just give you really clean output with a bit more sparkle. This is thanks to the fact that your audio components are no longer sandwhiched inside a tiny laptop chassis and there’s some extra power thanks to the built in headphone amplifier. The small size and quality build makes it practical to take with you wherever you take your laptop.
The nitpicks are few, like the volume knob that never ends, but I would love to see if ASUS could reduce the size even further, maybe flattening it to allow it to fit even more easily into a laptop bag, but please don’t take away that nice weight. The Xonar U1 has become one of the few extra items that I pack with me whenever I’m away from home and if you love your music and movies on the road, you’ll want one of these. Did I mention the Karaoke function is a hoot?
Pros
- Easy to setup
- High quality build
- Brings back that loving feeling to your tunes
- Dolby Headphone Surround makes movies on the road more enjoyable
- Karaoke anyone?
Cons
- The endless volume knob makes it difficult to figure out “Where” the volume level is.
Overall Rating: 9.0 / 10.0
