Music as it's meant to be

Asus Xonar Essence One is a USB digital-to-analogue (DAC) converter for audiophiles who are very serious about music quality.

Asus says its Xonar Essence One is the world’s first USBD DAC converter with 8x symmetrical up-sampling. The function can restore the quality of compressed digital audio files to the original hi-fi quality by up-sampling the signal to be as high as 384 kHz, compared to 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz of sampling used in most compressed digital files.

With 8x symmetrical up-sampling, the Essence One can reproduce faithful details of your music collection by up-sampling 44.1/88.2 /176.4kHz input to 352.8kHz and 48/96/192kHz input to 384kHz in a symmetrical manner. The Essence One also increases data volume by up-sampling the bit-rate to 32-bit corresponding to the original content.

Moreover, Xonar Essence One has extremely high SNR (signal to noise ratio) of 120dB compared to 110 dB of most other USB DACs. So, the Xonar Essence One can provide audiophiles sounds with clarity and every detail while significantly reducing noise level.

You can enjoy music up-sampled and converted by Xonar Essence One by either using a pair of headphones or by connecting its analogue audio outputs to an active speaker system or your home audio system.

To use with your premium Hi-Fi headphones, the Xonar Essence One integrates an audiophile-class headphone AMP circuit which can powers up all Hi-Fi headphones and grants top performance even when the headphones have impedance up to 600 ohms. The built-in headphone amplifier offers extra dynamics, sound details and low distortion.

The Xonar Essence One is fitted with two dedicated volume controls: one for the headphones and another for the speakers, so you can set the headphone and speaker volume level separately.

And if you are an audiophile with high-end or professional amplifier with balanced XLR inputs, you should be happy that the Xonar Essence One also features them.

The XLR output is a higher quality output that is useful for eliminating unwanted noises and interference. Since a balanced line contains two signal carrying conductors of equal magnitude but opposite polarity, noises induced along the cable path cancel each other out when they reach the destination load.

Since the Xonar Essence One is a USB DAC converter, it has no capability to play music files on its own. You need to connect it your desktop or notebook computer’s USB port and use Windows Media Player or other music player to play your files.

Before you can play files from the computer to the Xonar Essence One, you must first install its driver. The driver will provide an option for your computer to use USB connection to the Xonar Essence Once as its sound system, replacing the current soundcard.

Apart from using it as a USB DAC converter, you can connect it to other hardware players, like a Blu-ray disc player or a HD hard disk-based player. The Xonar Essence One has coaxial and Toslink optical inputs for connecting to such players. The digital inputs accept data formats at sample rates up to 192 kHz.

The front panel of the Xonar Essence One has indicators that show the sampling rates of the current input signals, ranging from 44.1 kHz to 192 kHz and bit-perfect sampling. To achieve bit-perfect sampling, you must install Xonar Essence One’s ASIO 2.2 driver, which will work with Windows Media Player to re-encode music signal as it was encoded on a music CD.

I tested the Xonar Essence One with my premium Sony EX-1000 in-ear headphones. I was impressed in the music quality – very clear with good bass and a lot of details. When I played the Eagles’ “Second Night Unplugged”, all the details of the instruments could be heard, in contrast with the vocals.

I also tested the Essence One by connecting it to my Samsung BD-C6500 Blu-ray player’s optical output and connecting the DAC’s unbalanced RCA output (line-out) to my Denon AVR 1611’s RCA input. I played music CDs on the C6500 for the Xonar Essence One to convert and send the audio signal to the AVR 1611 and was impressed in the music clarity with good bass sounds and details.

Asus Xonar Essence One retails for Bt13,900.

        

Key specs

_ Output Signal-to-Noise Ratio: 120 dB

_ Output THD+N at 1kHz: 0.000316 per cent (-110 dB)

_ Frequency Response: 10 Hz to 48 KHz

_ Audio Processor: C-Media CM6631 High-Definition Sound Processor

_ D-A Converter for Analog Inputs: TI PCM1795

_ Analog Playback Sample Rate and Resolution: 44.1K/48K/88.2K/96K/176.4K/192KHz @ 16bit/24bit

_ S/PDIF Digital Input: 44.1K/48K/96K/192KHz @ 16bit/24bit

_ Upsampling capability: Up to 352.8 kHz (44.1K 88.2K 176.4KkHz input) or 384 kHz (48K/96K/192KkHz input), 32bit 

_ I/O Ports: Analog Output Jack: 2 x 3.5mm RCA jack, 1 x 6.3mm RCA jack, 2 x Balanced Output (XLR), 2 x Digital S/PDIF Input : 1 x Coaxial, 1 x Toslink, 1 x USB Input

_ Dimensions: 261.33 x 230 x 60.65 mm ( L x W x H )