Xonar Essence ST Sneak Peek - Page 18

if you're looking for a crazily analytical sound, most definitely.

the SQ is so good that many recordings that sounded fine on the STX just lack now on the ST...it's put the bar one notch further

the stereo image is just way better, far less crossfeed/distortion...I read that some ppl were disturbed by the LME49720 level of details, that's exactly what I'm experiencing right now....there's FAR too many details for my little earthling ears, it'll take some time to get used to I guess

PS: the ST is less than US $10 more expensive than the STX.

is that a new hardware component of the ST? or is it completely software based?
may be possible to just flash the STx's bios and have it be recognized as a ST card to get the ST driver support

$10
i wonder if they will drop the prices of the STx or just phase it out.. either way for $210 USD, its unbeatable

well, one of my test discs is the remastered(from the original master tapes) "Enter The Dragon" OST...god---- the chinese percs in track #6 are

Amazon.com: Enter the Dragon: Lalo Schifrin: Music

and the funk/jazz tracks also sound mind blowing...my upgraditis is at peace for now, until Asus does it again

This is confusing to read.. you're saying the SQ is so good, that it 'lacks' compared to STX?

And crossfeed and distortion are nowhere near the same thing, yet you write it as if they're synonymous?

I've read somewhere that PCI is actually better compare to PCI Express, when dealing with jitter. PCI Express wasn't really design with that in mind but bandwdith throughput. Anyone can confirmed this ?

Correct me if I am wrong, Jitter refers to the drift in actual clock compare to reference clock. What you actually hear as a result of jitter is called phase distortion. Apparently (topic of debate) our ears are very sensitive to phase distortion. It is said that our ears can detect in order of microsecond in term of phase distortion. So that means our ears can detect phase distortion upto 1 MHz signal. That also means you need around 2 MHz sampling for digital audio not because we can hear ultrasonic frequency, but because we can detect phase distortion in signal less than that.

Is that also the reason why SACD sample the audio at 2+ MHz using DSD instead of standard PCM ? Their goal is being to avoid phase distortion ?

Is there anyway of measuring jitter to compare ST and STX ?

The thing is PCI-E can help if you have more PCI-E's then PCI slots. and or can place cards in PCI-E slots but not in your pci slots etc. alot of boards have pci-e1x cards behind the video card that you can use.

I could use my PCI slot as It would be in my way whenever i go sli.

Has anyone tried clocking another card (particularly the STX) from the ST's low jitter clock source? If the clock is making the difference, then slaving from the ST's clock ought to clean up the sound of other cards.

well, the STX has a PCI-E>PCI bridge, it's not going to help w/ latency(and jitter?)
there's a tight link between both, the more latency the higher the jitter.
it's much more resolving.
many recordings sounded OK on the STX, but *now* w/ the much more accurate stereo image sometimes you can hear slight glitches(the work of crappy op-amps in the mixers like the JRC5532?)

it's been said that most recordings have gone through hundreds of 5532(mixers, preamps, etc etc), Gregorio has told us many times that ppl in studios couldn't care less about audiophile grade components....and you can hear that!

the improved clocking drastically decreases crossfeed and distortion, the sound is not "held" back...it's hard to put words on it. read the Asus fluff, they're right! the jitter improvement is VERY audible

basically, the audio is not constantly cycling in the 2 channels, it stays L and R solid, not LRLRLRLRLRLRLRLR..if that makes any sense