Asus Essence One Headphone Amp/DAC (CeBIT 2011) - Page 7

11 OPAs? Interesting...

Interesting that its SNR is actually lower than the Essence STX, at least if that's the DAC alone. I'd like to see the other measurements. It would be nice if ASUS breaks the usual audiophool mold and publishes extensive ones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Head Injury 

Interesting that its SNR is actually lower than the Essence STX, at least if that's the DAC alone. I'd like to see the other measurements. It would be nice if ASUS breaks the usual audiophool mold and publishes extensive ones.

DAC is a lower qualty unit than in the ST/STX. This should not be a problem though in most cases. It should still have pretty much the same sound signature. The DAC offers compatability with 32 bit audio but does not really take advantage of this to produce better specs or sound than 24 bit sound. To be honest There are no chips yet that exeed the limits of 24 bit audio. Not even the 32 bit chips that have the best specs out there which are the ESS Sabre chips. Having the best specs do not garrantee best sound however.

After all, its not the DAC chip thats the most important, but the analog stage right after it.

so you can exchange the opamps of that thing by yourself?

More information relating to price in this forums post, assuming the price mentioned is UK sterling.  Not an "official" release price, and the company concerned has not commented on whether they will stock the product.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18305799 

A guy in Taiwan bought it for 18,000 taiwan dollars, which is like 620USD

How did he get it =o

Who would want to put 10 signal degrading. distortion adding opamps in between the dac and my ears.  That just sounds silly, even if the end result  is not grating to the ears.

Maybe they went like iBasso with socketed L/R, ground, virtual ground, buffers, and I/V.

I'll rip this thing apart as soon as I get it and try to fit some HDAMs in there, I highly doubt that they installed 11 OPAs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheGomdoRi 

More information perhaps: http://www.asus.com/News/uKyKEy072stXi6VP/

This is ridiculous!

Are these people audio enginers or serial ata developers?

HDAMs?  =\

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bojamijams 

1) Nope

 

2) Why would you want a digital out? No DAC that I know of has one. You need to FEED this thing with a digital input so why should it pass that signal out .. and to what? another dac? pointless
 

 

Well, not really. I use an Essence ST + H6 in my HTPC build...

But sometimes I want to switch to digital-out for my AVR/Separates.

If this had digital-out & multi-ch analog-out, I'd mount it inside my HTPC.*

T'would be a nice replacement for my Essence ST + H6, no more PCI slots used.

I hope they release a revised Essence ST/X that integrates the H6, & maybe a multi-ch amp.

The latter's not a big deal, as I generally prefer using separate amp/s.

*case is Silverstone CW02B

Guys, 

I did some search and found this, it's an open box preview and with board images

http://my-hiend.com/vbb/showthread.php?p=147355