I would highly recommend the Asus Essence One. I've had the internal STX Xonar card for quite some time but the Essence totally blows it away. I use it as a USB DAC & Headphone amp for my HD 650's & it sounds great. I really like a nice sounding acoustic guitar & the Essence/HD650 combo just...

A lot of it does sound crap but I don't think NOW do any remastering, it's just a reflection of how poorly most modern pop music is recorded.

I love the Essence One. The Headphone Amp is great, it drives my HD650's to ear splitting volume levels with no distortion. The DAC seems really good too, I'm coming from high end internal sound cards & notice quite a difference in all round quality. The ASIO driver works perfectly for bit...

I recently listened to one of the Now that's what I call music albums & was amazed by the quality of The Connells 74 - 75. The acoustic guitar sounds wonderful & the drums sound great. Really top notch engineering.   I agree that most of the tracks mentioned here all sound great. Another...

The veil is a real thing but it only occurs when the headphones are underpowered. When I use these through my ASUS essence one they sound great, like the band is in the room. When I use them with the internal sound card or anything with less amplification power the veil is very noticable.

If he gets either DAC & connects via USB I believe both support the use of an ASIO driver. This will completely bypass all the windows mixing stuff. On the Asus you get a cool little indicator saying Bit-Perfect when using the ASIO driver.

I have the Xonar Essence One paired with the HD650's & I must say I'm very happy with it. It has no problem driving the headphones & I can hear everything the way it should be even at low volumes.   I haven't tried Asus internal cards but went for the Essence one as I was fed up with EMI...