[Optimus Praim]

Quote:

I completely agree.  People who laugh at Asus Xonar products are simply ignorant, especially those who use DYI products or producs made by very small audio companies, producs that are often made by hand or in poor conditions.
Also, as you said, Asus is a company that is very highly respected in the world of PC hardware,  they build graphics cards and motherboards for gods sake,  stuff that is technically LIGHT YEARS ahead of something as simple as a DAC or a headphones amplifier, so i'm pretty sure they know what they're doing, and I trust them more than some small audio companies with questionable expertise who put price tags on their products that are 5-6 times higher than the product itself deserves.
 
 
I have an Asus Xonar D2X sound card, I payed 200 dollars for it, and i can say with full responsibility that it wipes the floor with any external DAC or DAC/amp combo in the price range that i've heard.  Compared with even the best DAC's in that price range (something like amps/dac's from nufoce , ibasso, fiio, audinst....), there simply is no contest in terms of sounds quality, features, flexibility, build quality and bang for the buck.    And the D2X is not even the top of the range card, and is not even in the audiophile category among asus audio products.
 
I'm definitely buying the essence one and replacing my D2x, i wanted an external DAC that would offer better SQ than D2X for a long time.
 
 

 
 
+100...
I couldn't agree more to everything you wrote...
I'll keep an eye on the DAC to see how it compares to other ones at his price range..
 
Here is a recent review.
http://soundnews.ro/2011/09/09/asus-xonar-essence-one-review-english-version/

 

[oqvist]

Asus know marketing much better then the small homebrew companies. More importantly they have much more funds for PR. Also it´s not like if you win head-fi you win the world . This is not the market Asus really want to win it´s the mass consumer market. Gamers that realize they want good audio for example will have an easier time see oh well Asus is nice rather then this company I have never heard of and there is never any adds for.
 
Would be fun to hear one the Asus Essence ST was quite okay as a DAC. Though I am all set on crappy audiophile gear

 

[Willakan]

@MikeAJ
I suppose it isn't that expensive compared with other fields, but it still seems to be pricey enough for some very prominent designers/companies, whose products feature prominently on here, to not bother.

 

[derbigpr]

Quote:

Asus know marketing much better then the small homebrew companies. More importantly they have much more funds for PR. Also it´s not like if you win head-fi you win the world . This is not the market Asus really want to win it´s the mass consumer market. Gamers that realize they want good audio for example will have an easier time see oh well Asus is nice rather then this company I have never heard of and there is never any adds for.
 
Would be fun to hear one the Asus Essence ST was quite okay as a DAC. Though I am all set on crappy audiophile gear

 
 
What marketing?  Asus marketing consists of FACTS and TECHNICAL DATA,  not fancy terms which are meant to confuse amateurs or make naive people believe that you're buying some out-of-this-world product. Asus (and other big brands) back up what they say with their products. Technical data on the box is REAL technical data,  not made up.
 
To be honest, i have yet to buy gear made by little audio companies that wont disappoint me, because i NEVER get what i pay for.  For example.... recently i bought a pro-ject headbox SEII amplifier. I paid twice as much for it as i did for my Asus D2X sound card.   The built in amp in the sound card sounds BETTER and has EQUAL POWER as the stand-alone amp, even though on paper, pro-ject amp should have at least 3 times the power,  it still cant run high ohm headphones properly.  Same goes for Fiio E9.  Same goes for Fiio E7, which costs as much as a sound card, and is inferior in every single way. It sounds worse, it has a weaker amp, and most importantly, you get no support from the manufacturer, while from Asus and similar brands you constantly get driver updates and user support.  Same goes for Nuforce UDAC2, which is considered very good for its price, but again, it is 2 or 3 times overpriced for what if offers.  And the higher we go in price range, differences in sound quality get lower, and products become more and more overpriced.
 
You say Asus Essence ST is "okay" as a DAC.  Now, if you compare it to any stand-alone DAC that costs the same, it will blow any of them out of the water, literally, in every single measurable or subjective way.  Plus, with essense ST you get a pretty powerful amp,  excellent drivers, user interface and loads of features.
 
What I'm trying to say is that "audiophiles" have been brainwashed so to say, and as soon as they see a brand name of some sorts, they automatically assume its going to be mass-produced crap. When they see some DYI product made by some guy in his basement and then sold for 1000$ , they assume its going to pure awesomeness.
 
The fact is, most audio gear is GREATLY overpriced. I dont think that there are any other products in the world of electronics that are quite as overpriced as audio gear. I mean... headphone amps that costs a couple of thousands of dollars... come on...

 

[Willakan]

I agree with some of what you said, but why attack Fiio? Their products generally do perform well and are reasonably priced.

 

[leeperry]

The fact is, most audio gear is GREATLY overpriced. I dont think that there are any other products in the world of electronics that are quite as overpriced as audio gear. I mean... headphone amps that costs a couple of thousands of dollars... come on...

 
Well, my friend...I already raised this question publicly here on head-fi: http://www.head-fi.org/t/472214/are-most-headamps-overpriced-cmoy-s
 
Facts are that:
-it's a nice market, and ppl gotta make a living
-they more or less make a 400% markup on the gear they sell, then the resellers make another 100% markup...so it sells for $1K, they sell it for $500 to the reseller and it costs them $125 to make. Is that overpriced? Who's gonna do the R&D and assembly/soldering then? go ahead, DIY your own amp from scratch
-RMA costs, and so do local taxes etc etc
-the case usually costs as much as what's in it
 
Overpriced compared to what exactly? I think you got my point ^^
 
Asus will sell far less of that Essence One than their latest mobos for sure. I personally think they went over the top w/ the 11 opamps design, but you never know! At least they went as "discrete" as can get: 2 dual opamps for each DAC chip polarity, so that's already 4 dual opamps just to filter the dual mono DAC output...then you got opamps used for line-out level amplification, headphones amplification, etc etc. The only thing that's for sure is that replacing its cheapo 5532/4562 by audiophile chips surely's gonna take a lot of soldering and additional expenses(please, no opamp trolling).
 
A friend of mine who's a major Asus fanboy is gonna buy it as soon as it hits Western Europe anyway, and I'm quite sure that he'll let me roll opamps in it like there's no tomorrow

 

[mikeaj]

Asus know marketing much better then the small homebrew companies. More importantly they have much more funds for PR. Also it´s not like if you win head-fi you win the world . This is not the market Asus really want to win it´s the mass consumer market. Gamers that realize they want good audio for example will have an easier time see oh well Asus is nice rather then this company I have never heard of and there is never any adds for.
 
Would be fun to hear one the Asus Essence ST was quite okay as a DAC. Though I am all set on crappy audiophile gear

Hm yes, I was talking about marketing towards the audiophile market, which I'm not entirely sure Asus is that interested in anyway, aside from this new Essence One and possibly the ST/STX. Certainly Asus sells a much higher volume of product from the traditional consumer markets.

@MikeAJ
I suppose it isn't that expensive compared with other fields, but it still seems to be pricey enough for some very prominent designers/companies, whose products feature prominently on here, to not bother.

I disagree. Even without the "proper" equipment like an AP, you can still get some meaningful data. I mean, about $500 will buy you a reasonable sound card and a cheap oscilloscope. You could run all sorts of tests via line out and line in and then perform some spectral analysis of the raw data yourself (or just use other software). You can check common abnormalities on power up or power down, approximately determine max output power before clipping into various loads, check output impedance, and so on. There's always RMAA, for what (little) that's worth. With gear like that, you can't check everything, but you could learn something about a lot of audio products out there.

I think in most cases it's more about a mindset or the design-by-ear (only) philosophy, than a lack of resources.

I agree with some of what you said, but why attack Fiio? Their products generally do perform well and are reasonably priced.

There's not much wrong with FiiO IMHO, but their prices in some segments aren't comparable with what you get from the likes of Asus, with the resources they have. It's not like any of the traditional PC sound card companies have a $20 portable amp or something like that though. e.g. If you don't need the transportability of the E7/E9, one of the Essence ST/STX probably has just as good an amp, if not better (IIRC both have TPA6130 outputs with around ~10 ohm output impedance to protect the chip), and has a better DAC and also a line in and other features...for around the same price.

I wonder if there's a Xonar U3 sitting on a test bench somewhere in the world...

 

[Willakan]

 
Quote:

I disagree. Even without the "proper" equipment like an AP, you can still get some meaningful data. I mean, about $500 will buy you a reasonable sound card and a cheap oscilloscope. You could run all sorts of tests via line out and line in and then perform some spectral analysis of the raw data yourself (or just use other software). You can check common abnormalities on power up or power down, approximately determine max output power before clipping into various loads, check output impedance, and so on. There's always RMAA, for what (little) that's worth. With gear like that, you can't check everything, but you could learn something about a lot of audio products out there.

I think in most cases it's more about a mindset or the design-by-ear (only) philosophy, than a lack of resources.

Yes, you can verify that your product actually works properly. You could even get some reasonable crosstalk/distortion/frequency response measurements, but if you're aiming for true high fidelity gear (which at the price points these people are flogging their stuff they certainly should be) you simply cannot verify things like ultra-low THD with a sound card.
As to the "design by ear philosophy," I'm afraid I don't think that's a feasible way of designing products. There seem to be a lot of people on Head-Fi who disagree with me and I gather they're voting with their wallets. Yay for misinformation and FUD I suppose...
 

 

[mikeaj]

 
Yes, you can verify that your product actually works properly. You could even get some reasonable crosstalk/distortion/frequency response measurements, but if you're aiming for true high fidelity gear (which at the price points these people are flogging their stuff they certainly should be) you simply cannot verify things like ultra-low THD with a sound card.
As to the "design by ear philosophy," I'm afraid I don't think that's a feasible way of designing products. There seem to be a lot of people on Head-Fi who disagree with me and I gather they're voting with their wallets. Yay for misinformation and FUD I suppose...
 

For testing the amp section loaded, it should still not be that hard. Unless the amp is ridiculous, the performance when loaded with headphones-level impedances is not going to be beyond the capability of a decent sound card to measure.

DAC section would take a lot more work and expensive instrumentation, particularly to verify the claims being made.

 

[khaos974]

I wonder why they didn't use the PCM1792, which is the top chip of the TI DAC line, after all they used it in the Essence STX which has slightly better specs by the way.

It would have made sense, at least in order to not have a confusing product line up, to design the Essence One to have better specs than the Essence STX.

 

[kn19h7]

Quote:

I wonder why they didn't use the PCM1792, which is the top chip of the TI DAC line, after all they used it in the Essence STX which has slightly better specs by the way.

It would have made sense, at least in order to not have a confusing product line up, to design the Essence One to have better specs than the Essence STX.

 
They're using dual mono-dac(pcm1795) design instead of single stereo dac..

 

[khaos974]

 
They're using dual mono-dac(pcm1795) design instead of single stereo dac..

Purely on spec, a single PCM1792 performs better than 2 PCM1795, and if they wanted to go all out, dual PCM 1792 works too.

 

[kn19h7]

Quote:

Purely on spec, a single PCM1792 performs better than 2 PCM1795, and if they wanted to go all out, dual PCM 1792 works too.

 
my bad ==
just went by the datasheets and realized pcm1795 is also a stereo dac, and is compatible with pcm1792a in design. now it seems the only advantage is that it support up to 32bit resolution..

 

[audionewbieyao]

So they are using stereo dacs for single channel use?
Will it make the dac perform better?

 

[Modo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
The only thing that's for sure is that replacing its cheapo 5532/4562 by audiophile chips surely's gonna take a lot of soldering and additional expenses(please, no opamp trolling).

 
You're doing fine on the trolling part, mate. Different chips need to work with the specific layout, not just have better specs on paper. But it's not like Asus engineers have access to high-end testing gear to check that, right?