[bambadoo]

Been using it like this for a long time. A really good transport. As a "soundcard". Not very good. 

 

[macrog]

I resell Audio-gd in New Zealand so I wont comment on the Digital Interface.
 
I have found the Asus Essence ST sound card to be significantly superior to the STX even when just used as a coaxial digital source. The ST was pretty much on a par with the Musiland Monitor 02us as a coaxial digital source for my dacs.
 
The difference between coaxial digital output sources is much bigger than I can understand.
 
The imaging is the biggest improvement on the ST over the STX.
 
Regards
 
Macrog

 

[pompon]

Quote:

Well, basically because the Xonar Essence can eventually serve other purposes, like a nice headphone source, or a third rig (I have a 2nd one).
But if the Hiface is clearly superior, at 150$, it is a no-brainer.
 
---------
 
No WAY!
 
I had a Hiface and sold that crap. Essence as digital transport is near from the top I had occasion to hear (audiophilleo usb to spdif is a bit better depending of the taste).
It's my second best transport.

 

 

[dmac03]

does anyone know how the jitter from the digital coax of the stx compares to some of the more popular usb to s/pdif converters?

 

[macrog]

Compared to the Musiland 02US and HiFace the STX digital coaxial output is poor. The ST is on a par with both. I guess the reclocking chip of the ST must work.
 
Regards
 
Macrog

 

[ZorgDK]

I'm using the coax out on the Essence ST with the Anedio D1 DAC and I can't really hear a difference between that and using the usb 3 port on my motherboard when listening to 16/44.1 material. I tested it today and I was able to quickly switch between usb and coax, it sounded the same to me with the music I played.
 
I need to use coax though to get 24/192 and I think I'll keep the ST as transport just because it's better in theory I haven't tried the motherboard coax out to compare with. 
 
One of the selling points of the D1 DAC is that it copes well with jitter. Maybe the transport has a bigger influence with other DACs, I don't know.
 
 
 
 

 

[jenneth]

I've been using the coax out on the Essence ST for about six months now, it's about the same as the ESI Juli@ (and both are better than my onboard coax out).

 

[shadowlord]

I'm using the ST as a transport since about 2 month now.
 
what i noticed is, that when i shuffle trough my library with Foobar ( WASAPI, buffer: 1000ms, full file buffer set to 150MB) sometimes when onr song ends i get digital noise until the next track starts.
 
It's a very annoying sound and it drowns out the last second of the song.
 
can anybody help here?