Bmac
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2009
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I noticed that Stereophile has finally put their review and measurements for the STX and ST online. It was on the cover of the December or January issue, making it the cheapest product ever to appear on their cover.
Stereophile: ASUS Xonar Essence ST/STX soundcards
There are a few technical errors (like the number of op-amps in the output stage). The review doesn't go into extreme detail about the sound quality, but I think it's pretty accurate. He didn't swap any op-amps so the review is based on the stock op-amps only.
He compared the cards to an Ayre QB-9 and a Squeezebox and judged it to be between the two which agrees with my experience with my Squeezeboxes and more expensive DAC's.
There are some interesting things to note in the measurements. The ST seemed to measure quite a bit worse than the STX, but they were in 2 different computers (the ST in an older XP environment, the STX in a new Vista box) so it isn't clear if those differences can be attributed to the cards themselves, the specific computers they were in or a combination of both.
Still, many here have noted that the ST sounds better, but the reviewer didn't notice any such disparity and the ST measured worse in this instance. Maybe it comes down to the environment, where either card in a better environment with better hardware around it will outperform the other in a worse environment.
The reviewer made no note of the ST having lower jitter than the STX, and he did measure both, so perhaps the extra clock in the ST isn't making as much of a difference as people think if any at all.
The headphone amp measured pretty well, but had quite a bit higher THD on the highest gain setting compared to the lowest setting. I'm not sure if the distortion is audible, but many people here seem to prefer the highest gain setting, which seems like the exact opposite of what should be the case based on the measurements. I never noticed a difference in sound quality between the different gain settings, so always used the low or middle setting with my K701's because it was the most comfortable.
Stereophile: ASUS Xonar Essence ST/STX soundcards
There are a few technical errors (like the number of op-amps in the output stage). The review doesn't go into extreme detail about the sound quality, but I think it's pretty accurate. He didn't swap any op-amps so the review is based on the stock op-amps only.
He compared the cards to an Ayre QB-9 and a Squeezebox and judged it to be between the two which agrees with my experience with my Squeezeboxes and more expensive DAC's.
There are some interesting things to note in the measurements. The ST seemed to measure quite a bit worse than the STX, but they were in 2 different computers (the ST in an older XP environment, the STX in a new Vista box) so it isn't clear if those differences can be attributed to the cards themselves, the specific computers they were in or a combination of both.
Still, many here have noted that the ST sounds better, but the reviewer didn't notice any such disparity and the ST measured worse in this instance. Maybe it comes down to the environment, where either card in a better environment with better hardware around it will outperform the other in a worse environment.
The reviewer made no note of the ST having lower jitter than the STX, and he did measure both, so perhaps the extra clock in the ST isn't making as much of a difference as people think if any at all.
The headphone amp measured pretty well, but had quite a bit higher THD on the highest gain setting compared to the lowest setting. I'm not sure if the distortion is audible, but many people here seem to prefer the highest gain setting, which seems like the exact opposite of what should be the case based on the measurements. I never noticed a difference in sound quality between the different gain settings, so always used the low or middle setting with my K701's because it was the most comfortable.
? Or is my analysis wrong on current limitation? 