Xonar Essence ST – World’s first Precision Clock Tuning for Revolutionary PC Hi-Fi audio
$ 195.99
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ASUS Xonar Essence ST 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Audio Card
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3 thoughts on “ASUS Xonar Essence ST 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Audio Card”
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Asus Xonar essence ST sounds better than STX,
I am writing this review to let you know that this Asus Xonar Essence ST audio card sounds better than another version STX which is designed for PCIE. I purchased two versions and auditioned them carefully. Both sound far superior to Creative Elite Pro, Fatal1ty professional and HT Omega Claro Plus that I have listened before. But vocals of STX sound nasal and rugh compared to ST. ST sounds more natural and refined with much deeper and more realistic bass sound reproduction. The Stereophile magazine reviewer said ST and STX appear to be identical, but they “indeed” sound different. They are not merely designed for different interfaces. No wonder ST is priced higher. I decided to keep ST and return STX for refund.
My speaker system is Creative GigaWorks T3. It sounds excellent with ST and STX. Today I will receive Razer Mako. Can’t wait to see how it will play with ST.
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|Xonar Essence ST=Sublimely Beautiful Sound, Simplicity Itself…Fantastic Stuff!,
Gosh Dang It, I just love this sound card, and coming from Asus you just had to know it would be this good, wouldn’t you just have guessed that? Well I didn’t guess that at first, and I struggled with setup and the Xonar Audio Center Control Panel for about 5 minutes…and then it hit me! “Check the box for speakers” and see what happens, I told myself…and BAM! WOWZA BABY!
The Xonar Essence ST PCI Sound Card ROCKS OUT like nothing I’ve ever heard in a computer before…I mean as my title suggests, this is SUBLIME, Beautiful Sound and Simplicity Itself for setup, control panel choices are clear and clean as daylight in the Spring at Malibu Beach…in short, the Xonar Essence ST is so much better than anything from Creative, or any other manufacturer for that matter, that it’s hardly worth bothering to “compare”…and I’m not going to do that, I’m just going to tell you how fantastic this system is, from setup to enjoyment of the finest headphone experience possible, to TosLink-equipped digital speakers and speaker systems…it’s all there for you to have with Xonar Essence ST PCI Sound Card, and the experience will change the way you think about computer sound, Wavey Davey guarantees that fact!
One thing you’ve got to do before installing the wonderful product here is UNINSTALL any and all drivers for sound from other products, and if you have had a Creative product in the mix, you have a BIG ASSIGNMENT ahead of you! Hell’s Bells, I spent the better part of an hour uninstalling all the Creative crapola and junk, all the drivers, conflicting and not so wonderful things like “Creative Alchemy” that does just about nothing good for the Creative sound cards…it’s just there you know?
Well you have to get rid of everything to do with Creative if you have had one of those in your computer before, and good riddance! Good dang riddance I say! I have never seen so much junk that you “have to install” with a Creative X-Fi product, and I’ve had them all, right up to the brand new Creative X-Fi HD 1270 THX sound card that just came out last summer, I’ve had them all, and they just plain SUCK compared to this beautiful Asus sound card!
There is just so much to UNINSTALL from Creative that it begs special mention here and so I am mentioning it in Big Bold Letters: UNINSTALL ALL OF IT! It doesn’t matter if you have to restart a couple times to get rid of all of that stuff, just DO IT! And let the simplicity and beautiful sounds of the Xonar Essence ST PCI Sound Card carry you away to where sound itself is made it seems, to NEVER NEVER LAND such as it is with the Xonar Essence card vs any Creative product!
OK, you’ve gotten rid of the Creative and other sound drivers, whatever they are/were, right? Good deal! Now prepare yourselves for the shock of a lifetime: the Xonar Essence ST Driver Package is only about 40MB in size! And that is IT, BABY! No more headache of having to install multiple “layers” of sound card crapola and drivers and sound panels, there is none of that! There’s just one, itty-bitty download from the Asus web site to get the latest and greatest Xonar Essence ST Drivers, (mine were for Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit OS, and they were EASY to find!), and the Control Panel already discussed above, the Xonar Essence Audio Center Control Panel, that’s all there is to it!
Restart the computer, and you’re done and ready to enjoy after installing the Essence ST physically in the PCI portal in the computer, hooking up the Molex power connector (that’s what I have in mine, there was no strange “Molex to Floppy Drive Connector” setup like I’d heard about, it was very simply a single Molex connector that gives the Xonar Essence its power, and BAM! You’re done and ready to ROCK and ROLL!), you are all done! That’s all there is to this install, and that’s what I mean to tell you: it’s SIMPLE!
I installed the Control Panel from Asus download pages, which are so easy to navigate and find stuff in since I already own an Asus laptop, the G51JX-A1 Core i7 720QM-based laptop at that! And that is all she wrote, after that little install you are all done. There is NO WAITING around for many MB’s worth of drivers and sound stuff like with Creative products, none of that at all! Just the one CP and you are Done City Baby!
I have a nice, well it’s a LOT nicer than nice, it’s PHENOMENAL…my speaker and sound system for my PC No.1, which I base my creative life around. It’s the Logitech Z-5500 system, you know that one? Well what a perfect match the Asus Xonar Essence ST PCI Sound Card and the Logitech Z-5500’s are! Crazy good together! They match up like Jane and Joan, like Jim and John, like George and Paul, they are a perfect match!
I used a simple Mini-Toslink to Toslink Optical Cable that I ordered right here at Amazon.com from another of the nice market-place vendors here who caters to the “cable crowd”, and it cost just a few…
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|Clear, clean sound,
I have this card running LME49720HA and LME49710HA op amps connected to M-audio speakers with thick gold plated RCA cables. With the stock opamps this card is good. With the LME’s this card sounds simply amazing.
My power supply is an Antec with very low electrical noise and a large RF choke filter on the card’s power cable also. My UPS/power strip is also noise filtered.
I can hear an ocean of sound, from the deep dark depths to the rippling, curling, crashing tips of the waves of audio coming forth. No static hiss at all unless it was in the track itself. So clear that when you watch a movie you swear you can hear the director breathing behind the camera.
The stock JRC opamps are bassier, good for music. They lack the razor sharp sound of the LME’s though in the high-end and mid-range.
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