PC based sound card. Thing that I have left long time ago. Just got a time to visit my friend’s with his new toy, a PC based audio source equipped with the latest PCI-E sound card, ASUS Xonar Essence STX...

My first impression was here which you can look around if you haven’t read that. Last time, I ordered 5 pcs of Burson Audio Discrete OpAmp for my ASUS Xonar Essence One. Unfortunately, I did a mistake. I needed 7...

Finally it’s done, the modification of Asus Xonar Essence One (E1). Before we go to a final listening test, let’s enjoy some pictures first. As I have explained before, this is not the best design to mount the big Jensen...

After this process, now it’s time for the audio board to return to its original place. Time to plug her back. The final touch is to assembly the power supply board and the new capacitors. It will take some time...

Asus Xonar Essence One uses a ribbon cable to connect the stage before the final buffer output to potentiometer then brings back the attenuated signal back to the buffer output stage. This is no where a best approach, as the...

Removing the capacitor from a through-hole PCB never become an easy job. But for the sake of modification, that is the only way and surely no way back. I spent nearly one hour to remove those 6 capacitors on the...

Still remember Asus Xonar Essence One DAC? It’s time to disassembly the power supply. It’s separated on small PCB. Good design as this makes my life more beautiful, although it’s not an easy job to disassemble it. It has 3 power supply...

Just to kill the curiosity, I hooked up ASUS Xonar Essence One to my QLS QA-660. Seemed the process didn’t click that easy. Xonar Essence One failed to capture the S/PDIF signal above 44.1 kHz sent by QLS QA-660. I...

ASUS seems so serious to jump into sound card industry. Since the first Xonar sound card launched several years back, ASUS keeps doing a lot of innovative things. I think, ASUS tries to change the game play on this industry....