Gadgetory

so today I'll be having a look at a fairly unique product this is the asou so as since st the essence of sound it's a zone our line of product product and it features a 124 decibel sound a noise ratio and a headphone amp so they're saying this card is for audio files in here we will find an excellent presentation for this card and let's go through some of the main features of it first of all it does require an external power connector so that should give you some idea that this is a either a fairly high powered card or what they say about it which is far more likely is the fact that it offers independent power supply directly from the PSU for sensitive analog signals so rather than taking power from the motherboard where there can be a lot of interference it takes power directly from your power supply awesome ok so use the superior decks it uses the burr brown PCM 179 to a digital analog converter which converts signals at 127 decibels signal-to-noise ratio excellent ok so that's a feature that you're going to find over other high ends even sound cards it has swappable OPA socket so you can actually tune it to your unique sound preference alright built-in headphone amp this is huge so many sound cards do not have a headphone amp and so many users are using headphones or headsets that they don't even know is not properly driven by the sound card that they're using for example the Sennheiser PC 350 s have a high impedance for a gaming headphone given that so many gaming cards don't have a headphone amp so unless you're using a dedicated app with it you're not getting the most out of it next perfectly sealed analog output path so EMI and copper shielding sealed the RCA and headphone signals from noise offering distortion free audio enjoyment excellent precision clock tuning world's first sound card with precision clocking to minimize audio jitter okay hyper grounding circuitry design utilizing PCB design separate signal and noise ensuring only the cleanest signals possible and ok fine gold professional audio capacitors ok so basically this card is built from the ground up to give you the best possible get this stereo audio so this is not a multi-channel sound card it uses either to RCA for left and right side or one headphone jack that's it that's all you can get a add-in daughterboard that sits next to it that gives you 7.1 audio but this card is all about the stereo experience so actually here's the details about the zone rh6 multi-channel extension board offering 120 decibel signal to noise ratio Tetra etc the reality of it is most audio files who are using very high-end headphones are using stereo they are not using surround sound headphones or any of that because many of them perceive it as as a more of a gimmicky thing rather than a true audio experience feature so whether that's true or not I am NOT the judge but I'm just giving you the facts so here we find the card itself and let's get the accessories go in first here so here's a little black box that gives us the accessories first of all we have an adapter Oh excellent okay so this is an RCA left and right to normal headphone adapter because the one that's actually built into the card is the larger kind okay then we have oh then we have an adapter for smaller headphone jack to a bigger headphone jack thank you for that then we have oh oh okay this seems to be some kind of like an optical audio thing some sort yeah okay okay so that's what that is some kind of it converts from the little tiny optical jack to to a larger one I hope okay audio a precision test report oh cool so you get the audio precision test report which shows you all of the different on noise level frequency response you know what I have to confess I know so little about this stuff that it's making me look kind of bad right now but what are you gonna do something about crosstalk dynamic range very cool well it explains what it all is excellent okay so they actually tell you what all of this stuff means so just because you don't understand what it all means it doesn't mean you can't be prepared to get good enjoyment out of the card here is a big picture of the card ok then okay so this is just a little mini poster gold-plated on the EMI shield the 4,000 years old time of tiger represents not only mankind's endless pursuit of the essence of sound but also zone our essence STX is commitment to offer the best quality ever from an audio card so that's the little tiger guy there very cool about that symbolic miss going on okay and this is the same poster but in black just in case you prefer that you know once you go black you never go back Quick Start Guide so that's giving you the basics how to install your card how to install the drivers awesome thank you for that then you have the driver CD don't use this download the latest drivers off the assist website and that pretty much does it for the accessories that are included with this card so why don't we have a look at the card itself if I've got to tell you it feels very high-end here okay so first of all here we go you've got your front right front left headphone line in and spit it out that is all for the for the inputs and outputs on this sound card it is all about the stereo experience okay under this shield you will find the the DAC which is I believe right there okay so that's the burr brown DAC right there and then also the user replaceable op amps are under there as well here is Ana sous blah blah blah audio processing unit you can actually see this is a fairly simple PCB compared to some of the more high-end sound cards that you'd see I mean creative used to have like firewire joystick ports all kinds of crazy things on there sound cards they are not going for that kind of approach here here you will find the power input that you will need to operate this card I'm guessing this is required partially for the headphone amp and also like they said to minimize the amount of interference you're going to get from taking motherboard power here is the output I believe for the 7.1 interface now we can go to the top of the card there is the output for your front panel audio as well as one of those CD connectors if anyone still uses those then we have the back of the card you can see this is a PCI card rather than a PCI Express card I'm not sure what the reasoning is for that but it is a slightly older cards that could be why and thank you for checking out my unboxing of the essence SC from a sous