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To test today we used a variety of compact discs, including (but not limited) to:
Peter Gabriel – UP
Norah Jones – Come Away With Me
Ryan Adam & The Cardinals – Jacksonville City Nights
Neil Young – Gold Rush
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Symphonies 29, 31 ‘Paris', 32, 35 ‘Haffner; and 36 ‘Linz'
Haftor Medbee Group – in perpetuity
Queen – A Night At The Opera (remastered)
Mike Oldfield – The Songs of Distant Earth
A Perfect Circle – Mer De Noms
Diana Krall – Love Scenes
Cara Dillon – After The Morning
Pavlo Beznosiuk – Johann Sebastian Bach – Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin
We immediately noticed that the Asus Xonar Essence One delivered extensive bass response, making it ideal for lovers of electronic and rock music. With Queen's A Night At The Opera, the Essence One was able to resolve lower frequencies with vigour, without dominating the sound balance. We did find that with Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin that the sound was a little too rich for our tastes, although the Audeze LCD2 headphones are well known to create a warm, bass rich sound environment.
Sound staging was impressive, both wide and dynamic, this was particularly noticeable with the Diana Krall CD, highlighting her position just left of center stage well. Krall's breathy vocals were delivered with clarity and impact, yet were warm enough to realistically capture her unique style of delivery. Some of the credit obviously has to fall to the Raysonic CD228, taking the harsh ‘edge' from many of the digital recordings.
The wonderful Mike Oldfield recording of ‘The Songs Of Distant Earth' was reproduced with passion and instruments were accurately positioned within the soundstage. Dynamic range was also exceptionally noteworthy and I enjoyed how the whalesounds were reproduced later in the recording. Ambient noises, such as low level background female vocals were easily able to be picked out from the wall of sound. This is one of the Essence One real strengths – being able to accurately hear every instrument within a complex, high grade recording.
There is no doubt in my mind that the detail of the Essence One is clearly a level well in excess of other soundcards I have tested in recent years. It still isn't perfect mind you, as I noticed that when compared with more expensive solutions that the sound could appear a little more compressed within the three dimensional soundstage.
Vocal reproduction deserves a special mention, Norah Jones, Ryan Adams and Neil Young all sounded very alive with only a hint of ‘digital' processing occurring on some of the tracks. This may sound negative, but I have been listening to so many sources over the last decade that I can generally tell when a recording is digital by nature.
The internal amplifier on the Xonar Essence One is certainly impressive, with a sound balance firmly on the dark/warm side. The range is focused, although on a few occasions with complex classical recordings it tended to reproduce a slightly imbalanced range of frequencies, focusing more on the lower, bass registers. This really is splitting hairs however.
I noticed when compared directly against the custom Little Dot MK VI+ amplifier that the Essence One wasn't quite as pleasant in the upper frequencies. Cymbals and subtle brushing against guitar strings wasn't reproduced as warmly, showcasing the negative side of solid state presentation. This might not be such a bad thing for ‘detail freaks', but I much preferred the slightly more subdued presentation of the tube/valve amplifier.
I was surprised how well the Essence One handled the Audeze LCD2 headphones, because they need a lot of power and control to sound their best. There were no problems under general listening conditions, however if the volume was forced to the last 20% then we could hear some minor clipping and distortion. This isn't realistic however as the level of volume would cause hearing damage on anything approaching close to long term conditions.
Using the USB port to a computer suffered a noticeable drop in quality, as I would expect considering the dramatic differences in source material. There are no real problems to mention, as ASUS recently updated their drivers to fix audio distortion and noise. I used an LG bluray burner to play back some uncompressed audio files from optical disc to the Essence One and the quality was fairly good, although after listening through the Raysonic CD228 player, I could easily pick up differences in dynamic reproduction, soundstaging and digital artifacting. That said, one costs £4,000, the other £180.
You don't need to spend a fortune to notice benefits by using the Essence One however. If you want to play MP3's via the Essence One through your computer into a decent pair of headphones, such as the Steelseries Siberia V2 or Corsair HS1A, then the sound will be very lively and enjoyable.
