Asus Xonar Essence STX II
Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2018 7:13 pm
I am in the process of building a music “server” based on an old PC I have and an Asus Xonar Essence STX II sound card.
So far I have bolted the card into the PC after disabling the onboard sound functions of the motherboard in the BIOS.
It sounds pretty good to my ears, with a very small difference between it and a Caiman SEG with super cap upgrade running off a long dog audio linear PSU. Either the Asus contains a very good DAC, or my ears need a good clean.
The initial idea was to get a server up and running on the cheap, that sounds good with my DAC. I was researching SPDIF bridges on the internet when I found the Asus sound card at a good price, so decided to give it a go.
I still have a few tweaks to do such as trying passive cooling of the video card and CPU if I can find suitable parts at a suitable price to try and reduce any internal “noise” created by the fans.
Am I wasting my time by trying to do this? I am pretty happy with the sound of the Asus DAC fed using the analogue outputs directly into my pre-amp. It is very enjoyable, and the convenience of accessing my music library and streaming on the same source is appealing.
I am sure I could improve the sound quality further, but at greater expenditure.
If I have missed anything glaringly obviously, please let me know as I am a novice at this computer audio malarkey.
So far I have bolted the card into the PC after disabling the onboard sound functions of the motherboard in the BIOS.
It sounds pretty good to my ears, with a very small difference between it and a Caiman SEG with super cap upgrade running off a long dog audio linear PSU. Either the Asus contains a very good DAC, or my ears need a good clean.
The initial idea was to get a server up and running on the cheap, that sounds good with my DAC. I was researching SPDIF bridges on the internet when I found the Asus sound card at a good price, so decided to give it a go.
I still have a few tweaks to do such as trying passive cooling of the video card and CPU if I can find suitable parts at a suitable price to try and reduce any internal “noise” created by the fans.
Am I wasting my time by trying to do this? I am pretty happy with the sound of the Asus DAC fed using the analogue outputs directly into my pre-amp. It is very enjoyable, and the convenience of accessing my music library and streaming on the same source is appealing.
I am sure I could improve the sound quality further, but at greater expenditure.
If I have missed anything glaringly obviously, please let me know as I am a novice at this computer audio malarkey.