USB headphone amps have gained a lot of popularity in recent years. There's a lot of good reasons for having an external DAC for audio, chief among them less noise to draw better performance from higher-quality parts, and of course more power to drive high-end or even audiophile quality headphones. ASUS has been focused on bringing interesting products based on these ideas, you only have to look at their Xonar Essence line of cards to realize that. The Xonar brand has been around for quite a while and we love the quality of ASUS’s design and build. The first Xonar product in the Guru3d Audio Lab was the D2X, a product that I called ‘a showboat’. It was ASUS’s first top-tier gaming audio card, and of course, they made an asteroid sized splash in the market. We liked it. Then, of course, if the D2X wasn’t enough quality for you, ASUS released the Essence series of sound cards. These are the ultimate expression of what ASUS could do with audio, showing their engineering chops and, dare I say it, passion. Oh, we liked them, too. Today we have in house another Xonar, the ASUS Xonar U7 External USB sound card. It is the performance enhanced version of the Xonar U3, a thumbdrive sized USB audio adapter. The U7 is not the average external USB DAC/headphone amp. It is loaded with features, offering 7.1 surround sound audio with 192KHz/24-bit capability, 114dB SNR, line-level outputs, S/PDIF input/output, and selectable gain for those audiophile headphones you were trying to convince yourself into buying (do eet, do eeet!). While it’s not a ROG branded product, the Xonar U7 is designed to work with the ROG Vulcan or Orion headsets. But, you can use it with any headset of your choice. This means you get both a dedicated headphone amp and microphone input, in a nice external USB powered package with some impressive specifications. The U7 also has a knob. We like knobs. The Xonar U7 is not just about the hardware, along with the Xear suite of effects, it can upmix stereo to surround for gaming using Dolby’s new Home Theatre v4. It works over S/PDIF, of course, so you can use an external decoder and theatre system. Dolby HTv4 also has a few new tricks up its sleeve, namely, dialog enhancement and dynamic compression. We'll get to those. The Xonar U7 has a lot of the same features you'd find in some high-end sound cards, good software, good features, but does that mean it's any good? There is quite a crowded field of USB headphone amps these days. Looking at the front of the box we can see it is very clean and simple, with a white on black design and a window that lets us get a peek at the headset. There is also talk of the main selling point for this new revision which is of course the enhanced compatibility.  The back of the box has a picture of the headset flanked to the sides by some more feature information and at the bottom we have some technical specs for the headset and its mic. Opening the box up and removing the contents we have: the headset, a quick start guide, the usual ASUS warranty book, a splitter cable for PC use and also a ‘stylish’ carry bag; it may not be the most fetching thing I’ve ever seen but in fairness it is a reasonable value add. That’s about it for the packaging really, it does the job whilst looking pretty tidy and the included bag is a nice touch. Time for a look at the headset. Closer Look Let’s get a proper look at the headset itself. From the front, we can immediately notice those oversized 100mm ear cushions which are generously padded and mounted to the conventional style hinged ear cups. The headband also sports a large pad which looks rather cushy. Speaking of said headband, here it is in all its green and brown er…glory. It isn’t the most attractive colour scheme in my opinion, but the good news is there is another SKU in the form of the Echelon Navy that sports a very similar blue grey digital camo pattern to that of the original Echelon which in my opinion is much more attractive. The left side of the headset continues the theme, with the only break in house colours being the shiny brushed metal style inserts in the middle of the cups. In this shot, we can also see our retractable microphone. Here we can see the metal rails that serve as adjustment, attractive and sturdy yes but not without fault; there is a bit of play between them and the plastic mouldings which cheapen the feel of the headset a bit and the lack of numbers or notches makes them trickier to set equally than some of the competition. Finally we have the in-line adjuster which size wise is nice and the layout isn’t bad either but I would much prefer a larger volume dial. |
