Asus Xonar U7 Review

Soundcards and Speakers 106 Page 7 of 8 Published by

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Listening

I tested the Xonar U7 with the Vulcan Pro headset we tested a while ago. The reference setup is the rather good Audio-gd Sparrow ‘A’ with AKG K701 headphones. But since the K701 has a ¼” plug, I dug out my Grado ¼” to 1/8” adapter cable.  I set the Xonar U7 to 24-bit/192KHz in the control panel (playback properties) and had at it. I used sources from uncompressed 24/192 to 128kbs MP3.  I also tossed in a few movies and Netflix sessions to get a better feel of the Xonar U7 in normal use.  The Xonar U7 has a very good DAC in the Sirrus Logic CS4398.

Hey, this is great! I can sum up the Xonar U7 in a single word: silence.  Silence!  Joe Pass, the great jazz guitarist, quoted in a response to the question of how he plays so many notes without getting tired, said, “I rest between the notes.” In the case of the Xonar U7 there is this sense that sound is coming from dead silence. The noise floor is that far down, it’s totally silent. Completely. I can hear my own heart pumping blood before I can perceive any noise coming from the Xonar U7 at max volume, everything all the way up to 11.

Speaking of volume, the Xonar U7 can push a lot of volume. It ain’t even playing, it takes your testicles and shakes them like a paint mixer. Violently loud. Yes, you can use the Dolby HTv4 volume compression to make the volume quite tolerable, but that’s cheating. Paint mixer.  Testicles. That’s loud.

With a 24bit/192KHz recording of Bob Marley’s Jammin’, at a comfortable listening level, the soundstage and the audience become a well-defined presence, deep and wide, and the overall texture of the recording becomes richer. My universal experience with 192KHz playback is that the bass tends to drop out, and the Xonar U7 does the same.

With a 16bit/44KHz rip of Whitest Boy Alive Burning the Xonar U7 is miles ahead of the ASRock’s onboard AC898, and very, very close to the Wolfson DAC equipped Audio-gd Sparrow. The only differences were tonal and rhythmic.  The U7 had quite a lot of juicy sounds, but didn’t quite have the ‘snap’ that the Sparrow had.  This translates into more head banging and foot stomping.  Of course you could just run the Sparrow off the U7’s S/PDIF connection and get the same snappy sound (well, the U7 even sounded different than the ALC898 S/PDIF), and the U7's juicyness. 

In my mind, running audio through USB then through S/PDIF would be a recipe for disaster, but it was actually fine.  The Sparrow also has direct USB, but for whatever reason, it just doesn’t sound all that good.  The U7 on the other hand sounded great over USB, with very slight difference running the Sparrow off the U7’s S/PDIF versus onboard S/PDIF. Go figure.

Another example of the Xonar U7’s punch was with a 320kbps rip of Dethklok’s The Galaxy, where the vocal (ahem) echo was better defined with the U7, but the overall texture and separation of instruments, was better with the Sparrow.  Either way, brutal.

The last example is a 24-bit/96KHz digitization of Black Sabbath's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath from an old LP. I believe the digitization was done with a Creative X-Fi, but my memory is fading. Anyway, there's a wonderful sense of listening to the vinyl that came through better with my reference setup. That is, the reference setup sounded more like I was listening to the LP playing on the record player than the U7 was able to do. 

I was kidding about listening to Facebook.  However, I am surprised to see so much rare concert content on Youtube. Most of it sounds awful, but there's also a lot of good sounding videos on Youtube.  The U7, or any other sound card, won't have much challenge in playing sound from YouTube or any other web content.  Right.  Moving to video. I watched a few things on Netflix, most memorable was Black Snake Moan, which has a rocking soundtrack, not to mention Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci.  There were more than a few moments in the movie where the music was driving the movie, and the sound coming out of the U7 was impressive, deep bass, excellent detail in all the ranges, and never a lack of clarity in dialog.

Rounding out the selection, I popped in a DVD of the Miyazaki classic, Porco Rosso. If you haven't seen it, see it. The Dolby v4 Dialog Enhancement didn't add much, but it did enchance the movie, if subtly. I think with any good movie, you just get immersed and don't pay any attention to the fine details. At least I wasn't distracted by the U7, it did its job very well.

To sum up, the Xonar U7 is on the better side of spectacular. I'm still trying to wrap my head around all that goodness powered by a single USB connection. It doesn't make sense to have just 500mw of power produce such good sound.  I might feel better if there was a way to plug it into a wall somewhere, but you know, after awhile, I was just busy being impressed by the U7. I'd love to say that the U7 could replace my reference, but it's just a little bit shy of the mark. Something like the Essence STU or Muses would certainly do that, but for a quarter of the cost of those bruisers, the U7 is very good.

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