ASUS Essence One review

A Closer Look - Front Controls

On the left we have the main power button, upsampling control, input control and mute.  The 8X symmetrical upsampling can be enabled/disabled, you can select which input (Coaxial, Toslink or USB) or mute the unit with these controls.

Main Volume and Frequency Indicators

 Inputs and Outputs

The Essence One features digital S/Pdif input through coaxial and optical Toslink.  This unit also features asynchronous mode USB.

Notes on USB input:  The USB receiver in the E1 unit operates in Asynchronous Mode and as far as USB based audio is concerned this is the preferred method of USB communication.  In this method, the DAC unit is controlling the flow of data which sync�s the stream  to the unit�s internal clock.  This method is preferred because the design is basically immune to jitter or any other type of clock anomalies.

The main volume control adjusts volume for the unbalanced (RCA) and balanced (XLR) outputs. To the right of that we can see the LED indicators that will show the end user what frequency is being sent to the device.  We have from top to bottom:

• Bit perfect
• 192 KHz
• 176.4 KHz
• 96 KHz
• 88.2 KHz
• 48 KHz
• 44.1 KHz

Outputs

The Essence one offers both unbalanced line-level outputs and balanced outputs Via XLR connectors for those with balanced gear such as amplifiers.  XLR connections are generally seen on high priced or studio components.