Drivers and Software

The main mixer panel has the discrete volume controls for each output channel.  This is a great feature for setting up your surround system properly.  This is also a great feature for you bass freaks as you can easily turn up the subwoofer output.

The Effect panel controls the cards effect settings for Reverb and EQ. For reverb there are basic preset for Club, Arena, room...Etc.  Next we have a 10 band +/- 20dB graphic equalizer with 12 presets and a user savable preset system.  When testing the EQ we found the EQ presets to be a bit too extreme, in our lab we only use EQ's to trim playback systems.

The FlexBass panel offers the controls for bass redirection and speaker size (small or large) The slider sets the cross over point at which the cards start filtering bass away from your satellite speakers and directs it to your subwoofer.  The size option sets the filter for each speaker pair, for example if your front channels are full range tower speakers you can set the drive to allow full bass to go through.  The bass redirection is also active for headphones, allowing you to set the cutoff points for the bass sent to your headphones.  There are also panels for Karaoke and Vocal FX offering tuning and effects for your voice while singing or in game voice chat

Notes on the Latest Beta Drivers:

We installed a set of the new set of Beta drivers that allow Bit perfect output with Auto sample rate adjustment.  Earlier drivers didn't modify the sample rate automatically; the end user would have to set the output for the media being played.  This could be inconvenient to say the least for many especially with playlists full of varied bit rate media.  Thankfully the new drivers allow auto sample rate for ASIO drivers allowing you to use other output plugins if you require resampling.  These drivers basically bypass everything in the above panels.  As to keep the signal pristine and bit perfect, the drivers prevent the user from adding any effects and they adjust the volume to proper levels.  How about we take a look under the hood of the Essence ST?

Very impressive, let's outline what we see here for those new to the audio world.