Xonar U1 USB Audio Station

Got my hands on this little UFO about 4 weeks back when I got sick and fed up of sound output of my laptop. Looking around the internet, I found this strange little thing called the ‘Xonar’ USB Audio Station and it looked like a UFO plus it said Dolby® Digital on the specifications. Frankly speaking, I was pretty hyped up about the ‘Chandrayaan’ project and having my very own UFO spewing out Dolby music on the go for a moderate budget of 4k seemed a pretty exciting proposition!



So far, this isn’t sounding much of a review and more of a rant, but here goes, anyways …







[BREAK=Specifications]





Formal Specifications:



Audio Performance:



Output Signal-to-Noise Ratio (A-Weighted):100 dB

Output THD+N at 1 kHz (A-Weighted): 0.0045% (87dB)

Dynamic Range: 96dB



Main Chipset:



Audio Processor: UA100

Sample Rate and Resolution

Analog Playback Sample Rate and Resolution: 48 KHz

I/O Ports

Bus Compatibility: USB

Analog Output Jack & Digital S/PDIF Output Combo: Analog 2CH/Digital 5.1

Analog Input Jack: Yes, stereo recording



Driver Features:



Dolby® Technologies

Dolby® Headphone

Dolby® Virtual Speaker

Dolby® Pro-Logic IIx

Dolby® Digital Live



DirectSound3D Game Extensions 1.0/DirectX

DS3D GX 1.0 supports EAX gaming sound effects and DirectSound 3D hardware enhanced functions on Windows Vista. (DirectX/DirectSound 3D compatible)



Smart Volume Normalizer™

Normalizes the volume of all audio sources into a constant level and also enhances your 3D sound listening range and advantages in gaming



Magic Voice™

Modifies the sound of your voice, for VOIP and online chat applications



Karaoke Functions

Music Key-Shifting and Microphone Echo effects



Xear 3DTM Virtual Speaker Shifter

Virtual 7.1 speaker positioning



Array Microphone

Reducing environmental background sounds and noises; keeping your front side voice input as clean as possible



Other Effects

10-band Equalier/27 Environment Effects







Bundled Accessories:



A pretty decent bundle in a small box



1 x User manual

1 x Driver CD

1 x SPDIF Optical cable and

1 x Array Mic

(Apart from the 1 x USB Audio Station itself)







[BREAK=Installation And Performance]



Installation & Performance:



The audio station comes with a driver CD, but it’s not essential to install the drivers for some quick music output.

Windows XP detected the device as “USB Advanced Audio Device” as soon as it was plugged in, and was ready to use within seconds. Without installing the driver of course there were no fancy Dolby effects and processing, but I still had the mixer and software volume control.

Hardware volume control which is achieved by rotating the upper semi-cone of the device was also not available without the driver.



Installing the driver though was quick and easy, and let me tell you, the device becomes a real rock-house with them. I was pleased to find all the various DSP modes pretty much handily placed, so I don’t have to keep modifying the equalizer all the time.

The presets included movie, music , game and hi-fi. The manual customization options are plentiful with the entire set of Dolby technologies, including virtual speaker, pro logic etc. But what really made me jump was the Dolby Headphone option. I just could not believe that I was hearing music on my same old headphones.







The sound is very clear and the powerful amplifier really makes any headphones thump. The bass output was remarkably good, and I was surprised to find that, because on such small devices it is generally otherwise. Not to mention overtones did not distort and hi-freq cymbals sounded almost true to life.



The only time I found some clicks and pops in the audio , were during the dxdiag audio test. There would be a small click, every time the next sample was up for playing. It might also be that these sounds have just become more prominent due to the heavy pre amplification. The advantage is that anyone who is on the move or travels through noisy traffic or a noisy environment will surely applaud the U1’s audio output level.





The U1 has 2 jacks in the front , for the headphones and the mic. The headphone jack also doubles up as an SPDIF connector with the SPDIF attachment provided in the bundle. Sadly, I cannot comment on the SPDIF capabilities because I don’t have that exotic a setup to test it !







Also, as I was talking about hardware and software volume control, the U1’s upper half can be rotated clock-wise and anti-clock wise to control the output volume and depressing the same, functions as mute and un-mute. I’d say kudos to ASUS for simplicity and great ergonomics. The volume control does give you visual feedback too.





Coming to the mic included in the bundle, supposedly, it is an array mic. The mic works very nicely with skype and has good gain.







Whats an array mic?



An array microphone does for microphones what your brain does for your ears. It gives them some intelligence. The general idea is that you take a set of microphones—which could be two, or eight, or thousands—and add a DSP chip with some sophisticated logic. The array microphone’s processor continuously figures out where the primary speaker is in the field of audio input it’s receiving, and selectively adjusts the output so that most of it is coming from the microphone that is getting the best signal. This amounts to “focusing” on a certain direction and distance so that the speaker’s voice, and little or no other noise, actually reaches the output.



Courtesy: Array Microphones: Interesting Thing of the Day



[BREAK=Concluding Remarks]



Concluding Remarks:



The ASUS U1 USB audio station, is a very well designed and well performing equipment, fills up my requirement for being highly portable bundled with a great sound output level and good audio quality.

So , you get style, portability , ergonomics and thumping music for about Rs.4000/- do I need say more ?



Hope you all like my first review on TE !:cool2:

Originally Posted by kritarth

what is the price for this now ?

I got it for 3.4K at Hyderabad. It could have coasted me still less but the distributor said that he cannot sell to me (i.e. a customer) directly and hence had it sent it to his dealer, whose margin of Rs. 200/- got added.

Srinivas.



The distributor's price was 3084/- + taxes.