 So today I'll be having a look at a fairly unique product. This is the ASUS Essence ST, the Essence of Sound. It's a Zonar line of product product and it features a 124 decibels sound to noise ratio and a headphone amp. So they're saying this card is for audio files. In here we will find an excellent presentation for this card and let's go through some of the main features of it. First of all, it does require an external power connector so that should give you some idea that this is either a fairly high powered card or what they say about it, which is far more likely, is the fact that it offers independent power supply directly from the PSU for sensitive analog signals. So rather than taking power from the motherboard where there can be a lot of interference, it takes power directly from your power supply. Awesome. Okay, so it uses superior DACs. It uses the Burbrown PCM 1792A digital to analog converter which converts signals at 127 decibels signal to noise ratio. Excellent. Okay, so that's a feature that you're going to find over other high-end even sound cards. It has swappable OPA socket so you can actually tune it to your unique sound preference. All right, built-in headphone amp. This is huge. So many sound cards do not have a headphone amp and so many users are using headphones or headsets that they don't even know is not properly driven by the sound card that they're using. For example, the Sennheiser PC350s have a high impedance for a gaming headphone given that so many gaming cards don't have a headphone amp. So unless you're using a dedicated amp with it, you're not getting the most out of it. Next, perfectly sealed analog output path. So EMI and copper shielding seal the RCA and headphone signals from noise offering distortion free audio enjoyment. Excellent. Precision clock tuning. The world's first sound card with precision clock tuning to minimize audio jitter. Okay, hyper grounding circuitry design, utilizing PCB design to separate signal and noise, ensuring only the cleanest signals possible and okay, fine gold professional audio capacitors. Okay, so basically this card is built from the ground up to give you the best possible, get this, stereo audio. So this is not a multi-channel sound card. It uses either two RCA for left and right signal or one headphone jack. That's it. That's all. You can get an add-in daughter board that sits next to it that gives you 7.1 audio, but this card is all about the stereo experience. So actually here's the details about the Zonar H6 multi-channel extension board offering 120 decibel signal to noise ratio, etc, etc. The reality of it is most audio files who are using very high-end headphones are using stereo. They are not using surround sound headphones or any of that because many of them perceive it as a more of a gimmicky thing rather than a true audio experience feature. So whether that's true or not, I am not the judge, but I'm just giving you the facts. So here we find the card itself and let's get the accessories going first here. So here's a little black box that gives us the accessories. First of all, we have an adapter. Oh, excellent. Okay, so this is an RCA left and right to normal headphone adapter because the one that's actually built into the card is the larger kind. Okay, then we have, oh, then we have an adapter for smaller headphone jack to bigger headphone jack. Thank you for that. Then we have, uh-oh. Okay, this seems to be some kind of like an optical audio thing of some sort. Yeah, okay. Okay, so that's what that is. Some kind of, it converts from the little tiny optical jack to a larger one. I hope. Okay, audio precision test report. Oh, cool. So you get the audio precision test report which shows you all of the different noise level frequency response. You know what? I have to confess, I know so little about this stuff that it's making me look kind of bad right now, but what are you gonna do? Something about crosstalk, dynamic range. Very cool. Oh, it explains what it all is. Excellent. Okay, so they actually tell you what all of this stuff means. So just because you don't understand what it all means, it doesn't mean you can't be prepared to get good enjoyment out of the card. Here is a big picture of the card. Okay, and then... Okay, so this is just a little mini poster. Gold plated on the EMI shield, the 4,000 years old chime of tiger represents not only mankind's endless pursuit of the essence of sound, but also Zonar Essence STX's commitment to offer the best quality ever from an audio card. So that's the little tiger guy there. Very cool. Got that symbolicness going on. Okay, and this is the same poster, but in black just in case you prefer that. You know, once you go black you never go back. Quick start guide. So that's giving you the basics, how to install your card, how to install the drivers. Awesome. Thank you for that. Then you have the driver CD. Don't use this. Download the latest drivers off the ASUS website. And that pretty much does it for the accessories that are included with this card. So why don't we have a look at the card itself? I've got to tell you it feels very high-end here. Okay. So first of all, here we go. You've got your front right, front left, headphone, line in and spit if out. That is all for the inputs and outputs on this sound card. It is all about the stereo experience. Okay, under this shield you will find the the DAC, which is I believe right there. Okay, so that's the Burr Brown DAC right there. And then also the user replaceable op amps are under there as well. Here is an ASUS blah blah blah audio processing unit. You can actually see this is a fairly simple PCB compared to some of the more high-end sound cards that you'd see. I mean Creative used to have like firewire, joystick ports, all kinds of crazy things on their sound cards. They are not going for that kind of approach here. Here you will find the power input that you will need to operate this card. I'm guessing this is required partially for the headphone amp and also like they said to minimize the amount of interference you're going to get from taking motherboard power. Here is the output I believe for the 7.1 interface. Now we can go to the top of the card. There is the output for your front panel audio as well as one of those CD connectors if anyone still uses those. Then we have the back of the card. You can see this is a PCI card rather than a PCI Express card. I'm not sure what the reasoning is for that, but it is a slightly older card. So that could be why and thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Essence ST from ASUS.