EVGA NU Audio Sound Card Unboxing & Preview

[khoisan]

Where did you pull that out?

WIKI


It is only 6W in this case. There are like 25+ IC's on the board + a relay. Or are you insisting making a circus like Polaris did over abusing pcie slot power?

And please all get that through your skull, low noise, high PSRR can be gained only sacrificing a lot of power. The cascade starts with simple shunt regulator at the front, then splitting further to each knot, feeding their own device, cleaning up the voltage rail with each step. The more high end, uber high SNR must be achieved, it goes into twilight zone territory with methods how to achieve it in such polluted environment like PC.



Read up the same. 12V line feeds all the card, the slot power mostly cut off from the board powering actually only the PCIe/PCI bridge.



Now this is an interesting one. There are two versions, one using PLX the other Asmedia bridge. The STX II uses only Asmedia, STX used both, depending on the revision, there should be an errata. The whole idea driving the vintage PCI Cmedia CMI8788 is a failure at core. Now the horrid story continues on. I don't approve hanging a buggy asmedia pcie to USB ic to drive a xMOS(the ASM chip doesn't fill out the latest USB3 xHCI specs, and is EOL device already) . It defeats the whole idea of having a tailored device. It should work on Ryzen, as a lot of the boards have the ASM1042A USB3 chip. I haven't seen any ryzen board having the old PCI slot made through any kind of PCIe to PCI bridge

I can confirm that Asus Xonar Essence STX II does not work with X399. I rebuild my main computer with x1950 Threadripper on Asus Zenith Extreme motheboard and it kept locking up at various times when you heard the "click" of the sound card engaging. I found post that there was a conflict between the sound card and the motherboard that would cause a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). I finally pulled the soundcard and everything else worked like a "charm" (not well but well enough).

I was in the same camp of being an audiophile with multi-thousands in speakers, DACs and multiple Mono Class-A amps and headphones to know what good audio sounds like. For two months I listened to the trash that is on-board audio and was about to jump on the EVGA Nu-Audio card. Explaining good sound quality is like telling someone to go to a game reserve in Southern Africa, when they keep telling you that they have been to a real safari at Disney World. Just place your face in your palm (or slap your palm into your face) and call it a day.

So with me being a sound nerd, I had a STX and STX II and took them out to examine the chips. The good news was my STX had the PLX chip while the STX II had Asmedia bridge which was causing the problem. After installing the older card, everything came up like a charm. If you can grab the old version of the card on eBay, I'd do that before going out for the Nu Audio. You can switch out the OpAmps and get a great sound. However, the Nu Audio does has some nice components on the board that make me curious on the sound.

No to be clear the Asus Zenith Extreme is a top quality motherboard with upgraded sound and multiple PCB layers to isolate the channels, but it comes no where close to the STX. Also the one benefit of the Nu Audio is direct playback of DSF/DSD master quality files. These are better than red box CDs but you need headphones that can resolve that quality. I uses planar magnetic headphones that are accurate but require the power of an amp to really get the best out of them. You are not going to get that from onboard audio.

 

[Ferrum Master]

The good news was my STX had the PLX chip while the STX II had Asmedia bridge which was causing the problem.

Thanks for the info, that ASMEDIA bridge is really seldom used, thus seldom who can trigger it. That PLX chip isn't a present too... it has issues of his own. The whole CMI-8788[AV200/100/66] Xonar lineup should have been scrapped really. I haven't got my hands on any CMI-8888 based card, thus have no opinion and experience about them.

DSD vs red box? Well mate... considering modern day studios, the mixing process is done by amateurs or ignorants not understanding a lot of basic things. The source material itself is not worthy, you can do with it whatever you wish, it is crap in the core. I am not against a proper PCM either way... that's not the bottleneck in my books.

 

[Gradius2]

For those who don't know, yes, this is a real upgrade from STX/STX II.

Why? Because AK4493EQ is better than PCM1792A.

For those who says "What? $250? You can get something better for less. This is 1990 or 2004 tech"... well, they have NO idea of what they are talking about.

This is for MUSIC (REAL music aka STEREO), not fancy things like Dolby, ATMOS, 7.1, or whatever.

A comparable (and external) DAC would be around $650 (Burson Playmate) to $1100 (RME ADI-2 DAC) easily.

Currently I have STX modded with Bursons V5 with a precision clock (crystal).

I listen to my music with fully modded HS80M speakers, and HD650 headphones.

I'm still looking between EVGA with Burson V6 vivid, Burson Playmate, or RME (too bad it uses the older AK4490EQ).

As for price, I'd would go with EVGA+Burson, as its the cheaper (and not bad at all) alternative.

Btw, what are the clock (crystal) values on EVGA?

 

[Mescalamba]

For those who don't know, yes, this is a real upgrade from STX/STX II.

Why? Because AK4493EQ is better than PCM1792A.

For those who says "What? $250? You can get something better for less. This is 1990 or 2004 tech"... well, they have NO idea of what they are talking about.

This is for MUSIC (REAL music aka STEREO), not fancy things like Dolby, ATMOS, 7.1, or whatever.

A comparable (and external) DAC would be around $650 (Burson Playmate) to $1100 (RME ADI-2 DAC) easily.

Currently I have STX modded with Bursons V5 with a precision clock (crystal).

I listen to my music with fully modded HS80M speakers, and HD650 headphones.

I'm still looking between EVGA with Burson V6 vivid, Burson Playmate, or RME (too bad it uses the older AK4490EQ).

As for price, I'd would go with EVGA+Burson, as its the cheaper (and not bad at all) alternative.

Btw, what are the clock (crystal) values on EVGA?

Kinda thought same based on specs, question is about noise performance.. Cant test that, unless I would actually buy it.

Apart drivers Im quite happy with my STX.

 

[VSG]

The review is up, in case that helps: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/NU_Audio_Sound_Card/

 

[Gradius2]

Kinda thought same based on specs, the question is about noise performance... Can't test that, unless I would actually buy it.

Apart drivers Im quite happy with my STX.

I'm (or was) quite happy with STX as well, but is time to upgrade (really)... I think this time I will go with external DAC (and once for all), probably the RME ADI-2 DAC (end game).

As for headphones HD800S (currently I use HD650) as the end game. As monitor speakers, I already have HS80M fully modded, so those are already my "end game".

 

[Mescalamba]

I'm (or was) quite happy with STX as well, but is time to upgrade (really)... I think this time I will go with external DAC (and once for all), probably the RME ADI-2 DAC (end game).

As for headphones HD800S (currently I use HD650) as the end game. As monitor speakers, I already have HS80M fully modded, so those are already my "end game".

I heavily dislike new Sennheiser sound signature (too much peaks in higher freq, makes my head and ear hurts). Ofc you can EQ it, but only if you have way to do it. Would need to have HW EQ for that. I loved my old HD555 (still have them, with some tweaks).

While my current DT880 are not that "spacious" or "accurate" as old Sennheiser, they do sound great, especially with STX.

I dont think STX is obsolete in any way. It actually can feed any high impedance cans without issues. Also its quite upgradeable.

But you are right, good external DAC and AMP is probably best solution, especially for music. I have plans for that too. Probably tube AMP tho, if I go Sennheiser way (that mostly mitigates peaks in high freq, since tubes usually roll off at that point).