Microphone Input Performance

The EVGA NU Audio is equipped with a pair of audio inputs—a studio-quality line input and a microphone input. While the line-in is handled by the AKM AK5572 A/D converter (up to 32-bit/384 kHz sample rate, 121 dB maximum dynamic range), the microphone input uses the Cirrus Logic CS5436 IC (up to 24-bit/192 kHz sample rate, 103 dB maximum dynamic range). To test the microphone input of the NU Audio sound card, I used the Antlion ModMic 5.

Here are two samples recorded by the EVGA NU Audio sound card (24-bit/48 kHz) with microphone volume set to 50% and 100% in the NU Audio software driver.




While the microphone itself sounds very good, with no audible compression or loss of clarity in my voice as this is in fact as good as the Antlion ModMic 5 can sound, you'll hear a constant metallic buzz in the background if you listen to the samples closely at high volume. It's especially audible with the microphone volume set to 100%. It strikes me as something that's caused by the sound card picking up interference from other parts of my system rather than a fault in its own electronics. The good news is that the volume range of the microphone input is so wide that you won't ever have to push it all the way up to 100%. I didn't have to go above 50% with any microphone I used in my tests, such as the aforementioned Antlion ModMic 5, V-Moda BoomPro, or the microphones of the HyperX Cloud Alpha and SteelSeries Arctis 3 gaming headsets. At 50%, the buzzing is much harder to pick up, although it's still present.

Here are two more microphone samples, one recorded by using my integrated sound card (Asus ROG SupremeFX S1220) and another made with an external USB sound card, the $50 Creative Sound Blaster E1 known for its surprisingly good microphone input (and noisy headphone output). Microphone volume was set to 100% for both tests.




First of all, you can clearly hear that the EVGA NU Audio makes the microphone as loud at 50% as the integrated sound card and the Creative Sound Blaster E1 do when set to 100%. The integrated sound card has a constant, audible background hiss, which sounds like white noise. It's more prominent than the metallic buzzing on the EVGA NU Audio sound card, but also less harsh to listen to. Then, we have the Creative's external USB sound card with no background noise at all as the unit is physically located outside of the case and connected to the motherboard through USB. One could argue that its voice quality is slightly compressed compared to the NU Audio, but I for one would take a dead-silent background over a small loss in airiness any time of the day.

With all that in mind, the microphone input of the EVGA NU Audio isn't nearly as impressive as its headphone output. I'm fully aware that the buzzing can be limited to my system (or may even be present in some other form for other systems) on a different PC, but I'm running a high-end rig with top-shelf components—if there are issues here, they can only be worse on older/less advanced systems.