New Asus Xonar Essence STX Drivers

[Brian Kingsbury]

Apparently a couple of months ago Asus released a new beta version of the Windows drivers for its Xonar Essence STX. The new driver supports higher sample rates and bit-perfect playback and recording.. Here's a link to their site to download it.

And a cut & paste of the description from their site...

Xonar Essence STX bit-perfect ASIO driver (beta) for Windows 7 32/64bit
1. Sample rate supported: 44.1 / 48 / 88.2 / 96 / 176.4 / 192 kHz
2. Supports one ASIO playback stream (maximum 8 channels) to analog output.
3. Supports one ASIO recording stream (2 channels) from analog input.
4. Recording source (microphone in or line in) is selected by system mixer.
5. To keep the ASIO stream bit-perfect, the following two rules apply:
(1) The ASIO stream has higher priority of using DMA buffer than other streams. That is, when the ASIO stream is played, other streams cannot be played.
(2) No volume control is available for the ASIO stream.
6. When there are more than two ASIO applications running, only one application gets the right to use the hardware resource. This is based on “first come, first service” rule.
7. Current buffer time is set at 10ms, will be adjustable in later version

I've had this card for about 9 months now and I've been very happy with. I'm not a big computer audio guru but I do use Foobar and know a small amount about the different output options. Currently, I'm using the analog outputs to play it through a DIY F5 amp and DIY speakers. I've always found the sound quality pretty good.

I just downloaded the new driver and installed it and all I can say is WOW. I'm a bit blown away with the improvement in sound quality. There's some popping and clicking from time to time (it's beta after all) but overall the sound quality is simply stunning. It really tightened up the imaging and improved overall clarity. Some recordings that I used to have a hard time listening to actually sound pretty good now. I've gone through a few recordings to make sure I wasn't just imagining things and there's a substantial improvement across the board. Definitely worth the download if you own the card.

 

[Face]

I'm using the Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim and use the digital coax connection to my DAC for 2 channel playback, HDMI to my prepro for movie playback. Since the last set of drivers I've been able to export 192k/24 via digital coax to my W4S DAC-2. Needless to say, I'm very pleased with the results and this card in general.

 

[bogdanuk]

Hi, i have this fantastic Asus Xonar Essence STX and it works very well. The driver version i installed is 6.12.8.1773. All i want is to upgrade the driver. The question is i must uninstall the current driver before installing the latest driver ? The latest driver has everything from the previous drivers ? thank you !!!

 

[5th element]

Usually it is better to completely uninstall the drivers before installing a new set. I am running W7 x64 and the beta version of the drivers that were detailed at the start of this thread work far better then the latest non beta release. In actual fact I couldn't get ASIO to work at all with the current release, whereas it works almost flawlessly with the beta build >.< I wish Asus would get their act together and release proper drivers for this thing that include a low latency monitoring function too.

 

[bogdanuk]

I think i will keep the actual driver (6.12.8.1773 - vista driver) for the moment or at least until Asus will release a new beta driver after the latest driver 6.12.8.1973. Right now everything works perfect together with my Razer Mako 2.1 using the RCA cables (a real shame for this 2.1 sistem for not having optical out).Wma files sounds amazing with this combination.

 

[jmansion]

Multi-channel ASIO output?

Apologies for extreme stupidity with this - but how would one use an 8-channel ASIO stream with Xonar? (I'm interested in active software crossover for stereo)

Would this suggest an HDAV1.3 using an HT receiver as the DAC and amp combo? Or decoding to analogue in (say) an Audiolab HT control amp and then using conventional power amps? That would actually be rather cost effective it seems - interesting! (At least 'cost effective' without considering the Audiolab and seperate power amps anyway)

Or only by adding the H6?

I wish these things did HDMI1.4 and ARC. I could see a way to junk the HT amp completely - or at least kick it out of my HT setup and use it for crossover prototyping.

 

[Mark_A_W]

Just so you guys know, there are 3rd party drivers for the Xonar cards - based on the Asus ones, but "fixed".

I run them and they work well.

UNi Xonar brainbit | Unified Xonar Drivers