ASUS XONAR Essence STX PCIe Audio Card

We used several scenarios to test Asus Xonar . First we ran Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.2 to generate specific performance data using a cable loopback from the line outs to the line in. Then we switched cables to connect from headphone out to the line in port. As per Rightmark's instructions we set the levels to be as near to -1 db as possible.

Testing the onboard Realtek HD audio and the M-Audio 1010 LT we used the same scenario except we used a loopback cable to measure from line out to line in only. As the M-Audio is a multichannel card we chose the first two available RCA line outs and line ins.

On the Asus Xonar and M-Audio 1010 LT since they featured ASIO drivers we used the Centrance ASIO Latency Test Utility v3.7 to measure performance as samples and time delay for round trip.

For the Asus Xonar and onboard Realtek HD audio we ran a games demo test utilizing Half Life 2 EP2 and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars with Audio set to maximum and minumum settings and output measured by FPS (frames per second) yield.

For subjective testing we used Sony MDR V700DJ and AKG K702 Headphones and Alesis Monitor One MK2 self powered near field studio monitors

3x 300GB Velociraptor (Intel Raid 5)

Windows XP Pro SP3