ASUS is certainly trying to challenge Creative as the leading sound card innovator with its Xonar series. The latest model stands out in a new way though. It comes equipped with ASUS’ Splendid video HD video processor and is the world’s first HDMI 1.3a compliant audio/video enhancement card. Xonar HDAV 1.3 features both Protected Audio Playback Systems (PAPS) and full Advanced Access Content System (AACS) certifications, which are required to play Blu-ray audio at its true bit-rate. Without them, the audio will be down-sampled to DVD quality (48K/16bit)when played on a PC. Thus with it, you will be able to take full advantage of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio for high-fidelity sounds at up to 24bit and 96-192KHz.
“The PCI Express based Xonar HDAV1.3 is designed from the ground up for next generation home theater PCs (HTPC); and is equipped with the proprietary AV200 audio processor and HDMI1.3a certified Splendid HD video processor – making it capable of delivering the highest quality 7.1 channel 192K linear pulse code modulation (LPCM) audio and high definition video through the HDMI port. “
ASUS claims to have used a grounding it calls HyperGrounding to achieve a Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of 120dB and peerless 0.0004% distortion, for all eight channels. Most sound cards focus on delivering a a high SNR for the front speakers, while the rest of the channels have to settle for less.
The Splendid HD video processor made it’s debut with ASUS’ upgradeable Splendid MA3850M, which was based on a mobile version of the Radeon HD 3850. Quoting our previous report;
“The color processor is intended to improve image quality without increased CPU load. The processor sports a 7-bit color enhancement, 12-bit gamma correction, real-time 2D peaking and dynamic contrast engine. It automatically selects the best possible display mode depending on what you’re doing – e.g. Photo Mode, Video Mode, or Game Mode.”
The audio is handled by the AV200 sound processor that routes the the signals through the high-quality components; oversampling digital to analog converters (Burr-Frown PCM1796, 123 dB SNR), National Semiconductor LM4562 operational amplifiers (opamp), and analog-to-digital (Cirrus Logic CS5381, 120 dB SNR) converter. The Xonar HDAV1.3 main card has two HDMI connectors (in and out), two RCA jacks (front L/R), digital S/PDIF (Coax/TOSLINK combo), AUX in and a shared mini-jack for the microphone and line-in. The Deluxe version also comes with a daughter card with analog outputs for the remaining six channels.
For the gamers, ASUS has the DS3D 2.0 engine which allows for precise emulation of EAX 5.0 and 3D gaming audio in Windows Vista. ASUS even hints at the problems with Creative sound cards in its press release saying that Xonar HDAV1.3 “enables the latest EAX and DirectSound HW after installation, with no additional driver patches, game modifications, or OpenAL required.”
Xonar HDAV1.3 comes bundled with some software: TotalMedia Theatre: 7.1-ch Blu-ray disc/HD-DVD/DVD movie player, ASUS Gamer OSD: On-screen-display utility for gaming, and RightMark Audio Analyzer: Easy but powerful software intended for testing the quality of audio equipments. The accessories consist of -DVI-to-HDMI cable, HDMI cable, Stereo RCA to 3.5mm cable, S/PDIF TOSLINK optical adaptor.
