Asus XONAR ESSENCE STX - Sound Card - 192 kHz- Manuals

v Notices Federal Communications Commission Statement This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions:• This device may not cause harmful interference.• This device must accept any interference received including interference that may cause un...

vi This symbol of the crossed out wheeled bin indicates that the product (electrical and electronic equipment) should not be placed in municipal waste. Check local regulations for disposal of electronic products. Safety information • Before installing the device on a motherboard, carefully read all ...

vii About this guide This user guide contains the information you need when installing and configuring the motherboard. How this guide is organized This guide contains the following parts: • Chapter 1: Product introduction This chapter describes the features of the Xonar Essense ST. • Chapter 2: Get...

1 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Package contents • ASUS Xonar Essence ST PCI audio card• 3.5mm-to-RCA cable x1• 3.5mm-to-6.3mm adapter x1• S/PDIF TOSLINK optical adapter x1• Support CD• Audio Precision Test Report System requirements • One PCI slot for the audio card• Microsoft ® Windows ® Vista (32/64bit) ...

5 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Xonar Essence ST card layout 1 Front Right Out port Connect the Right audio cable (red) from your 2/2.1 channel speakers to this port. For multi-channel speaker systems, connect to the Front Right In port on the powered speakers. 2 Front Left Out port Connect the Left audio c...

7 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Before you proceed Read the following notes and precautions before you install the audio card. • Disable the onboard audio device in the BIOS settings or uninstall any other sound cards on your computer. • For BIOS setting or uninstallation of other sound cards, refer to the ...

8 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Connecting to a TV tuner card If you have a traditional PCI TV tuner card on your computer, you may need to connect it to the Xonar Essence ST card to send the tuner card’s sound to your PC speakers. To connect to a TV tuner card: 1. Secure the PCI TV tuner card into the rear...

9 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Installing the audio card driver Ensure that you have installed the VGA card driver before installing the Xonar Essence ST driver. Otherwise, driver installation error may occur. To install the audio card driver: 1. After you have installed the Xonar Essence ST card, turn on ...

10 ASUS Xonar Essence ST 1 Optical adapter Plug the optical TOSLINK adapter into the S/PDIF-Out combo connector. 2 Optical cable Connect your decoder’s S/PDIF-In port to the optical adapter with the TOSLINK optical cable. You can also use a coaxial cable for a S/PDIF connection. Just plug the coaxia...

11 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Connecting stereo headphones The Headphone Out port has a built-in high-quality amplifier to driver headphones. Connect your stereo headphones to the headphone output ports on the Xonar Essence ST card. Headphone Out

12 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Connecting 2/2.1 channel speakers 2 Speakers 2.1 Speakers 1 1 Front Right Out Front Left Out 1 1 Front Left/Right Out The Left/Right Front Out ports have a built-in high-quality amplifier to drive headphones. Connect the 2/2.1 speaker set’s 3.5mm plug to the bundled RCA-to- ...

13 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Connecting a microphone Mic In Front Right Out Front Left Out 1 2 2 1 2 1 Front Left/Right Out port/Headphone port Connect the headphone’s 3.5mm plug to the bundled RCA-to-3.5mm Y cable, and then connect the Left/Right ends to the to Front Left/Right Out ports on the Xonar E...

14 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Connecting Line-In audio sources Line In 1 1 Line Input Jack Connect the CD/MP3 Player or any other Line level analog audio sources to this Line-In port by using the bundled 6.3mm-to-3.5mm adapter for sound recording or real-time Dolby/DTS sound processing through the Monito...

15 ASUS Xonar Essence ST If the icon is not shown on the taskbar, click Start > All Programs > ASUS Xonar Essence ST Audio > Xonar Essence ST Audio Center to launch the Xonar Audio Center. 1 2 4 6 78 9 3 5 Minimize buttonClose button Chapter 4 Xonar Audio Center Xonar Audio Center The Xonar...

17 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Main Setting Sample Rate The sample rate determines the number of audio samples per second that the Digital-to-Analog Converters (DAC) and S/PDIF digital interface will output. The Xonar Essence ST card can support sample rates up to 192KHz (44.1K, 48K, 96K, 192KHz). Usually...

18 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Analog Out mode 123 1 Analog Out The Analog Out setting is used to match your actual speaker setting, such as headphones and 2/2.1 speakers. Xonar Essence ST will play the channels and do the proper 3D/Dolby sound processing accordingly. Select the correct speaker type for y...

19 ASUS Xonar Essence ST SPDIF Out/DDL Xonar Essence ST is capable of outputting Dolby Digital Live, which is a real-time encoder that transcodes any audio, including games and music, into industry- standard Dolby Digital bit-streams on-the-fly. This is ideal for playback through a home theater syst...

20 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Audio Channels (For Vista only) This setting only appears in Windows ® Vista. Windows ® Vista delivers the audio channels to the audio driver according to this setting, no matter what the original audio content is or how many channels they have. Hence, you need to set this i...

21 ASUS Xonar Essence ST 7.1 Virtual Speaker Shifter The 7.1 Virtual Speaker Shifter has the following major features:• Expanding/upmixing audio to 7.1-channel surround sound • Virtualizing 7.1 surround sound over any set of speakers• Shiftable virtual speaker positioning allows you to adjust the be...

23 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Dolby Headphone Dolby Headphone creates a stunning multi-channel surround experience over ordinary stereo headphones for playing 3D games, watching 5.1 DVD movies, and listening to music. Dolby Headphone produces surround sound cues so realistic that you will believe you are...

24 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Dolby Virtual Speaker Dolby Virtual Speaker technology simulates a 5.1-speaker surround sound listening environment from as few as two speakers. Dolby Virtual Speaker also creates a wider two-channel environment during playback of stereo CDs and MP3 content, and when combine...

25 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Mixer/Volume The Mixer feature is designed to control the volume for playback and recording on the Xonar Essence ST. In addition, the Xonar Essence ST also provides a high- quality digital monitoring function for hearing the recorded audio from the speakers. You can also pro...

26 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Recording/Monitoring Volume 7 23 5 1 8 4 6 1 Recording Volume Tab Click this button to show the recording volume page. 2 Left/Right balance This horizontal slider controls the volume between the left and right channels. 3 Recording volume slider Drag this slider down to decr...

28 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Effects Environment Effects Use environment effects to create realistic listening experiences that mimic different environments. There are a total of 27 environment options that can be applied to all 2D sound sources such as music. 1 2 3 1 Default environments These four but...

29 ASUS Xonar Essence ST 10-Band Equalizer The equalizer modifies the audio output for different frequencies, and is used to compensate for deficiencies in your speakers/systems. There are 12 default patterns and you can also customize your own settings. 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 Default equalizer options Click...

30 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Karaoke The Xonar Essence ST provides powerful features for Karaoke, including Key- Shifting, Vocal Cancellation, and Microphone Echo. Key-Shifting changes the pitch of Karaoke background music, and Vocal Cancellation reduces the original vocal in songs and keep the music an...

31 ASUS Xonar Essence ST FlexBass FlexBass, an advanced bass management and enhancement mechanism, allows you to select each satellite speaker’s type for optimal sound performance from the speakers. The Speaker types are: • Small : common speaker that cannot produce low frequencies. • Large : wide-b...

34 ASUS Xonar Essence ST DS3D GX and DSP Modes Xonar Essence ST is introducing an innovative technology –DirectSound 3D Game Extensions v1.0 (DS3D GX 1.0)- to restore DirectSound 3D Hardware acceleration mode and its subsidiary EAX effects on Windows ® Vista for 3D games. Unlike some proprietary API...

36 ASUS Xonar Essence ST VocalFX VocalFX is an innovative voice processing technology to let your voice get into the realistic game landscape (VoiceEX) or to emulate the background scenes in an online chat (ChatEX). It also allows you to change your voice pitch to disguise who you are (Magic Voice)....

37 ASUS Xonar Essence ST For 3D Games 1. Tick the VoiceEX and Local VoiceEX checkboxes. 2. Ensure that you and your team member can talk to each other in the game. For VOIP 1. Click App List . 2. If you do not see your VOIP application in the list, click Add . Ensure that you have installed the late...

38 ASUS Xonar Essence ST 4. Your VOIP application has been added to the list. 5. Tick the ChatEX and Magic Voice checkboxes to chat online. When you select any of the VocalFX functions, this message appears: This message implies that the record device is set to microphone. Ensure that the GX functio...

39 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Troubleshooting I cannot install the audio card driver on my computer. • Ensure that you have properly plugged the audio card in the PCI slot on your motherboard. • Check that the Windows hardware device manager has discovered a multimedia audio device. If no device is found...

40 ASUS Xonar Essence ST • Check if you are using a Dolby Digital Live encoder through the S/PDIF output. If this is the case, the analog output is muted to get rid of any interference between your digital speaker system and analog speakers or headphones. • Try rebooting your computer. I cannot hear...

41 ASUS Xonar Essence ST I found no sound effects when playing 96K or 192KHz sound sources. • Currently Xonar Essence ST effects including Dolby supports common 44.1K, 48KHz sound sources processing and provides high-definition audio (96K/192KHz) in hi-fidelity playback. This is also usually the beh...

42 ASUS Xonar Essence ST Does the Xonar Essence ST support EAX on Windows ® Vista? Yes, Xonar Essence ST supports EAX2.0 on both Windows ® XP and Vista through the innovative DirectSound3D Game EXtensions v1.0 (DS3D GX 1.0) technology. Why do I need Dolby for PC games? • Dolby Digital and Pro-Logic ...

43 ASUS Xonar Essence ST When I selected “Digital Output device” as the default audio playback device on Windows ® Vista, the sound effects and UI controls do not work. For Xonar sound cards on Windows ® Vista, there are usually two audio devices: Speakers and Digital Out Device such as S/PDIF. Spea...

45 ASUS Xonar Essence ST ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. (Asia Pacific) Address 15 Li-Te Road, Peitou, Taipei, Taiwan 11259 Website www.asus.com.tw Technical Support Telephone +886228943447 Support Fax +886228907698 Software download support.asus.com* ASUS COMPUTER INTERNATIONAL (America) Address 800 Corporat...