I have been spending a bit more quality time with the ASUS Xonar Essence One and in spite of the fact that I am an audio noob I appear to have used it rather efficiently. However, the big test came about this morning when I had to hold a serious of conference calls over the internet.
I often have issues with sound when I use my headphone and microphone set for interviews via Skype, particularly sound quality when I do playback. The problem is that if I don’t hear what the interviewee is saying clearly, then I won’t get it right and that would be a Very Bad Thing.
It was literally at the eleventh hour when I remembered to set everything to go through the Xonar Essence One instead of my usual whacking it into the PC. Fortunately slotting everything in was easy enough. For my first conference call I used the Xonar and there were actually no issues with them hearing me clearly – a common problem with Skype. Although I know that the sheer number of factors that influence that have little to do with the sound card, I did see it as something of a good luck charm.
My second call, this morning, was not so great. I went through the PC instead of the Xonar Essence One and, apparently, sounded as if I was in the bath. Not quite the impression you want to give in a meeting… I also had issues with crackle and poor signal quality from their end.
This mean that transcribing the meeting was going to be tricky – a person can spend hours replaying the same section just to hear a single word. And this is where the Xonar Essence became my best friend in the whole world.
Using the upsampling tech and all the fancy knobs and levers on the Xonar Essence One, I was able to adjust the quality of the recording to the point where words were almost 60% clearer without distortion. What a pleasure. And what a difference!
An audiophile reading this may start sobbing into his or her coffee, but let me tell you, I’d get this gadget just for that trick alone.