Sound cards are still worth budgeting for if you value your music, your movies or your gaming. But not having the ‘cans’ to get that audio out and to your ears is just as important. With that in mind, ASUS has got together with Sennheiser and bundled its latest Xonar sound card, the Xense One, with Sennheiser’s latest PC350 headset.
ASUS Xonar Xense Sound Card
The Xense Edition package is specifically designed for FPS gaming – the kind of guys who sit rooted to their screen and are a butt-twinge away from fragging you. The PC350s are high quality closed back ‘phones, so they isolate the gamer from his or her environment, keeping focus entirely on the game itself.
ASUS Xonar Xense Sound Card
ASUS engineers apparently tried some 1,000 headphone combinations in the pursuit of best matching their card to a perfect headset. In their words, the Sennheiser PC350 ‘proved perfect‘.
No wonder – because each speaker is a huge 38mm, extremely strong Neodymium magnet that gives a frequency response of 10 Hz – 26,000 Hz – outside of the human 20-20,000Hz range even.
The Xonar Xense itself is a seriously ripped sound card too – and it needs to be, because with respect it’s difficult enough already to tear people away from “good enough” onboard sound. No doubt because years of “mp3 abuse” have sensually diluted many of us – something I suffer from myself.
But those serious about their gaming already spill out for an expensive graphics card, CPU and high performance motherboard, why not complete the package and go for an improved aural sensation as well?
The Xonar Xense makes use of EMI shielding that protects the audio card from nearby PC components and other electronic devices. This is necessary, since PC hardware is notorious for spewing EM noise into the surrounding environment. The sound is also processed by ASUS’ own AV100 chipset common to all Xonars.
With it, the sound now remains consistent and reproduced how it was meant to be heard. The heavy duty 6.5mm studio-style audio jacks offer better conveyance than standard 3.5mm plugs by giving more connector contact area, further ensuring gamers get the full spectrum audio.
Both card and headphones include support for Dolby Headphone 5.1 as well as ASUS’ own Xonar GX2.5 audio engine that can use the latest of Creative’s EAX technology.
For those more techy, the full specs are as follows:
