Aiman Farooq from Michigan State University reviews the ASUS Xonar U3
Do you spend a good portion of your day listening to music, while studying or just relaxing? Are you a hardcore gamer always trying to boost your Kill/Death ratio?
Do you work on multimedia projects like short films or maybe you DJ on the weekends? If none of those things apply to you, first off I’m skeptical that you’re actually a college student, secondly if none of that describes you then this review may not be so important.
However for the rest (see: majority) I’ve spent some quality time putting the ASUS Xonar U3 through the paces and it may just be the greatest thing for your ears since earmuffs.
The Xonar U3 is an external USB Sound Card. Now this review is going to have two parts, the first part is where I nerd out and tell you about all the nitty gritty technical details of how this will enhance your listening experience and the second part will be where I’ll explain just some of the cool ways you can use it!
The Xonar U3 plugs into any laptop or netbook through a USB connection
Right off the bat the most obvious thing you’ll notice when you start using the device is that it has amazing frequency response. The response is from 1.1 Vrms full-scale output voltage for >32 ohms load. This means that its able to properly drive higher quality headphones and speakers.
For those of you, who like myself, work on audio and video projects frequently and have invested in some studio grade headphones you know how big of deal this can be. Running headphones like those out of a normal headphone jack on a laptop is a lot like having a sports car with the engine of a compact.
I feel like ASUS was specifically thinking about students when they were making this device. In the box you’ll find a USB extension cable so that you can make sure to have enough room to plug this thing in despite any other adapters you have hooked up. You also have an S/PDIF TOSLINK optical adapter so that you can utilize that combo output jack.
The Xonar U3 makes both audio and microphone inputs clear, crisper, and louder
Lastly you’ll find the Xonar U3 itself, it comes with everything you need to get up and running without having to make another run to your local electronics store! That’s enough technical mumbo-jumbo though.
Now we’ve talked all about the techy stuff but what can I do with the U3? Well for starters you can play your music loud, and when I say loud I mean LOUD!
The driving power and great frequency response will help you to play your music on more powerful speakers with little to no distortion. For reference I usually play my music as loud as I can on my speakers before the distortion hits, when I started using the Xonar I kept pumping the volume up until I hit the max and still no distortion, the music was coming through loud enough that I could feel my desk shaking!
At the same time I was hearing little details that I had never even noticed in some of my favorite songs. The two sides of the audio channels were much more defined and I could hear the proper decay of guitar strings without any drop off.
You will notice the biggest quality boost with compressed online audio and videos
The biggest difference I noticed was in online videos, I listened to some songs and watched some video game trailers and with the U3 I was able to isolate individual instruments, backup singers, and more. Now speaking of video games this sound card is great for the gamer on the go.
I loaded up an Battlefield 3 to test it out and while it didn’t quite improve my admittedly pretty bad aim I felt like I knew what was going on around me, when I was getting shot I was able to tell where exactly people were firing from and so I was able to react more quickly.
Serious gamers out there know that this can be the difference between getting the drop on your enemy and getting fragged. Sometimes you’re playing on a team and I’m sure everyone has had that teammate with the awful microphone, you don’t even want to hear them talk because it’s so static-y and incomprehensible.
With the input jack the magic voice feature will help you to send clearer sounding voice through for gaming and other VoIP applications. I imagine this may be one of the well kept secrets of some pro gamers out there.
What are some other cool things you can do with the Xonar U3? If you’re like myself and do a lot of multimedia work you’ll be able to get more powerful sound processing for recording and playback, it might even be pretty great for you amateur musicians out there who are looking to start recording some tracks.
For me however another great thing is that I can take this and turn my laptop in to a DJ console. With the use of an external sound card I can use free DJ’ing software like Mixx and plug in to high powered speakers and I’m good to go. I can use the Xonar to drive the party speakers while plugging in my headphones in to another port on my computer to cue music up like all the big shot DJ’s you might see in movies or on TV.
I’ve only covered a small amount of the potential of the Xonar U3 and I’m sure there’s plenty more you can do with it, I’d love to hear what some people plan to use it for but my verdict is if you’re someone who appreciates exceptional sound quality or you’re one of those people who has invested a significant amount of money on some great headphones or speakers whether it be for music, games, or anything else then it’s a no-brainer.
You need the Xonar U3 to get the most out of your audio. Enter to win one now from ASUS CampusLife.
Aiman Farooq is a Media & Information Technology student at Michigan State University.
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