ASUS Essence One DAC / headphone amp upgrade with Burson Discrete V4 opamp

Published on

wpadmin
May 8, 2014

Post Info

Feedbacks - V4 SS Opamp
ASUS Essence One

No problems at all with wiring for the Asus Xonar Essence one but sound become gorgeous (with the discrete opamp). And with a new larger case, adding a second case with a separate PSU totally rebuilt with Belleson regulators and changing all electrolytic capacitors with Simic II you can forget any other DAC and listening only music.

This was only the first step, long wires are necessary to arrange the discrete opamps in the narrow space of the One’s case.

The System

Listening with

ASUS Essence One · DAC / headphone amp: USB DAC / headphone amp (8x upsampling, swappable opamps) · discontinued

Frequency response: <10 Hz – 48 kHz (-3 dB, 24/192)
Output voltage: RCA 2 V · XLR 4 V
Inputs: USB; coaxial; Toslink (44.1-192 kHz, upsampling to 352.8 / 384 kHz)
Outputs: XLR; dual RCA; 6.3 mm headphone (7 Vrms full scale; LME49600 buffer)
DAC / chipset: TI PCM1795; C-Media CM6631/CM6631A USB; AKM AK4113 S/PDIF; ADI ADSP-21261 DSP
Other: SNR 120 dB (A); THD+N -110 dB (1 kHz, -3 dB); headphones up to 600 Ω

^[1]

Burson

Burson V4 Opamp · Discrete opamp (single / dual) · discontinued

Supply voltage: ±5 V to ±20 V (absolute maximum)
Gain-bandwidth product: 50 MHz (at 100 kHz)
Dual or single: dual and single
Package: dual 40 mm × 16 mm × 20 mm; single 40 mm × 16 mm × 14 mm; 8-pin

^{[2] [3]}

Specs from manufacturer data unless a source below says otherwise. “calc.” values are worked out from those figures (V = √(P × R); 110 dB SPL used as a loud reference level). Gear listed without specs is not in our spec library yet.