This is a review and detailed measurements of the EVGA NU Audio Pro 7.1 Surround DAC, headphone amplifier and ADC. It was kindly purchased new by a member and drop shipped to me. It costs US $300 on Amazon including free shipping.
I like the slick coloring and logo:
But I hate, hate, hate dealing with internal sound cards! This one even made me dig up a SATA cable for extra power! It took me half hour to get it into my gaming PC which had nice and neat cabling before I cut off all the tie-wraps to wire this thing.
And this was just the main card. To get the surround channels, you need to insert yet another PCIE card in there:
And then you need to put in a jumper display port cable to make the two talk to each other. By the time I was done, I was in bad mood but thankfully it all worked once installed their driver package. Unlike the bloatware that Creative ships, this one only had one piece of crapware which was its control panel. As these things go, it was not so crappy although I am unhappy that after I pulled the card out of my PC, the stupid thing auto-started on the next boot. Have to uninstall it now.
Once there, I was pleased to see a solid and working ASIO interface for both input and output which I used exclusively for my testing.
EVGA NU Audio Pro DAC Measurements
We have three different subsystems here so let's start with the DAC portion:
A bit disappointed with output being shy of nominal 2 volts we like to see. And rather high distortion which sets the SINAD exclusively to 100:
As you can see though, performance has improved over the Nu Audio (non-pro) version. Well-designed budget DACs are a good bit ahead of this interface but they cost $99 for two channels and here you are getting 7.1. Dynamic range is likewise good but a step behind:
I was pleased with the clean output of the jitter test:
Intermodulation distortion test showed the higher residual noise level than desktop products:
Linearity is almost perfect:
Filter is the default one we find in DAC chips:
Multitone distortion is pretty good:
Noise+distortion using a wideband test is not as good as it could be:
I ran a spectrum test (not shown) which indicated some noise around 50 kHz so not an audible concern.
Nu Audio Pro Headphone Amplifier Measurements
Just about every PC sound card has what I call a "checklist" headphone amp so imagine my surprise when I saw plenty of power and good noise and distortion:
As you see, where you set the volume control determines how much noise you get. So at lower volumes you should be able to get even lower noise floor.
There is ample power to drive just about any headphone here. Sweeping the load from very low 12 to 600 ohm demonstrates this again:
Nu Audio Pro ADC Measurements
Reversing the tables and feeding the card 1.9 volts (near clipping) gives us very respectable interface:
We are talking pro level performance here with distortion at threshold of hearing:
Dynamic range shows good performance as well:
Frequency response is good enough:
IMD distortion performance was surprisingly good:
Linearity showed more error than I like to see but still better than typical PC sound cards:
THD+N versus frequency once again showed above class performance:
Note that the microphone input is exposed as an extra pair of devices so you have 4 channels of input, not just two!
Conclusions
I went into review of EVGA Nu Audio Pro grumpy but came out happy! No, it doesn't break any records in any one category. But for the first time, it shows competent performance across the three subsystems rivaling purpose built external devices but at much lower cost than the cost of those combined. It is the first time we are seeing this. Engineering had far more power than marketing department it seems!
A lot of you want to have 8 channel output to build surround systems out of PC. Here is your solution at bargain price.
I am happy to recommend the EVGA Nu Audio Pro.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I like the slick coloring and logo:
But I hate, hate, hate dealing with internal sound cards! This one even made me dig up a SATA cable for extra power! It took me half hour to get it into my gaming PC which had nice and neat cabling before I cut off all the tie-wraps to wire this thing.
And this was just the main card. To get the surround channels, you need to insert yet another PCIE card in there:And then you need to put in a jumper display port cable to make the two talk to each other. By the time I was done, I was in bad mood but thankfully it all worked once installed their driver package. Unlike the bloatware that Creative ships, this one only had one piece of crapware which was its control panel. As these things go, it was not so crappy although I am unhappy that after I pulled the card out of my PC, the stupid thing auto-started on the next boot. Have to uninstall it now.
Once there, I was pleased to see a solid and working ASIO interface for both input and output which I used exclusively for my testing.
EVGA NU Audio Pro DAC Measurements
We have three different subsystems here so let's start with the DAC portion:
A bit disappointed with output being shy of nominal 2 volts we like to see. And rather high distortion which sets the SINAD exclusively to 100:
As you can see though, performance has improved over the Nu Audio (non-pro) version. Well-designed budget DACs are a good bit ahead of this interface but they cost $99 for two channels and here you are getting 7.1. Dynamic range is likewise good but a step behind:
I was pleased with the clean output of the jitter test:
Intermodulation distortion test showed the higher residual noise level than desktop products:
Linearity is almost perfect:
Filter is the default one we find in DAC chips:
Multitone distortion is pretty good:
Noise+distortion using a wideband test is not as good as it could be:
I ran a spectrum test (not shown) which indicated some noise around 50 kHz so not an audible concern.
Nu Audio Pro Headphone Amplifier Measurements
Just about every PC sound card has what I call a "checklist" headphone amp so imagine my surprise when I saw plenty of power and good noise and distortion:
As you see, where you set the volume control determines how much noise you get. So at lower volumes you should be able to get even lower noise floor.
There is ample power to drive just about any headphone here. Sweeping the load from very low 12 to 600 ohm demonstrates this again:
Nu Audio Pro ADC Measurements
Reversing the tables and feeding the card 1.9 volts (near clipping) gives us very respectable interface:
We are talking pro level performance here with distortion at threshold of hearing:
Dynamic range shows good performance as well:
Frequency response is good enough:
IMD distortion performance was surprisingly good:
Linearity showed more error than I like to see but still better than typical PC sound cards:
THD+N versus frequency once again showed above class performance:
Note that the microphone input is exposed as an extra pair of devices so you have 4 channels of input, not just two!
Conclusions
I went into review of EVGA Nu Audio Pro grumpy but came out happy! No, it doesn't break any records in any one category. But for the first time, it shows competent performance across the three subsystems rivaling purpose built external devices but at much lower cost than the cost of those combined. It is the first time we are seeing this. Engineering had far more power than marketing department it seems!
A lot of you want to have 8 channel output to build surround systems out of PC. Here is your solution at bargain price.
I am happy to recommend the EVGA Nu Audio Pro.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
