EVGA NU Audio Pro Review (Internal Sound Card)

[tomchr]

@amirm You can probably get rid of the timeout errors in the Line In THD sweep by tweaking the settling parameters. I often end up bumping the settling timeout up to 10 seconds. You can find it in the Advanced Settings for the sweep (roughly centred on the Sweep screen).

Tom

 

[guenthi_r]

Not really an upgrade for the good old Asus Xonar STX

 

[AlexScan]

The specialized CA20K DSP/controller on bona fide PCI and PCIE X-Fi cards are actually pretty advanced, as described in the attached PDF files.

Also, with Daniel_K drivers, these cards still have good support for recent Windows.

Yes X-Fi is state of the art chip in the era of PCI cards... and CS4398 DAC for all channels too !

I have already the latest DK driver, works fine on Win10.

My soundcard have some hardware problem because of age (for unknown reason the card dissapear from peripherical)

Found two FFT:

 

[Xyrium]

Wow, very nice performance from this little card.

BTW, is it perhaps time to recalibrate the SINAD chart, and eliminate the bottom 20% or so?

 

[amirm]

BTW, is it perhaps time to recalibrate the SINAD chart, and eliminate the bottom 20% or so?

We have to do something. The graphs has over 4000 pixels horizontally and keeps growing! Vertically it would go on forever.

 

[Xyrium]

We have to do something. The graphs has over 4000 pixels horizontally and keeps growing! Vertically it would go on forever.

Indeed. As the SOTA moves all of the other stuff downward, the bar has to be reset. I vote for slicing off everything below 100, and then splitting the stuff below that to another chart, which would not be posted in the reviews, but stored in "the archive".

 

[Doodski]

We have to do something. The graphs has over 4000 pixels horizontally and keeps growing! Vertically it would go on forever.

Perhaps making a spreadsheet and exporting it to <.pdf> and then the ASR users can download the entire pdf to view it. The cellular telephone users will like that too I imagine because it will be vertically oriented rather than horizontal.

 

[AnalogSteph]

My soundcard have some hardware problem because of age (for unknown reason the card dissapear from peripherical)

Does yours have a heatsink on the X-Fi chip? Those without apparently are quite unreliable. Not sure whether its just solder joints or actual internal degradation.

 

[bennetng]

Does yours have a heatsink on the X-Fi chip? Those without apparently are quite unreliable. Not sure whether its just solder joints or actual internal degradation.

I have both X-Fi XtremeMusic (PCI) and X-Fi Titanium HD (PCIE). I bought the former one in 2005 and the latter one in 2013. Both cards don't have heatsink, actaually, one of them even has a sticker on the chip. Both cards have no problem in device detection, but the 2005 card's headphone output is damaged and has increased distortion.

If @AlexScan bought the Elite Pro in 2005, then he has been using it for 15 years already, a glorified death I would say. By the way, the FFT plots he attached should be from this review, apart from RMAA loopback, it also contains Audio Precision 2700 (the best one at that time) measurements.
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi.html

 

[ShiZo]

Wow, I never thought this day would come.

 

[Brain]

The 'high' distortion of this audio card is due to the AD8056 opamps, swapping to OPA1612 will greatly improve THD and SINAD if you want that.

 

[somebodyelse]

The 'high' distortion of this audio card is due to the AD8056 opamps, swapping to OPA1612 will greatly improve THD and SINAD if you want that.

Measurements to back that up?

 

[Vasr]

Measurements to back that up?

Or you could look up the spec sheets of the two chips.

The TI opamp chip has better specs than the AD chip. It is like replacing a DAC chip with a better measuring chip if you could. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[mansr]

Measurements to back that up?

I can believe it. The AD8056 is a video amplifier with wide bandwidth (300 MHz) but relatively poor distortion figures (by audio standards). The published specs are difficult to compare since their frequency ranges barely overlap. That said, the OPA1612 seems to be far better within its intended operating range (audio). Of course, something entirely different could still be limiting the performance of the card as a whole.

 

[somebodyelse]

I should have been been more verbose. I'd like to know if @Brain is saying this on the basis of having made the substitution in this product, with measurements to share, has swapped and made controlled or uncontrolled listening tests only, or whether it's just plausible suggestion based on looking at the datasheets but hasn't actually been tested.

 

[Vasr]

I should have been been more verbose. I'd like to know if @Brain is saying this on the basis of having made the substitution in this product, with measurements to share, has swapped and made controlled or uncontrolled listening tests only, or whether it's just plausible suggestion based on looking at the datasheets but hasn't actually been tested.

He made no assertions on audibility.

Not sure he measured standing on one leg, with one hand pointing to his nose either.

 

[capslock]

Here is a hi-res picture of AKM chip for L and R on the main board. The Tantalum ones are the gold with stripe (EC102 and EC103) on either side of the AKM chip I believe.
View attachment 108081

Interestingly, the daughter-board for the other 6 channels using the same AKM chip do not have the Tantalum capacitors.
View attachment 108093

Why would they use these copious numbers of through hole resistors? Street cred? They have their use if there is a significant voltage swing across them, but I doubt this is the case here, and there are also high wattage, low tempco surface mount options these days.

 

[capslock]

The biggest problem (IMHO) with tantalum capacitors is that tantalum is a conflict mineral.

That is true. On top of that, tantalum caps are not good for signal coupling, only for supply decoupling. They were unrivalled for decoupling 30 years ago, but we have very good alternatives today, be it low-ESR electrolytics (polymer or not) or ceramic chip capacitors.

 

[howard416]

Honestly, nothing to complain about at all (EDIT: if you can make the 3.5 mm jacks work for you). Seems like it would be an perfect value solution for anyone looking to run PC-based active DSP.

"High distortion" might be relatively accurate when compared to SOTA DACs, but to me -100 dB on H3 and basically nothing else is way past the point of audibility especially since the multi-tone is so clean.

 

[JDM]

Measurements to back that up?

Audio Note tested Op-amp https://forums.evga.com/EVGA-NU-Audio-Pro-Certified-Opamp-Rolling-List-m3027421.aspx

OPA1612 SINAD=111!!! link to measurements at the end of 1 post