• Registered: 2011-06-04
  • Posts: 2

Topic: RME HDSP 9652 vs Asus Xonar Essense ST for home system.

Hello!
Maybe this forum is no a right place for my question, but I think you can help me.

I want to buy a DAC / soundcard for my home stereo system. Now I use Yamaha CDX-10000 CD-player as a source for it, and I want to replace it because it's not very useful to write a CD when I want to listen the music. I want to listen music in high quality directly from my PC (actually turned to mediasever) without need to burn any CDs.

I was strongly adviced to take a look on two products on the market: ASUSTek's Xonar Essens XT and RME HDSP 9652. Your product is $500 more expensive than ASUSTek's one. Please, tell me wether I can get any benefits of choosing RME (may people say that it's worth additional 500USD and the sound difference will be great)? 

I'm going to use the device for listening only, not for mixing or music production.

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,558

Re: RME HDSP 9652 vs Asus Xonar Essense ST for home system.

The person who advised you did not take into account that the HSP 9652 is an entirely digital card without DA conversion. It is a multichannel audio card, not really what you need here.

These two RME cards would be suited to the puropse, if you want an internal solution:
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_hdspe_aio.php
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_hdsp_9632.php

You could also try this external USB audio device, which has excellent converters:
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_babyface.php

That said, I'd personally keep using the YAMAHA CDX-10000... cool
Amazing machine...;)

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • Registered: 2011-06-04
  • Posts: 2

Re: RME HDSP 9652 vs Asus Xonar Essense ST for home system.

Thank you for the response, Daniel!

RME Support wrote:

These two RME cards would be suited to the puropse, if you want an internal solution:
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_hdspe_aio.php
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_hdsp_9632.php

I'll take a closer look at both of them, thank for the advice.

RME Support wrote:

You could also try this external USB audio device, which has excellent converters:
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_babyface.php

It seems to be too expensive for me, so I will probably choose from one of the devices listed above.

RME Support wrote:

That said, I'd personally keep using the YAMAHA CDX-10000... :cool:
Amazing machine...;)

Yes, it's excellent :)) Actually, I'll never replace it completely by anything else.