I held off writing about the Asus Xonar Essence Muses One Edition until I had burnt it in over 100 hours (I stared Tuesday afternoon and listened Sunday afternoon), and I feel that it may need three or so more days. I will try a very brief description of the sound thus far, and defer a final opinion for another 100 hours or so.
However, my impressions as of Sunday were very, very consistent with Michael Lavorgna at Audiostream. Warm, great tuneful bass, extremely NON fatiguing, great tone and body, extremely likwable midrange, Also, it doesn't get the 'air' around instruments as well, as a tradeoff. Its as if you were sitting really close to the performers.
Mostly, no digital nasties though clipping artifacts and tape saturation still come through, if they exist.
The headphone amp works well with the Sennheiser HD-800, and I thought, very, very well with the AKG K-701. The last part was a surprise, as I could never get anything to really sound good with those. These can play loud, though I still wonder about the really hard to drive ones.
I did listen to just the dac without the headphone amp by running it to a Bryston BHA-1 , and it seems clear that they voiced it with the synergy of the built in headamp in mind. The other thing I did notice was that the line output to the BHA-1 was a little low, even with the line output volume control completely turned up. I have rarely had to run the Bryston BHA-1 past 12 o clock, and this was at 2 o clock with a balanced cable to HD-800 headphones, and was still below what I normally would run ath 10 o' clock with the Mydac.
Thats the first cut, if anyone is interested. I will get more details as it settles in, I have hopes that it will step back just a little bit, given time.
