Testing:
Once I had the Xonar U3 setup and running I noticed I had no sound. The device automatically disabled the speakers built into both laptops used for testing. While I consider this a minor annoyance and likely unavoidable, for some high end laptops with quality speaker systems, it would be a disadvantage to force the user to have external speakers or headphones.
When deciding what I was going to test I settled on a few tests to see if the average user would get noticeable performance gains from the device and enlisted the aid of my wife as an untrained ear for verification. First, I wanted to see if the Hyper Grounding Technology performed as advertised. Anyone who has played a CD or DVD in more than one laptop has likely experienced the distortion and added noise caused by many laptop headphone jacks being placed too near the CD/DVD player or the internal power supply. Some companies are especially bad about this, and most cheaper laptops and netbooks suffer from this to one extent or another. Would the Xonar U3 actually clean up the sound in this situation?
Having tried the device in my own laptops, I will say the sound is cleaner and crisper than the onboard sound. In addition, unlike the onboard solutions, when there is a quiet spot in the music (as in many classical pieces) with the Xonar you actually get to 'hear' silence. This is an easily noticed improvement for many.
Next up, I wanted to see if it would properly provide 8.1 surround sound to my home theater via the Toslink adapter provided. The easiest way to check this was to put a DVD in my laptop and check the settings:
Sure enough the sound from the movie was routed through the card to my home theater and all 9 channels operated correctly. More importantly, the sound was as clear and clean as if I had run the cable directly from my DVD player or PS3. This test was repeated with a couple of EAX enabled PC games (Dragon Age Origins, in the one case) and again full clear surround sound through the home theater system.
The next step was to check the claims this device would provide emulated 8.1 surround from stereo media. I was initially disappointed when I realized the NFL Game Rewind streaming content was in stereo only even though the original broadcasts were largely done in surround sound. (At least our local team is). However, this turns out to be a perfect way to test the virtual surround sound experience. So off to watch a football game I go and..... it works! Oddly enough, the surround sound produced by the Xonar U3's Dolby Virtual processing was almost identical to the surround sound experience I get while watching the game live. This prompts me to wonder if the U3 is just that good, or if the supposed surround sound in the live broadcasts is actually emulated in the first place.
On to the next test... I disabled the SPDIF output and plugged in a good set of headphones. Once again, I noticed how much quieter the quiets are when using the Xonar U3 as opposed to the onboard sound. After rerunning the above tests using the headphones I noticed a few differences. First, during play back of a home burned CD, the volume leveling was more noticeable with the headphones on than through the home theater. While I noticed the Xonar U3 balanced the volume of the different songs on the CD when played through the speakers in the room, the effect was both more pronounced and more welcome when I was wearing the headphones. The same effect was clear in the silent parts of the classical music tested and the stillness in certain areas of the game tested as well. I also noticed the volume was slightly better in the headphones than with the onboard sound. Most onboard sound cards have a preamp, but can't take full advantage of it without risking distortion if the output is used for anything other than headphones. The Xonar U3 doesn't appear to suffer from this, likely due to the device being designed to use either headphones or the SPDIF output in the included software, and due to the enhanced grounding. As I don't have access to a pair of surround sound headphones at this time, I was unable to test this feature of the device.
Finally it's time to test the extras.
The effectiveness of the VocalFX function was very disappointing in my brief experience playing with it. I could hear very little difference in my voice when monitoring the output, and those who I asked to listen to me couldn't tell the difference either. It's possible, with the 40 minutes or so I spent playing with the function, I didn't manage to get the settings correct. But, for a feature like this, it's supposed to be fun not work. If it's that hard to get it working right, most aren't going to bother. I was told by those listening there was an audible hum from the microphone. Further testing showed this to be a 60Hz power hum, apparently caused by the powering of the device through the USB port. This hum remained in the microphone input in every configuration I tested the device in. I went back and checked both my laptops and all the USB ports on them.
The Karaoke functions however, worked wonderfully. The Vocal cancellation worked as well as any software I've used to try to pull vocals off a track and did so without noticeably distorting playback. The Key shifting feature worked as well, though if you shift the key down more than a notch or 2 the distortion became noticeable. Shifting the key upward (more useful for my wife than I) did not introduce noticeable distortion in any of the 4 half steps up the software allows and was very clean. With the power hum in the microphone you won't be recording any demos through this device, but you should be able to make a backing track with it.
