Disassembly ASUS Xonar U1
It doesn’t take a long time to disassembly this tiny cute ASUS Xonar U1. So I decide to do it on my short spare time.
The first thing to do when disassembly the ASUS Xonar U1 is to remove the big volume control button as shown below.
Then prepare to see amazing thing inside.
It’s a small USB sound card. As you can see from the photo below. The input is USB, then filtered directly into two big 1500uF 6.3 Volt main capacitors. The main “brain” is suspected as CMedia Nitrogen D2.
After that, remove the glued rubber from the bottom.
Remove two screws from the bottom side. Then you can see the bottom side of the ASUS Xonar U1 main PCB.
Remove another screw and you can release the PCB from the chassis.
The bottom side picture of the PCB. Almost all of them are SMDs components. Not many stuffs to be modded here.
The top side of the PCB. The main line output also can provide enough amplification for your headphone and also acts as SPDIF output. There are also some capacitors. From my short time analysis, these capacitors most likely used for signal coupling. The size is quite small, around 2.2 uF.
The ASUS labeled UA100 is most likely the CMedia Nitrogen D2. You can see also a 12.000 MHz clock. The same standard used in the CMedia chipset.
The bad side so far? ASUS only implements 48 kHz internal sampling rate and no option for 44.1 kHz. I think the CMedia Nitrogen D2 is able to do 44.1 kHz. So this should be driver related problem only (I hope so!).
March 4th, 2008 at 9:27 am
wow, at last. the cloak revealed!!
but, how but the SQ itself compare to the creative Xmod which you reviewed previously?
have been waiting unpatiently since i want to buy an external SoundCard… :p
March 4th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
XMod has “thinner” sound… Xonar has thicker sound (well, it’s a CMedia “signature” anyway)…
March 5th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
oww.. if it’s CMedia based, so why does it can only handle on 48kHz??
pity of it, since most of my ’source’ are still using 44.1kHz (still the most common used for now)…
How do you think whether its driver can/can’t be modded? (or maybe from Asus itself will fix the prob..)
March 5th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
It will resample all the source to 48 kHz natively inside the driver. You will not experience any problem with your 44.1 kHz (only if you are a purist)… like me eh?
March 5th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Another purist fanboy comes to town.. ;p
Btw, how do you order this ‘toy’ brother? from the distro(in/out indo) or what? and would u mind to tell about the price too?
Since i’ve been waiting so long for this one. And according to the other reviews on the net, it does sound quite good compared to the price tag..
March 6th, 2008 at 8:48 am
You can check at local distro…
April 7th, 2008 at 1:00 am
creative xmod reviews…
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