ASUS ROG Clavis USB-C Gaming DAC (ESS 9281 Quad DAC Amplifier, AI Noise-Canceling Mic, MQA Rendering, Aura Sync RGB, Compatible with PC, Mobile, PlayStation 5, and Switch)

I recently bought this and a couple new pairs of headphones to rediscover great audio quality both in music and games. I have many of the bluetooth sony/bose overear/bud offerings and I forgot what I was missing out on.I’ve used the Clavis for 8+ hours a day, everyday for the past couple weeks through both work and gaming. This thing is amazing imo and fits in my ‘mobile desktop’ setup.You need to go into windows sound settings and set the playback rate to 32bit. It works with discord fine and does a great job of noise filtering; Armory Crate is annoying but I had to set the Clavis up once and forget it.I swap between 2 pairs of headphones; KZ KS10 Pro in-ear monitors and the Corsair Virtuoso Pro headset when gaming/need a mic. I find that the Clavis can drive both of these headphones with very little power/volume.You can def blow out your ears if you allow windows volume to go to 100% with these types of headphones through the Clavis.From my pictures you can see I have a TRRS compatible in-line volume adjuster coiled around it to remain a single dongle. This allows me to bring windows volume to 100% and have hardware controlled volume for safety while still letting the mic pass through.Little fuss and great high quality product in my opinion. It’s small with a metal housing with a short braided USBC cable. Also comes with a USBA conversion/extension cable. A volume adjustment would have been welcome and I wouldn’t mind an increased size but I found a solution for it. I highly recommend this little headphone amp!!

This little dac is great for the pc, laptop, cellphone etc.It works as a stand-alone dac or you can use a pc based software to really adjust the settings. It handles most of my headphones well, but I wouldn't recommend it for headphones with over 80ohns impedance as it doesn't have the power to really push them. With others that are 80 ohm and under like the 32ohm that most headphones are the Clavis really comes to life. Great tuning is easy in armory create and these support 32 bit 384khz flac lossless audio. This combined with a great audio source code like Amazon HD music creates an amazing listening experience! As an added bonus the AI noise cancelation works wonderfully, easily muting the door bell and subsequent barking dog from my calls and video chats.

I've bought 4 of these things and each one bricks after the latest firmware update. I've tried different computers and cables for each one. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. It sucks because this is the only way to get an ESS Sabre 9281 Quad DAC. All the other DAC companies just spend all their money on guerilla marketing.

Cómo dag, prefería otro más compacto.Además si no tienes un equipo Asus tendrás que bajar la aplicación para que funcione al 100%.La cancelación de ruido es excelente.Lo recomiendo para lo último.

Oddly enough, I took a chance on this DAC in part because of some of the bad reviews on Amazon and the good reviews for a similar product on YouTube.There were very few reviews of this product on YouTube at the time I first learned of this. But there were a few reviews for the ASUS noise canceling headphone adapter, which is a much cheaper and simpler version of this product. I watched several videos and was impressed at how well the little dongle seemed to reduce ambient noise that would otherwise be picked up by the attached microphone. I work from home (in my living room, which I'm not going to treat with sound panels) and I've spent a lot of time over the past 2 years or so trying to perfect my home audio setup. I'd recently finally settled on a shotgun condenser because it seemed to do a better job of focusing on my voice and not passing on as much ambient room noise.The first thing I had to find out was if this thing would work well with a splitter/joiner, since I currently use separate headphones from my microphone. I ordered this DAC and a Sennheiser PCV05 to allow me to connect my headphones and microphone to it. And I was delighted to find that it worked perfectly. I was able to use my lavalier, shotgun condensers, etc. with no issues. It also works well with wired headphones with integrated microphones as I tested it with my Vmoda Boom Mic and several other mic cables I had with various headphones I own. They all worked great. And just like in the review videos, it dealt exceptionally well with noise reduction. Ambient room hiss was gone. The sound of the landscapers cutting grass was gone. The sound of my central heat, a sound that people have specifically complained about when I make the mistake of using the wrong microphone, was gone. You do take a small hit on vocal quality, but I think it's acceptable even for work calls. And the better your microphone, the less this will be an issue. I tried it with several mics and found the sound quality more than acceptable.The only real complaint I have is that there is no way to monitor how I sound with this dongle. I'm used to using my Creative X3 or G3 DACs which have built-in monitoring options with the ability to mix up or down how much of your own voice you hear. The Clavis doesn't have that. From an audio perspective for calls and recording, this is really my biggest complaint. You'd have to use software that allows you to monitor - and video conferencing tools don't really allow for this.Now, as an audio device from a headphone perspective, this is where the negative Amazon reviews come in. I have minor hearing loss on my left side as a result of a viral infection. It's not bad enough to require me to need a hearing aid, but I've spent a lot of time configuring Equalizer APO on Windows and SpotEQ on Android to have a balanced listening experience and those both work really well for me. But when I saw people complaining that this device is "way louder" on the left side, I was intrigued. It appears to be an issue plaguing primarily Android and perhaps Samsung devices. Almost all of my Android devices are Samsung, so I thought I'd be the perfect person to try this out. And I wasn't disappointed. In most situations, this thing does play louder on the left side than the right. It's not quite perfect for my imbalance, but it's so close that I find myself reaching for this thing more often than not, especially for apps that don't play nicely with my SpotEQ app. I do find though, that it is inconsistent. I haven't figure out if it's app dependent, or audio dependent. My podcats apps all seem to have the imbalance, but sometimes on YouTube I'll notice certain videos are almost perfectly balanced for my hearing but others aren't at all. It's so strange. But overall, the imbalance is there. It is my understanding that the Armoury Crate software has a firmware update that fixes the imbalance, so there's that for people who just want this for normal non-defective hearing usage. I'm not going anywhere near that software, as you might imagine. It's working just fine for me, thank you.My other biggest complaint is also echoed here and elsewhere on the internet - it doesn't have enough power, or at least not compared to other dongle DACs I own. Comparing it against the DragonFly Black (or any of the other more expensive ones) is probably unfair as that thing is so loud I almost can't use it on Windows because it's loud even at the lowest volume setting. But comparing it against the Zorloo Ztella or the TempoTec DACs I have in my collection, it still seems lacking. You can't use this with power-hungry planar driver headphones if you want the best out of them. It's best for lower power, high-sensitivity headphones and IEMs. This is honestly the only thing that would ever get me to load up Armoury Crate and risk fixing the imbalance. More power would really be nice. This is why I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5 as I do really love this thing overall.But I love this thing so much I bought 2 of them and I'd honestly buy a third if ASUS ever puts them back on sale for $80 again. It's so good for calls in noisy situations and the audio quality for listening is good even it's underpowered. I highly recommend it for it's intended purpose but most of you will want to update the firmware. :-)

Perfect all-around DAC:iPhone - works with iPhone using the small lightning to usb camera connectoriPad Pro - works in usb-c slot + Microphone Use2016 MacBook Pro - works both in MacOS / Bootcamp Windows 10 + Microphone Use(configuration app only works in Windows 10)Sound is great - works well with Apple MusicUnique in that this DAC includes inline microphone capabilities (great for teleconferences when using headset with boom microphone)

I purchased this at same time as a $15 competitor, and honestly wanted to like it but for the price it seems to be quieter and less clear than the cheaper competitors version. Ended up returning this.