ASUSROG 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)

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. :-)

Update (2023-May-14): I plugged the device into my PC and out of curiosity, I hit the "Check Update" on Asus Armoury Crate PC software, and there seems to be some update. Although the firmware version still shows 2022/10/31 v0.1.8703 after update, I did find some changes.1. The channel imbalance for PC/NB mode on Android is gone even without USB-DAC-direct-control software such as UAPP and Neutron. PowerAmp now play 192KHz/32Bit just fine. Although UAPP/Neutron can still push volume a lot louder than PowerAmp, but since the imbalance is fixed, it's very usable.2. In MOBILE mode, I experienced occasionally device not usable after remove headphone and re-plug-in the headphone, it seems fine now.I changed the rating from 1-star to 4-star after the update, not 5 because I think the customer response could've been better in the first place.=== Original Review ===Bought the dongle because it can support headphones with Android remote control. I have a Sennheiser HD6XX with a short remote cable(also bought from Amazon), on my previous Moshi USB-C adapter, the adapter makes small buzz sound when nothing is playing. This ASUS has no noise when nothing is playing, and all the remote buttons works fine.There are 2 mode on this adapter, PC/NB vs MOBILE. On latest firmware, the MOBILE mode does not has the issue of left-right imbalance, but it limits to 96KHz/24Bit max.The PC/NB mode only works well on Windows. On macOS, the default volume to 69.7% on the left channel, but only 43.7% (the same value as MOBILE mode) on the right channel. This initial imbalance during handshake is the reason a lot of people complained about left ear being super loud and the right ear darn silent. It may be possible to fix that with a firmware update, but I sent a bug report and the ASUS R&D simply declared "Only MOBILE mode is supported on macOS". On macOS however, one can use Audio MIDI Setup app(inside /Application/Utilities) to manually adjust the channel balance thus fixing the issue manually(although have to be done every time the dongle connects to the Mac)The channel imbalance also cause problem on Android, as Android by default only controls digital gain, not hardware gain, so without using apps that can control the USB DAC directly(such as USB Audio Player Pro, Neutron Music Player, Onkyo HF Player), their is no way to fix channel imbalance. Which is a shame because the MOBILE mode limits the max volume to 43.7% of what the hardware is capable of due to Android cannot change hardware gain. If not for that imbalance problem, this thing could go 384KHz/32Bit with PowerAmp app. (Edit: 192KHz with AAudio output, 384KHz with Hi-Res output)When using apps that can control USB DAC on Android, the microphone is not accessible to phone or message apps(because it's occupied by DAC music apps, and probably some other limitation of Android 13 ), making using a mic remote meaningless.I give only 1-star because the attitude of ASUS R&D is terrible and not really willing to fix that(I doubt them even willing to look into that). The dongle itself does make a great sound if using within limitation.

ROG needs to stop selling this device IMO. I can confirm, like other long term reviews, after 6 months of VERY gentle indoor stationary use, it's broken. I'm very gentle with electronics, so for this device to die means it's corrupt on the inside via a design flaw in my opinion.I wakeup to see the PC register this as an ESS generic dac, and unable to output sound. Now it outputs nothing in PC mode, but will work in Mobile in a worse fashion. Mobile mode only output 24bit96k so I may as well use any old dac at that point IMO. Plus, I'm missing out on MQA and Aura Sync, a feature I used to sync this DAC with my M.2 reader also from Asus. I am genuinely soured from the Asus ROG brand as a whole after this, and feel silly getting the m.2 reader that matched my DAC only for the DAC to fail in the following month.Unfortunately the DAC is now trash for my use case, and I am skeptical I was even getting proper performance originally. I only ever saw 32bit/384k in the Armory Crate app, but in this faulty state, the DAC only reads as 32bit/96k in windows.I believe the device short circuted rather than over heated given how it is acting now, which also makes me worry for connected equipment.I'm irritated seeing the low price continue to drop, since long-term reviews confirm the device is faulty. You may expect cheap, and that's fine, but I bet you don't expect it to just break one day without warning. Thats the issue in selling something that's faulty verses just cheap.I will not register for warranty replacement, instead I'll check out the new ifi GO Link which promises many of the same features of this device, namely 32bit/384k with MQA rendering.I wouldn't buy this again unless it was $15 given how it lasted 6 months.Updated from Thee Stars to One Star for having paid $95 for the experience.Old review:First off, audio quality is fine. Totally as expected and sounds phenomenal. But I'll discuss everything else about this device.When installing on Windows 11, the required Armory Crate software is so slow to install, but spiked my computer to 4Ghz. The required software had many unrequired features beyond using the ROG Clavis, so much so finding the device in the menu can be tricky. Once found, you'll fiddle with Tidal a bit by turning off Software MQA under the small "more audio settings" option. That's when the MQA signal can be detected by both the DAC and Software and you're playing in the best quality. Overall, this process is actually harder than other systems over wireless options so honestly,aptX and the like will still be a better user experience for most people. If your intention to buy this is to get higher quality, consider wireless standards first. But I like the little Aura Sync light a lot more than I thought I would. It's bright and has a good tone. I think that light might not last as it feels kinda like a sticker covering the top, which leads to my biggest gripe. The device feels cheap for being made of aluminum. It's like those phones that were all metal with a coating of plastic paint. Guess that means if you were to use it with your phone in your pocket without a case, your phone would likely be fine! But IMO it feels like poop. The USB C cable got too much grippy and it makes me worry for any device I plug into. Finally, the volume control doesn't work on any device I've tried it on. It always resets to a rather loud volume when changing tracks, and the only way I live with it is by dialing back my amplifier.If this device physically lasts for more than a year I'd say it was worth my $120 and would upgrade to five stars. But issues with finish and volume control, plus the feeling of the USB C connection knock off a star. I got this DAC on some sort of sale new, but I'm sure a used product, despite the feel, would hold up due to the metal construction.It comes with a USB-C to USB A cable too which is just... So usefull... Little extras like that definitely make me sure to choose ASUS.

Opción interesante si el programa que se usa no tiene una funcionalidad de supresión de ruido ambiente. Lo compré para poder hacer home office con mi pareja, desafortunadamente no filtra adecuadamente las voces lejanas, por lo mismo realmente no sirve mucho para filtrar conversaciones de otras personas al rededor en una llamada. El software tampoco es compatible con macOS así que eso tampoco ayuda en caso de querer personalizar el dispositivo para mejorar el audio

So I got this product used and I got mad when I first plugged it in and it was mostly blasting music from only the left side. I made sure the plug was all the way in I even switched from a standard 3 mm plug to a trrs plug and I got the same result. I even swapped it from my ROG 5 to my Moto 5g Ace to my pc to mylaptop. So I walked away and cooled off.After a long walk collecting my thoughts, I tried it again. It decided to work because it knew I had put in a request to amazon to send it back. It then started to work properly.So if your initially decides not to work, you know what to do. Tell it you will send it back where it came from and then put it in time out.Once it accepted me as its lord and master I began to use it. I bought this to use on my phone and PC and hoped it would also give me active noise cancellation. (it doesn't)But what it does provide is a powerful DAC that is hi-res certified, Output is loud for most headphones (except my cheap sony MDR on ear headphones) but my logitech on ear monitor and sony extra bass in ears are loud AF, also it has ASUS Aura sync too with my ROG 5.the inline mic button works on this to pause and skip. It also comes with a usb c to usb a cable. (the cable extender is plastic)I'm not sure what the audible difference is between the mobile and PC/NB mode are or if there is supposed to be a difference?But yeah the DAC sounds loud and great on most headphones when compared to the standard output of audio out.Update: it seems this DAC only works with sony music center on android 10 and android 11. When I use this unit to listen to music or media on other apps it still only plays music through the left channel. Returning.