Asus Blu-ray Drive Has Integrated Xonar Sound Card and Headphone Amplifier

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Still have the need for a disc drive? Might as well make it great for playing movies!

It may be one of the product categories with less fanfare, but Asus decided to make one anyway. The SBW-S1 is a Blu-ray drive with an integrated ASUS Xonar sound card and headphone amplifier, something Asus boasts as a world's first.

Today, with ultrabooks shipping sans an optical drive, those who still want a big cinematic experience from optical media will find this useful. Asus says that the Xonar sound card will help deliver "clear distortion-free audio output" and that those who like to keep the experience private will appreciate the amplified headset output.

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Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dgingeri
    hmmm... I kinda like the sound of this. (no pun intended.) I could take the optical drive and the PCIe sound card out of my machine and run them through USB. That makes room for 4 more SSDs and an additional GTX680.
    Reply
  • bjaminnyc
    Interesting product. I like the idea of hiding the PC entirely and just having that on my desk.
    Reply
  • warezme
    Interesting how a BD player can integrate a full audio card and headphone boost but a fairly good Reciever like my Yamaha RX-671 does not provide amplification for headphones and unlike my old Kenwood disables the speakers when I plug in a headphone. My old Kenwood boosted the headphones to perfection and gave you the option to disable the speakers in sets or all of them or leave them all on. 1 step forward and 2 steps back.
    Reply
  • BulkZerker
    Now just make it fit in a 5.25 bay and I'll rip out this LG unit I've had for 6 years.
    Reply
  • Shin-san
    This sounds interesting to me. A higher-end headphone amp costs $100 by itself. On top of that, I bought 250 ohm headphones (DT 770s, baby!) and with an amp, they sound amazing.
    Reply