Benchmarks: audio
24 bit, 192KHz
The audio experience is always going to be subjective; different users will have different audio equipment, prefer different sound profiles, and so forth. Rightmark Audio Analyser provides a good way of getting around this subjectivity as it measures theoretical audio quality. The benchmark analyses a number of variables before outputting a performance summary.
Testing in a variety of audio bit depths and at 192KHz the ASUS Z97 Pro Gamer delivers outstanding results. The quality of the SupremeFX implementation shines through. More importantly, the audio comes with extra features, like a headphone amplifier and the ASUS Sonic Radar software. More advanced features such as hardware-level sound profiles and headset impedance-detection are reserved for the ASUS ROG branded boards, however.
DPC latency is an alternative way of measuring audio quality when each system starts from the same clean software base. Broadly speaking, any value below 500 microseconds provides seamless uninterrupted audio and video streams, the ASUS board delivers particularly impressive numbers.
