ESS Technology has been the quietest chipmaker in Silicon Valley. While its competitors grew huge, ESS shrank and almost disappeared from the face of the earth. But the company is bouncing back. In ...

For years, onboard audio has improved to the point where many enthusiasts questioned whether dedicated sound cards still had ...

In the world of high-end audio, it’s all about the chase. Enthusiasts lust after audio purity, hearing every tiny detail in its purest form, eliminating all sources of distortion or interference. It’s ...

This is from an earlier post in the A/V forum, maybe you guys can help out?<BR><BR>I'm on my second laptop with an ESS audio chip. (yuk!) My latest is a Dell 8100 w/ 32MB Geforce2Go. Obviously, I'd ...

At MMORPG, we first discovered Fiio with its line of affordable, pocketable headphone amplifiers. It's only fitting then, that we find ourselves in this edition of Golden Ears coming full circle and ...

My friend has a Compaq Presario 5000 with some kind of ESS sound built in. It got borked, so I wiped it clean and put Windows 2000 (it used to have Millenium), hoping Win2k would have the drivers for ...

Motherboard audio is good enough for most people. When it is not, the obvious upgrade is usually an external DAC or headphone amplifier: Easy to connect, easy to reach and easy to carry over to the ...