Asustek Computer has announced its third audio solution for personal computers (PCs) this year. The novelty is aimed at mobile and small form-factor systems and can offer improved audio quality for games, movies and music.

The new Asus Xonar U1 featuring an unknown audio processor developed by a third party is an USB device that provides analogue and digital audio outputs and supports such technologies as Dolby Virtual Speaker, Dolby Headphone, Dolby Digital Live, Dolby Prologic Iix, DirectSound and EAX with hardware acceleration. The novelty is aimed at those who require high-quality audio on their notebooks, for video games, movies or music.

The new external audio solution, offers high-quality audio outputs as well as amplifier for headphones to maximize listening pleasure or enhance gaming experience.

External audio solutions for personal computers are available from a number of companies, including Creative Technology, Silverstone, Zalman and some other. But while there is a number of suppliers to offer external audio adapters, the latter are still not really popular as gaming or multimedia oriented notebooks already come with high-quality audio adapters, while customers who use mainstream mobile PCs do not require advanced audio.

Asus will ship drivers for both Microsoft Windows XP and Vista operating system with its Xonar U1 audio device.

Pricing of the novelty is unclear.