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(More customer reviews)I thought I'd try to give a layman's view of this sound-card who has dabbled a bit as Im sure you will get plenty of audiophiles talk about this card and in my past experience that has left me baffled as I didn't relate to it.
let me give you a background: I have used onboard audio and an audigy 2zs.
I can't comment on the gaming part of this card as I have not tried it. I bought this card purely for two channel audio on speakers and headphones.
I was attracted to this card as this is one of the few cards I've seen that were genuinely dedicated towards proper two channel audio. I have a Sennheisser HD600 powered by Xenos H3A and pair of Axiom M80ti's towers powered by a decent power amp and also a regular tv sound. Have also used Cambridge Megaworks 510D for many years (and loved it!) and experienced many different PC speakers like Logitech Z-5500, Klipsch promedias etc.
If you don't have a really good set of speakers or headphones, don't bother buying this card because you won't find much of a significant difference from this and any other regular decent soundcard out there.
So to make this very clear, if you have a good PC speaker system like Logitech Z-5500 or a Cambridge Soundworks Megaworks, the sound quality you will get will be decent but the upgrade over a mid-range PC soundcard like an Audigy 2 that you own will probably not be worth it to you (10%-20 in my estimation).
On the other hand, if you own a good set of headphones like a sennheisser HD600 or similar or a proper set of speakers and amplifier, the sound quality increase you are going to get is exceptional and very worth it!
I thought my audigy 2zs was worlds above the onboard sound card, Live! and Monster sound MX300 cards I owned. I also really enjoyed the sound.
So when I moved on up, here are the things I experienced. Proper soundstage. Very very detailed sound. For the first time I started to criticize not just the recording quality of musicians but also the producer's job of presenting the sound.
Old records like Diana Ross, Remastered Beatles all started sounding way better than most of the rock and rap I was listening to. Also classical music started flooring me! The reason is that despite the age of some of these recordings, they were actually recorded and produced well, but this effort only comes through on a quality card like this!
The quality of this card over an audigy 2 is honestly on a whole new level far above it. it took some time for this new sound to get used to my old ears, mostly as it didn't sound like what I expected. I expected music that had bass that stressed my headphones to have much deeper bass and recordings that sounded harsh to sound worse on this because of its revealing nature.
When I first got it, the bass felt very poor to me. It didn't boom out in my ears and it wasn't loud. The mid-range and the treble seemed way too foward from what I was used to. I turned up the volume to get more bass up and my ears just felt worse for it. But even then I started hearing all these details and even entire melodies that I had not heard before in tracks I had listened to for years.
This was either the card needed some sort of burn in or my ears had never heard good audio. My best explanation was a bit of both.
Well a few days later, my ears adjusted and then OH-WOW!!
First, the bass was exactly what was present in the recording. Also, there was NO distortion. Also every bit of the music just sounded ridiculously detailed and sharp, clear as day. Nothing was excessive, nothing was lacking.
So here we go:
Bass: very very deep extension. Also the bass is defined to a point that I didn't think was possible. For instance in songs that you thought that had synthesized bass (not from an actual instrument) turned out to had a very defined voice rather than just producing a note. It was showing the instrument that produced the note. For instance the electric bass, you could now tell the grittiness or the smoothness and the subtle texture of the effects used on it. You could tell if the guy did a very subtle double tap, picked it slightly softer than usual etc.
The drums sounded really good. You can tell overtones being produced by a deep bass which isn't localizable where you hear the deep bass but then hear the "top-end" of the point when it was plucked and you can localize that. Also, if you are bored, this card has an EQ which is very well implemented and can boost the bass if you want a party beat(however, I don't use it.)Midrange: Here is a caveat, this card did not produce distortion, because of that the sound you get used to when it gets louder and you are feeling that you are rocking out isn't quite what you get. It just gets louder but the quality is preserved in all its detail and this can get fatiguing as it does this for mid-range AND treble. So, I found myself listening to music at lower levels because at higher levels the mids and trebles stayed true without getting mushed up and fatigued me. A better way of saying it was that I listened to music at healthy volumes and enjoyed the heck out of it! This is a strange thing but it is not a fault of the sound card, my ears were just not used to it and initially listened at higher levels than I could take.
So the mid-range is really good. You get depth in the soundstage which I had not experienced before. I don't have the necessary words or the articulation to describe the many ways the soundstage is just amazing but this is honestly the BIGGEST plus of the card hands down. mid-range drums sound REALLY good. Acoustic instruments sound gorgeous. Placement is also very good. Also transient response and attack is much much better than the audigy 2.
Treble: The treble was great, never sounded too much or harsh. It was just exactly what was there on the record. Cymbals sounded fantastic. Never sounded stressed.
Dynamic range of this card is very good. However, I had to get used to the fact that when the dynamics increased this card did not produce distortion at all (even subtle) so you don't realize that the dynamics have gotten really loud until you train your ears to spot it. The distortion on my audigy and pretty much any other system including movie theaters I heard where the system reached its limit made you feel like the sound got louder. So this took some getting used to.
Headphone amplification. I tried this out for a few days. The headphone amplifier had enough juice to power my 300 ohm sennheissers to very loud volumes and retain good quality. This is saying a lot as the sennheissers are notorious for being hard to drive. The bass goes low. The highs are nice. The mid-range feels very smooth. Having said that, its output isn't quite as breathtaking as the RCA line out which maintains a much higher SNR ratio.
I felt that my Xenos 3HA headphone amplifier did a better job of placing instruments solidly in the soundstage around me. Also the dynamic range was significantly better. The difference is I believe in how tight the thing sounds, but the difference is subtle. Now my amplifier cost me about $140.00 by itself so that is saying a lot about this card that retails for $200. If you don't have a headphone amplifier and you are on a budget this card will give you much more benefit by providing both a quite nice amplifier and a terrific sound output. For the price I am not aware of any soundcard/headphone amplifier combo bought together or separately that can sound good by spending only $200. And yes, this is a proper headphone amplifier and not an afterthought. But like I said, my headphone amplifier is simply better (not by worlds, but by about 20%). If I hadn't had this amplifier before, I would have been very satisfied with the HA on the card.
Cons: Despite all the yelling about Dolby digital, this doesn't have onboard DVD or blu-ray dolby digital 5.1, TrueHD or DTS decoding capabilities. The Dolby capabilities I see it having is not very practical for my personal use. However, most of the software players you will use like PowerDVD and WinDVD have a deluxe version that can decode dolby and DTS without needing an onboard decoding.
Also this card cannot output blu-ray audio at 96Khz and instead outputs it at 48 Khz. This is not for lack of capabilities (it goes upto 192Khz) but because the only soundcard PERIOD that has the protected DRM mechanism for blu-ray is the Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3, and that's the only soundcard that can
do 96Khz DT and Dolby on the PC.
Also for recording purposes, this card has an unusually high latency which does not seem to have been fixed. I haven't actually experienced this but I've read about it from other posters. For playback this problem doesn't happen.
This card has a great warranty on paper. However, I read some bad things about Asus's customer support from newegg where people tried to return the card but they were sent it back saying that there was nothing wrong with it. Asus actually replied to them on newegg and apologized and said they would try to take care of them. I don't know how true it is but you might want to read up just to be careful.
The Asus has only stereo outputs but can be expanded to give surround sound using the H6 daughterboard, but as of the writing of this review, I haven't been able to find one.
It also comes with adapters in case your headphones don't fit.
And last and certainly the least, the digital out on the back of the card on the BACK of your PC has a red light on it. This should not bother people but I have read some reviews where this was annoying.
Things to note: another thing cool about this is that (like most soundcards) if you output this card to a...Read more›
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ASUS Xonar Essence ST Headphone 7.1-Channel Audio Card for AudiophilesASUS' Xonar Essence ST audio card with world's first precision audio clock tuning offers a revolutionary listening experience. In its search for the purest essence of sound, ASUS have broken the boundaries with the soundcard on the market, the Xonar Essence ST. This PCI card is the world's first audio card to incorporate precision clock tuning to minimize audio jitter, bringing the user a clearer, crisper listening experience. The Xonar Essence ST is capable of achieving an industry-leading 124dB SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) in signal clarity and offers a built-in headphone amplifier to obtain the best performance out of any available pair of headphones. Thanks to ASUS' exclusive Hyper-grounding and EMI Shield design, even the most demanding audiophile will be satisfied with the unprecedented sound quality.Specifications -Device Type - Sound cardEnclosure Type - Plug-in cardInterface Type - PCISignal Processor - ASUS AV100Sound Output Mode - StereoDAC Data Width - 24-bitSample Rate - 44.1 kHz (min) - 192 kHz (max)Signal-To-Noise Ratio - 124 dBResponse Bandwidth - 10 - 90000 HzFeatures - Karaoke, built-in Dolby Pro Logic II decoder, Dolby Headphone technology, Dolby Virtual Speaker technology, Magic Voice, Smart Volume Normalizer, FlexBass, Xear 3D Virtual Speaker Shifter, VocalFXCompliant Standards - DirectSound, A3D 1.0, OpenAL, Dolby Digital Live, Dolby Virtual Speaker, Dolby Headphone, DirectSound3D GX 2.5, Dolby Pro Logic IIAudio Modes - Playback - 24-bit 192 kHz - 124 dB; Record - 24-bit 192 kHz - 118 dBInterfaces - 1 x audio - line-out - RCA x 2, 1 x headphones - output, 1 x audio - line-in/microphone, 1 x audio - line-in - 4 pin MPC, 1 x audio - SPDIF output - RCACompatible Slots - 1 x PCIOperation System - Windows Vista/XP(32/64bit)/MCE2005
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