I don't think the audio card market is dead... and this proves it. I was sceptical when buying mine, but it definitely was a $100 improvement over the on-board Realtek HD chip (Gigabyte Ex58 UD3R board).

Firstly, you get none of the stupid interference and noise from the CPU or whatever, just silence so nothing spoils the audio quality.

Not just that, but it supports 96/24 audio.

The equaliser is a lot better than the realtek one in XP, and the realtek card doesn't even have one under Vista. It also does not distort when you push it. If you crank it to max... it gets a bit boomy, yes, but you don't have to go that high as the bass is already much better out of the DX and it's not really that distorted.

It goes louder on my headphones before it has a treble bias.

I've noticed quite a big improvement in bass on all my speakers, even the cheap ones. Instead of a very bland "woof" sound, it's a lot more detailed and instead of sounding synthetic, you can almost believe someone was playing a bass guitar in front of you if you closed your eyes. It's the best sounding source in my house for my HD515s, and that's compared to a Harmon Kardon Hi-Fi amp (equaliser helps that I'm sure), and it's miles ahead of my Zen and the old Realtek HD.

On top of that, it has handy VOIP features, will boost performance a little, and has that DS3D whatever it is.

So yeah... not a bad upgrade if you love sound quality.

So to keep it simple, if you are going digital out you don't need a soundcard, and if you are going analog out you are outdated.

The soundcard market is not only over for Creative, it's over for everyone. Nobody needs cards anymore except maybe for creation. But why would you use a PC if you were serious about music creation? Bah, my x-fi is probably the last sound card I'll ever own.

Is anyone with more audio savvy than me worried about those huge spikes in distortion at 60Hz, 1kHz, 7kHz?

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14500/18

But using this sound card, will you still get Dolby Digital and DTS surround effects when watching a DVD (say, in PowerDVD), if you no longer have a dolby digital-dts receiver (due to it having a lower-quality DAC than the sound card), and use analog speakers instead?

oops, this was meant to be a reply to #114

The one person praising the XP results aside I wonder why the CPU utilization tests of all things was done on XP. I assume they were all run again and the results weren't re-used from a 2 year old review. I'd think that testing in Vista with it's much changed audio interface would be a good thing to test too.

Was all testing aside from the CPU usage done in Vista? I'm almost considering getting rid of my Prelude for one of these heh.

Fantastic looking card, if it weren't for the lack of DTS live encoding I'd be all over it. Since I'm hooking my comp up to a Yamaha RX-V1700 I'll be sticking to my guns with the D2X purely for the DTS's sonic benefits though (DTS is a higher resolution format).

Having said all that, does anyone know if the output for this new (relatively) DTS and DD live encoding is the same resolution as it would be if read from a DVD?

So if I am using the optical TOSLink to my receiver, what does it matter what DAC's a sound card is using.

Aren't you talking about the analog out section on that card when it comes to sound quality vs the Creative X-Fi?

Greetings!

Why use Realtek onboard and not an AD one?

Wow, new review favoring Xonar DX, 8/10
Check this out:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2282606,00.asp
Conclusion:
ASUS chews up proprietary audio calls and spits out aural gold with the Xonar DX, a fantastic gamer's sound card.....

I didn't know they had this head to head comparison, too..
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2268263,00.asp
Sound Card Shootout: ASUS vs. Auzentech
ASUS is the easy winner. The Xonar is user-friendlier, it benchmarks better, it doesn't have that weird Windows sound issue, and it comes with a generous bundle that partially justifies its price.

I was looking into this card last week, and decided to wait for a review. I shoulda just bought one.

Two questions:

Does this card do multi-streaming, totally separating the front panel and rear inputs/outputs like most onboard sound does these days?

Anyone know if this card works in linux?

ack! just when i was going to build my new pc too

from a purely gaming point of view, which card should i be using, the asus or creative x-fi?

OK, I love things un-Creative as much as the next guy, and I know the test systems are different and all, but I'm calling shenanigans.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/14500/7

http://techreport.com/articles.x/8884/10

Someone please explain to me how the X-Fi XtremeMusic's scores dropped so very sharply between it's own review and this one??

Loopback 44.1/16bit frequency response was a 6 in it's own review, here it's a 3?? Did you run over the card with your car a few times?

Dynamic range stayed a 5, and that's as expected, but THD went from a 6 to a 3, just like frequency response.

I'm sure there's a good reason, and I'm dying to hear it. What's up, Geoff??

I am just glad to see that TR hasn't forgotten out us XP users (more of us than Vista users) completely and included it in it's testing. Vista may be what M$ is trying to shove down our CPU's but I am not impressed with it and really do not see the need to change yet. It seems that the review sites have bowed to the pressure and only include Vista on the systems that they use to test products.
TR please keep XP in the mix for testing products, I think many of us would appreciate it.

Might just have to pick up one of these...

I have one important question that is not made clear in any of the literature or, sadly, from your review.

Can EAX 3, 4 and 5 be emulated in Windows XP? Or is this functionality only provided when using the DS3D GX software in Windows Vista?

Wow. I saw this listed at newegg a few days ago and almost bought one, but I figured I'd hold off for this article first. I should have just bought it then.

A few questions:

PCI Oxygen HD cards (even Asus' own Xonar D2) do not have the 4-pin power connector. The D2X, being PCI Express, has the power connector as this one does.

I thought that an x1 link provided the same, if not more, power than a PCI slot. I'm trying to find info on it now but the files at the pci-sig's website require a login to download (and everyone else just talks about the 75W limit on an x16 slot). Does the PCI-to-PCI Express bridge chip drink that much juice?

I seem to recall some PCI Express TV tuners with bridge chips that don't require aux power, and I figure a TV tuner would use more power than a sound card anyways.

So, why is there an auxiliary power connector and how does the card behave if it isn't connected?

For these tests, the Xonar D2X, X-Fi XtremeMusic, and ALC889A were configured to pass DTS Interactive bitstreams. The Xonar DX can't output DTS Interactive, so it was set to use Dolby Digital Live instead.

I thought Auzentech's was the only X-Fi capable of Dolby Digital Live / DTS Interactive. What's the dealie here?

Something's not quite right about these results, though. The Xonar D2X's CPU utilization was much higher with a previous driver revision, and with DirectSound 3D GX offloading positional audio calculations onto the host CPU, it shouldn't be using fewer CPU cycles than the X-Fi.

I wondered about this but I think the question was answered later in the article regarding how well it handled EAX in gaming. Obviously the feature is working properly; would it then be logical to conclude that newer driver revisions have just been optimized to a point where CPU use is much better than it was previously?

Anyways, thanks for the great article guys. Definitely going to be buying one of these with my next round of upgrades.

Curse just getting a wireless card for my PCI-E x1 slot! I would love to get one of these instead, I might just have to get a PCI wireless card next payday :D

I couldnt spend $90 on a sound card even if I had a million dollars in my pocket right now. I just cant tell any difference for the life of me between onboard audio and sound cards.

The onboard audio on my Abit IP35 Pro suits me just fine. I think it supports 7.1 surround sound or whatever too. Maybe my hearing sucks.

Jeff, are you aware that BF2 and Bioshock use EAX3 reverb? BF2's X-Fi mode just enables 128 sound buffers. Why didn't you try BF2142?

BTW, EAX5 support in DirectSound is non-existant. The three or so games out there that really use EAX5 call it via OpenAL so you might want to clarify how Asus can emulate EAX5 without proper OpenAL support.

You also failed to report your impression on headphone HRTFs, for instance in UT you can learn how to avoid a manta coming from behind in the last second with the help of MacroFX and even when you fail to jump in time, the sound effect is very convincing.

And if you are considering a good-enough software emulation at lower price, why not throw an XtremeAudio to the mix?

Nice review! Two questions, though, before I buy one:

1) The card has a shared SPDIF out/Line in/Mic in jack. So, how do you connect both your dolby digital receiver via SPDIF and a mic via mic in simultaneously? Do you have to go through the hassle of disconnecting your digital speakers every time you want to plug in your microphone?

2) Is there any such thing as hardware OpenAL support? And does this card have it?

ASIO? Or will we keep having to live with mangled kmixer sound?

These are back in stock at the egg

Excellent review, as always. I'm glad to hear about this card. Hopefully, Asus won't back down like other vendors did.

What's up with the graph in the Stereo Crosstalk graph (first graph) on page 17? It looks really weird.

Got my zs for $25.00 gonna be awhile before any sound card looks interesting for $90.00

Does anyone know what opamps the DX have?

I just bought one on Sunday. My Bro has the DX2. I am happy to find something that isn't by the sonsabeeches at Creative. I had an Aureal 8830
and Creative riuned a fine card with frivolous lawsuits then wouldn't allow the technology to hit the streets. I have tried Turtle Beach and onboard and can't wait to hear this card

Grippy

Whoops! Meant to be a reply to #51.

Every time I've looked at the sound card market, I couldn't find a card that did everything I wanted at a reasonable price. Creative always came closest, so I always went that route. Good cards, but always with some sort of compromise. This latest fiasco that involves crippling their cards under Vista when it's obvious those features could be offered (and were, under Windows XP) really is the end of things for me with them. They are doing their customers a grave disservice.

Fortunately, it appears there finally is a high-quality, and yet reasonably priced alternative that really does do almost everything. Thanks for the great review, TR; if ASUS continues to support the DX well, it will be my next sound card, and my first non-Creative sound card (my first card ever being my SoundBlaster 1.5 back in 1992).

With any luck, geeks will make this the last straw that will remind Creative that their duty is first to their customers, and without them, there isn't a company. If not, they'll bite the dust, and they'll richly deserve it.

Nice soundcard, however on-board solutions are still good enough for majority of the mainstream market. The PCI-E is the only thing that justifies the upgrade over my Audigy 2ZS.

I would not hold my breathe to think that ASUS will provide better drive support then Creative. IIIRC, ASUS does not have exactly have the best support in the computer industry. Just look well they supported their old previous attempts of creative (no pun intended) hardware solutions. (The one 2x7900GS on a single PCB and something similar using ATI chips)

This is yet another review that proves why audio hardware acceleration is dead. The only reasons to get a discrete solution are purely for fidelity and content creation.

Thank you for adding some XP test results!