Do you really need a discrete sound card? Simple question, and we've taken a look at Asus' new Xonar Xense and DG sound cards to...

With 177 different awards to date for the Xonar line-up, it's time to find out if that figure is going any higher today as we welcome the Xonar DG into our war room.

Asus has established itself as a player in the high rollers' hi-fi lounge with Xonar soundcards like the Xense, D2 and mighty Essence ST. Although still relatively new to the audio game, it can look old timers like Creative and Auzentech in the face without shame.

A long while ago when PCs were still very much something that was relegated to offices, they were able to produce a beep and that was the limit of the aural experience.

Affordable, feature packed, 5.1 channel sound, headphone amp and built in S/PDIF, this is the ASUS

Had a cloud II headset that was being complicated, and the 5.1 sound wasn't working. I had to enable the type of sound my headset was supposed to be in the asus xonar settings for the card to adjust to my headset properly.

Gets the job done; Interface that helps with a lot of sound problems

Doesn't sit in the PCI slot efficiently; If I plug anything into the audio or mic ports directly, the card moves out of the slot; Will not work when I screw in the card; I have to sit it diagonal in the PCI, and leave it alone; 2 weeks so far without touching it and I have had no problems

Great little upgrade to the audio quality of the system. I'm not making use of the virtual surround sound or anything, I really don't have any interest in it. Primary reason for purchasing this is my on-board audio had issues with static on the microphone and a buzzing sound (in-ear) when my video...

+ Completely eliminated static sound for audio recording; + Much more balanced sound output

- Really gross software interface; and for some reason the Xonar software files aren't digitally signed by Asus so you have to give the software permission to run since Windows sees it as a potentially harmful file

Do not hesitate to upgrade your on-board audio to this ASUS Xonar DG. Even with a $300+ mother boards, you are still stuck with Realtek or Cirrus Logic audio chipsets which can not outdo a good quality ASUS Xonar or Creative X-Fi card.

Quality and Price

Interface and digital out

Boosts your headphones sound by a very good deal, easy to install and setup. comes with wuick setup manual and a CD for drivers. Only con that i could find is that, the CD did not work for me and did not install anything, but a quick lookup in ASUS website can solve that problem.

I found it, this is the posting that I bought! Bought it a while ago to fix my problem with gigabyte z68ap-d3 making annoying background hiss, depending on GPU load. I thought it was my gpu, but I tried another and had the same problem. So I swapped power supples, same thing!