This card has been one of my most frustrating tech purchases. I needed a card to output 5.1 through an optical digital connection for playing back movies. I was leery of this card after the negative comments, but the advertising said it does it.

After reading some very good reviews of dedicated sound card online, I decided to ditch my mobo integrated sound for this. Unfortunately, I've noticed a much higher noise floor with this card.

Added features

Poor Sound Quality

An awesome card for headphone users. You get a nice built-in headphone amp, along with dolby headpho..

Worked fine immediately after installation (with minor complaint: every time we restarted our computer we had to reconfigure device to output sound to the connected 2-channel speakers, rather than the default: 2-channel front-panel headphones, which were NOT connected).

The inclusion of integrated audio solutions on every motherboard pushed discrete audio solutions into the luxury purchase market. So why do...

Clear; Full Body Audio on All Channels; Built-in Headphone AMP Supports Headphones with up to 150 Ohms of impedance; Includes Low Profile Brace for low profile HTPC cases; Well written User's Manual

Included Quick Start Guide is almost useless; Audio Quality not Noticeable with Low Bit-rate Audio Sources

There seems to be a growing interest in gaming headsets recently. Neoseeker has had a few requests for reviews of such gear in the past few months alone; prior to that we basically had no headset articles! First, we looked at the innovator Psyko 5.1 Surround headset .

Asus' Xonar line continues its impressive lineup with the Xonar DG, proving to be an exceptional value at $30. It does a good job providing richer, fuller sound over speakers, but the built-in headphone amp is where this card really excels.

This card is really decent for the price. Has the ports most people would need (3.5mm, and S/PDIF-out). Headphone amp is pretty nice. I bought this card originally to be able to get 5.1 audio from my sound system over S/PDIF.

Price; compatibility; ports,and ease

No Dolby Digital Live

Great soundcard. Easy install. Port for front PC headphone jack. Bought headphones to life after suffering cruddy onboard audio. Built in amplifier works well. Not huge amounts of power, but a huge improvemnt will be noticed. Software supplied has an excellent and easy to use equaliser!

I was skeptical to say the least, I'm quite the audio-enthusiast and was looking for a card that wouldn't break the banks after recently building a new home media/gaming computer. I was shocked frankly.

Headphones amp

For this price none