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

BUY.com sent me a used card (all of the packaging was opened) but I decided to install anyway. Used the included drivers as well as the Win7 drivers from the ASUS website. Two bluescreens later I am returning the product.

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

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.

Card works great and sounds great. Much improved over the "Headphone Virtualization" from my onboard Realtek and the MIc quality might be even better (it was very good with my onboard). Front Jacks work perfectly though you have to make sure you set it properly (i.e. AC97 or HD).

Dolby Headphone is great for those wanting good surround positional audio on their stereo headphones - Headphone Amp is a nice touch - Good sound quality

- For $30 its hard to really complain about anything

BUY.com sent me a used card (all of the packaging was opened) but I decided to install anyway. Used the included drivers as well as the Win7 drivers from the ASUS website. Two bluescreens later I am returning the product.

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...

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.

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.