It's been a couple of years now since ASUS first launched their Xonar series of sound cards, with the excitement and anticipation which led up to said release proving to be largely justified, giving another injection of interest to a discrete sound card market which has burgeoned over recent years. 

For improved sound on a tight budget, the Xonar DS is an excellent choice. With 7.1 channel sound and DTS support, it's a big step up from most onboard audio solutions.

Some may find that the use of PCI rather than PCIe or the removal of Dolby Digital processing from the AV200 chip is a disappointment but at the price level Asus have targeted with this product it is hard to fault.

Over the last few years the quality of audio functionality on motherboards has increased significantly. The standard offerings such as Realtek's 7.1 Channel 888 chipset offer a large amount of features with little cost to RRP of the board.

Also don't play games using this card, the drivers are so terrible in that it likes to make them crash and indefinitely stutter the sound... If it doesn't make your computer Blue Screen.

If you're down and out on audio devices; grab it

Don't ever raise the volume above 50% or you'll make your ears bleed

I have used this card in a few customer builds. They have all been more than satisfied. In the 50 dollar price range, this is the upgrade to get when going from onboard audio. This card is certainly not audiophile grade, but is more than enough for the average user wanting better than onboard.

Sound quality for price; and ability to upgrade opamp section

None

A notable difference compared to the onboard sound. Like other have mentioned, download the drivers from the Asus website and installation will be a breeze.

Perfect card if you want multichannel audio and don't want plethora of cables running around your PC. With DTS Connect which this card supports you can enable all of this via a single, thin optical cable. Great buy at this price.

I had been using a preamp to digitize my LP collection on an old computer that blew up. This card doesn't have the blue line input. It claims that the first input works for microphone or line in. It works for mic but not my preamp.

Good sound card for the price.

Great for gaming

Some audio distortions on some mp3s