I've been using creative soundcards for the past 10 years and thought time for a change after I was not pleased with their last fatality1 card. As soon as I plugged this baby in, the sound was way way different.

For the price the sound form this is excellent. Unfortunately due to poor customer service from asus and wierd drivers it could be much better. The asus audio center used with the card has decided to stop letting me use the equalizer when in 2 channel mode (despite this being the standard mode for...

The reason for five stars is simple; I'm comparing it to the only other sound card I've ever had, which is none. The difference between the onboard/ integrated audio and the Xonar DS is not really comparable.

Pretty good price; I guess

I have no idea

FANTASTIC! The sound quality is MUCH better then the standard motherboard sound, its also very easy to upgrade the opamp (my preference LME49720HA) Also its very cheap! You cant go wrong, same hardware as the Xonar DX with less options.

This card has been well reviewed by users elsewhere, but for me it was a bit of a disaster. In fact, of the two serious problems I had with it the fact that it just plain didn't work was the less serious one; it failed to plug 'n' play, didn't show up in control panel and device manager could see...

Very pleased with sound quality: significant improvement on onboard sound output. Works well with a Behringer pre-amp for digitising vinyl. Installation cd not much use (no WIndows 7 recognition.

A PCI sound card that we really like? It'll be an ISA graphics card next, if we're not careful

Low profile design; A truly affordable upgrade; Proper 3D sound for games

No Dolby Digital

Sounds fantastic, high fidelity mode disables every sound effect for true audio replication, swappable output operation amplifiers. GUI could be cleaner and more intuitive (I had to Google some of its button functions).