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.

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.

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).

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.