A significant step up from my PCI Soundblaster Augidy ZS. Like lifting a veil on music and games. I thought my Z5300 speakers were to blame for the flat sound from my PC but it turns out that the majority of the problem was with the card.

No, It's not a Xonar STX! but I really like this sound card! I listen to music, Play video games and watch ripped blue ray movies (legitimately of course) Improves the sound quality in general.

This is one of the best sound cards out there today. The sound quality is top notch, and the low profile form factor means its really easy to put this...

Great sound quality; low profile; good software

no automatic headphone handover; quiet clicking when you change the output

I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that sound cards have started getting interesting again after years of a boring one horse race. It wasn't too long ago when we looked at the – the PCI-Express x1 version of the original D2.

In late 2013 Microsoft changed the sound driver architecture in Windows 7, and as of 2014 ASUS still hasn't fixed the drivers for ANY of their Xonar cards. This causes the card to output sound at 8KHz with *massive* compression artifacts, no matter what the settings. It sounds like a bad Skype call.

Amazing hardware

Bad drivers cripple the card

My greatest concern was - will this sound card work with my xp64. Other cards I purchased in the past would not. This sound card advertised that it will work with xp64 and in fact it does. I have it connected to my Pioneer Elite 7.1 - wow.