, founded in 1990, is somewhat a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to designing and manufacturing computer hardware and components these days. Currently, the company is pushing their tablets, notebooks, and all-in-ones, but they have firm roots in the manufacturing of computer components that are...

There are a few dirty secrets in the tech industry, and one of the best-guarded among them regards multichannel audio-everybody wants multichannel audio but almost no one actually runs the speakers to use it.

Clean and pure sound output and control over headphone impedance

Pricey and lacks full EAX support

Humans have five main senses; touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing. Modern computing strives to advance the integration of these senses to produce stimulation during interaction, whether it be for games, movies or writing lengthy documents like this one!

Crisp audio output; Near flat frequency response; Respectable headphone amp; Very low noise levels on both line-in and line-out; Top-tier components; such as the capacitors; DAC and op-amps; Op-amps are user replaceable; Drivers work flawlessly on Vista and 7; Dolby Headphone works well for movies...

Need pricey equipment to appreciate the added quality of sound; EAX emulation isn't quite as good as a native hardware solution; No hotkeys to quickly alter settings in Xonar Audio Center

The Xonar Essence STX sound card offers stellar sound, and it's one of the best choices available if you listen to music over quality headphones.

Superb audio quality; Dedicated headphone amplifier; Swappable op-amps; Direct3D; EAX emulation for XP; Vista games

Analog output is stereo-only

As with most products, I was slightly apprehensive about the Xonar Essence STX before I heard it. I asked myself, how could a small, simple amplifier on a soundcard perform anywhere near as well as a standalone headphone amplifier?

The DAC; capacitors; and op-amps on the card produce an extremely pure and transparent sound; Hugely dynamic and accurate sound on any headphones using the onboard headphone amplifier; Headphone amplification works for the front panel (case) audio sockets; Flawless driver compatibility in Vista...

The GX mode isn't a 100% exact emulation of EAX

After running the rule over Auzentech's latest discrete sound card offering, the X-Fi Forte, recently, today we have the treat of getting to spend some time with the latest offering from another current discrete audio giant, ASUS.

Asus Xonar Essence STX Backside of the Essence The sound card seems to have fallen out of favor with the hardware enthusiast over the past few years, as on-board solutions have provided multi-channel surround sound that functions as well as dedicated cards.

With all the current fuss about getting audio data from a computer to a standalone D/A processor via S/PDIF, USB, FireWire, WiFi, or Ethernet (footnote 1), it has been overlooked that the oldest way to get audio from a PC is to use a high-performance soundcard plugged into the host machine's...

When I had been listening to the Auzen X-Fi Prelude, I had not expected any card to surpass it. Later on, the ASUS Xonar D2 showed the weak aspects of the Prelude. And now, the Xonar Essence STX sounds better than the Xonar D2 and Prelude, and better than the X-Fi Elite Pro, and perhaps even better...

Based on my long term testing with the STX card, from engineering sample to final production version I have been highly impressed with the Xonar Essence STX. ASUS set out to build a new flagship card for stereo and headphone use and definitely pushed the bar much higher for other companies who want...