Last year at COMPUTEX, I came across a product at the ASUS booth known as the "Stereo X". My interest in this product led to an enthusiastic...

The best music experience you'll ever have on a set of headphones on a PC; Extremely high quality audiophile build with swappable OPAMPS for those with a need to tweak

Not for gamers or casual listeners; Price may be hard to justify for some

I'll start with the cons: The driver support for win 7 64 was so bad. You can look throughout forums for hours and find that no one's resolved this simple issue. After countless screwed up installs, restarts, driver sweeping, I said screw it.

New to sound; but I can yell you I've never been happier

took ages to figure out driver issues...; HOURS

James is back in business and this time he looks at a special Xonar offering from ASUS, essentially a headphone pre-amp for discerning audiophiles.

Asus' Xonar Essence STX may be pricey, but for audiophiles or those with the money to spend on an excellent sound card, this is the one to get. It looks good and performs even better.

Im not 100% satisfied with the shipping, thus the 4 egg overall experience. The product itself functions exceptionally. It is a 5 star audio card. I definitely recommend it for an htpc build, for watching movies and listening to music.

i got it on sale and am pretty happy with it; On krk rokits, corsair sp2500 and bland creative t40s, the stx makes quite a difference in sound quality; highs, mids and lows become very distinct; It offers a plethora of settings to enhance your music and movie experience.

asus software interface looks outdated. Not a huge deal, since it's mostly a set it and forget it affair, but it just looks windows 98 ish. The extra clarity works both ways; lossy and unprofessionally mixed audio files will become much more apparent.

Reliability