Crave high-end audio, but use Linux? The situation surrounding this has been bad in the past, but that's not so much the case now, especially where ASUS' Xonar family of cards are concerned, including the headphone-specific Essence STX.

Asus's latest high-fidelity sound card is expensive compared to most home PC audio processors, but the Xonar Essence STX has a few unique features to justify its high price. Asus is so proud of the card that it includes an audio precision report in the box.

An excellent sound card. Will work in any type PCI-E slot (x1, x4, etc.), and recently released software finally works with Win7 RTM. Paired with a set of premium headphones or amplified studio monitors, you can do some serious recording and/or listening. Recommended!

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...

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

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.

So first of all, for people who are saying that they are hearing noise from outputs. The only noise I hear from the card is from HP out, when sample rate is set to 44.1 Khz. What can be the reason of the noise and how to prevent it: 1. Don't use video cards. Use only integrated video. 2.

Sound quality; Takes power direct from PSU; Swappable op-amps; Build quality

DRIVER; Headphone output sound quality

In accordance with ASUS philosophy of presenting new devices in short periods of time, not long after the first Fonepad, new models, Fonepad Note 6 and Fonepad 7, have been announced. Unfortunately, f...

The Xonar Essence STX is a PCIe 1x card, with an EMI (ElectroMagnetic Interference) shield, optical/coaxial output, RCA output L/R and two 6.3mm headphone jacks - that are powered by an onboard amplifier.

Behind every pair of headphones should be a good sound chipset. That's the idea, and hopefully anyone who knows anything about good audio would adhere to that. For those who can't figure out why their big expensive headphones aren't quite performing as well as they'd imagined, read on; Large and...

Great quality; beautifully packaged; forms a deadly duo with high-end headphones

None come to mind