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

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.

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 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.

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

This isn't just a fancy sound card, you know. Oh no. Let us quote from the included Audio Precision Test Report, a fancy document bound with gold string to compound its obvious legitimacy: "The development of the new Xonar Essence line has triggered us to engage a new quest in search for true...

, 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...

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

I in tend on using this for gaming and for home theater and have found the sound quality amazing! Once the software was installed it works well. The CD that came with it only had VISA drivers which crashed multiple programs on my computer and I had to restart in safe mode uninstall them and then...

Easy To Use; Quality Output; Reliable Performance

Difficult To Install

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.