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

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!

The Asus Xonar Essence is extremely good. Although a little long in the tooth, it still performs well. It beats the dust out of the so called hi def on board sound as supplied by many mobo manufactures. Being PCIe it will work in any size socket without any problem with video cards.

Amazing Sound Card. I'm Hearing Stuff In Tunes I Have Never Heard Before. As a music Producer Myself This is Perfect For Me. As I Can hear Everything In crystal clear sound. This Card Also Does Well In Games I Recommend. :)

Have this hooked up to some Acoustic Energy Aego M 2.1 speakers. I know they aren't not the best speakers out there, but this thing makes them sound really really nice. I'm impressed most playing my guitar through it via IK Multimedia Amplitube. Using the ASIO driver set @ 24-bit 2ms it's perfect.

Perfect for headphones. Gets the best out of any headphones/earphones. Quality of output is pristine. Listen to musical notes never heard before, in any song, with a good headset. Even though drivers could be better, giving it a 5 star is not exaggerating.

Reliable

Difficult To Install; Expensive

Reliability

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.

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...