ASUS Xonar DG 5.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card

Pros: I came across this card because I filtered through all the sound cards with optical outs by price and this was the cheapest one I could find by a brand that I recognized. Actually, I've always wanted a Xonar. But for my personal build it would have to be one of their top end models. Even though this one appears to be their entry level card. It has a lot of features and really good sound quality. I put this card into an HTPC build I did for my sister. I wanted to make sure she'd be able to get 5.1 to her home theatre receiver. The motherboard I had to work with only had analog 1/8 in jacks out. I also installed a graphics card, which did have HDMI audio out. But her receiver is an older one and doesn't have any HDMI inputs. There was a PCI-E x1, but it was covered up by the graphics card, which was a dual slot card. So I had to track down a decent PCI sound card with optical out. PCI hardware is becoming obsolete, so I thought it might be hard to find a quality sound card that suited my needs. This sound card has impressive quality for what I paid for it. I had hoped to find a sound card for $20. But when the difference in quality is so great between the $20 one and one for a few bucks more. I'll spend a bit more. This card has analog 5.1 audio out via standard PC 1/8 in jacks and a digital 5.1 out via optical, aka SPDIF, aka Toslink. Pretty much any motherboard you'll find these days, that's not too old or dirt cheap is going to have analog 5.1 output. Although, it seems to me that particular format is going obsolete. Some things still use it, but for the most part the vast majority of people on desktops these days are probably using either a simple stereo output, a digital out to their home theatre or TV or wearing a headset. Which often times connects via USB. At this point, I can't imagine ever needing to buy a sound card without some sort of digital output ever again. This sound card supports 96 khz sampling rate. Which is good. It's not the highest, but respectable for what you pay. I tested this sound card on my receiver, which supports all the latest and greatest formats. This card put out DTS and Dolby Digital at 24 bit 96 kHz just like its supposed to. When I hooked it up to my sisters receiver that actually created a problem. Hers is older and only supports 48 kHz sampling rate. So it wouldn't accept the signal from the sound card until I realized what was going on and changed it. Even at 48 khz you'd need a trained ear to detect the difference. 95% of people wouldn't notice or even care if it were set there or at the max 96 khz. Even the latest consoles output audio at 48 khz. Even though the PlayStation has an option for 192 khz it doesn't actually play there, even if you select it.

Cons: I had trouble with the most recent version of the Xonar Audio controller software. As long as I was using analog. It worked fine. But as soon as I tried to enable the optical out, it would crash the program. It would just pop up that the Xonar Control Panel stopped responding and I had to close it. Then if I restarted it, same thing, crashed. Even if I opened Windows audio output and enabled it from there it wouldn't work. So what I had to do was go to Asus website and download an older version, which did work. For some reason the optical out is labeled as, "Optical Pass-Thru" in Windows audio output panel. Which caused me some problems early on. At first I disabled the pass-thru, thinking it was a feature I didn't want to use. I enabled a different optical out, that didn't even exist. I don't know why it was even listed. So of course that didn't work and it took me awhile to figure out that the pass-thru was what I wanted to use. In fact, I found the info online in a forum about this card. In the end I realized that it was actually obvious as the Pass-Thru was the only optical out listed as Asus Xonar. In all honesty, I have mixed feelings about Asus. They make some of the most excellent enthusiast hardware and clearly some really high quality entry level gear as well. But, I have had some serious issues with their hardware in the past. I had 2 GTX Titan graphics cards from Asus. $1000 each. One of which was pretty much perfect. However the other one had some very sloppy soldering on most of the components. If you held the two cards up side by side it was visually apparent. And eventually one of the capacitors actually came loose from the main board causing the card to become essentially a $1000 piece of junk. Fortunately it was still within the warranty period. But still, on a $1000 piece of hardware, you expect the quality to be perfect. After that, I have been cautious about Asus hardware. Asus customer support is slow and I've heard a number of stories about them denying legitimate RMA warranty claims. I doubt I'll ever buy another graphics card from them again. But I'll still consider purchasing their other products in the future, especially mother boards and sound cards.

Overall Review: In the latest version of the Xonar Audio Control Panel, there's an option to select 8speakers, or effectively 7.1, as your output. Since the latest version wouldn't work for me I had to use the older version which didn't have that feature. So I wasn't able to test whether the 7.1 would work or not. The Xonar audio control panel has a load of features. Unfortunately I didn't really play with any of them so I can't tell you about them. If you're interested in that, check out Asus website to see what all features you'd have access to. That is one of the best things about sound cards opposed to onboard audio on most PCs. The sound cards usually have a lot of extra audio effects to take advantage of. Some of which can be very effective. This card comes equipped with a standard length PCI bracket. There is also an optional shorter one, which I honestly would never have any use for. But if you have a the type of PC with a shorter bracket slot, Asus was kind enough to give you the option. Setup is easy. The PC I installed this card in used Windows 7 64 bit. Although I had to download the older driver version to make the optical out work, this card also comes with an install disc. Installing with the disc is as easy as it gets. When it's done there will be a little blue icon in the box next to the clock on the task bar, indicating the program is running. You can access it there by double clicking it or track down the shortcut in the program menu from the start button or in the appropriate folder in the Program Files (x86) folder. Overall I was very satisfied with this card. For the hardware alone, I would rate this 5 Eggs. But because of the problems I had with the software, I am deducting 1 Egg. I wasn't able to take full advantage of all this cards features, so it gets 4 Eggs. Asus doesn't exactly support this hardware with frequent driver updates. When I looked, there were only 2. One from 2013 and the other from 2011. So clearly this card has been around for awhile. Which isn't a bad thing really, as it has given them ample time to work out most of the bugs. But clearly they still have work to do. Whether it will ever actually get done, I have my doubts.

Pros: Price is good considering what this card can do. Headphone amp included. there is third party drivers you can use if you have problems with the stock ones. Unified Drivers

Cons: Some report problems with the drivers

Overall Review: Great sound card. Miles better then onboard

Pros: Low profile bracket included. Latest drivers are online. Only driver is required for full function.

Cons: Driver install process was clumsy but functional. Took long time waiting for nothing.

Overall Review: Drivers can work with non-Asus audio. For low end CPU's this will offload workload since a processor is on this audio card.

Pros: It's only the first day owning this, after tweaking the settings a little bit i can honestly say this thing rocks. I hear things that i didn't know was there before. Sounds very clear. headphone amp is ridiculous. If you game with a headset, get these.

Cons: Slight buzzing noise when playing audio, you notice it just before a song starts or something. You have to tweak it just right to get this away. It's not hard.

Overall Review: Time to get some really nice headphones and see what this thing can make it do!

Pros: If you care at all about audio, but you're on a budget, this card is a no-brainer. For an entry level price, it will be a major upgrade to integrated MOBO sound. If you look at the real-estate on this board, and then imagine any MOBO manufacturer devoting that much space to audio support, you can see the problem. This card solves that problem. The headphone amplifier provides the drive necessary to power less sensitive audiophile headphones, such as my AKG K-501s.

Cons: None, really. You do need to install the drivers that come on the CD (or download the latest ones from Asus), because Windows isn't aware of this card. (At least not Windows XP. Newer Windows versions might have built-in support, but I haven't tried it).

Overall Review: I am an audiophile (not an audiophool). I prefer verifiable, reproducible, science-based results. Sound quality matters to me, and I am a veteran audio engineer, experienced listener and music lover. I haven't used every feature on this card. I use two channel stereo headphones, or feed two channel audio to my Hi-Fi. The stereo sound is superb, but I haven't tried the surround modes, so I can't vouch for that. I am not too enamored of the Dolby headphone ambience effects. It isn't really hi-fi; it's gimmicky. I was hoping for an "out of head" headphone experience, but it doesn't provide that illusion. 3D headphone simulation should be very subtle, but this Dolby Headphone effect is like a ton of bricks. I also do not use the spatial "effects", or even the equalizer. I leave it in HF (Hi-Fi) mode the vast majority of the time. I use the card to transcribe my huge vinyl collection to digital using the Audacity audio editing tool. Editing with 24-bit audio is really handy, because I don't have to be really fussy about headroom. It's just set and forget. I use Audacity's normalization tool to fix up the levels after the fact. The card's measured noise levels on the line input are pretty good, weighing in at just under 96dB unweighted (which is typical for sixteen bit), measured with Audacity's level meters. The spec claims 103dB, A-weighted, so my measurements are consistent. A-weighting yields better specs. The noise floor is pure analog white noise. There's no whistles, hum or digital whine or buzzing. The quality of your MOBO ground and power layout can affect this too. This is great performance for an entry level price tag.

Pros: Same incredible sound as the D1 and D2 cards (no noticeable difference). Excellent W764 drivers and audio interface. Built-in headphone amp. HD audio connector for front panel mic and headphone ports. EQ and EAX effects applied to input signal with absolutely no interference (great for plugging in game consoles or other devices). Amazing clarity at high volumes. Perfect for music, movies and games.

Cons: None to speak of.

Overall Review: In my quest for the ideal sound card, I've used Creative, Turtle Beach, HT Omega, Diamond Xtreme 7.1, and Auzentech (all sold here), but I kept coming back to the Xonar. My only beef about the D1 and D2 cards I owned was the horrible popping and crackling interference when using the line-in port. I have the audio from my 360, PS3, and Roland drum kit running into my sound cards, so this was important. Absolutely no interference with the DG's line-in. As stated above, EQ and EAX effects also apply to the line-in signal; a feature very few cards out there have. Most just allow audio pass-through. So I'm pretty psyched about the DG. I just can't believe what appears to be a stripped down version totally holds its own against the more expensive Xonar cards, or any of the others I've mentioned for that matter. For a 2.1 or 5.1 setup, there's little reason to go any other route. I'm not an audiophile; more like an audio aficionado. And I highly recommend the Xonar DG.

Pros: Small Footprint A Freaking FP connector that works (with amplification)

Cons: Zero

Overall Review: I can't believe I waited this long to replace the Audigy SE I had. The Audigy SE was a great card - still is pretty good don't get me wrong, but this little elite card blows the brakes off the Audigy SE, my older X-fi..... I mean FOR CRYING OUT LOUD (literally) I had no idea analog sound could be this pristine from a mere gaming/sound card. I installed it after popping out my Audigy SE. Installed the card and then loaded drivers from the CD - ok on initial setup and listening it was like the onboard sound of my MSI 970a-g46. Low Voume but sounded ok. So i began to toggle things in the Asus UI/Sound control panel. Still no joy after a bit, still the same. I know it must be better than this right..? So then with my old (but good) Grado60 cans (analog out back panel) I clicked on the arrow to bring down the extended menu of the Sonar. Ok so by defualt it was set to 5.1, I changed it to cans (headphone) then i see a little hammer sign off to the right of the speakers selections (that's HP Advacned selection) - then I see the actual 'headphone amplifier' section. It was on default moderate settings raise volume to 80% and its ok, then i toggle pro-gamer mode WOW much better. The I toggle 'exciter mode' and 90% volume, then click "ok, here's where the fun began. LOOL _ i literally could not believe what i was hearing. It was so much louder, volume, clarity was there. Rumbles. Playing Black Label Society "Funeral Bell" was astonishing -- rumbles galore and i can hear the highs and lows. mids pretty well. Dude my canz is shakin round top to bottom my eyeglasses were cocked sideways on my face. My bag of Doritos were dancing too. I fired up some ambient Steve Roach and was again blown away with the clarity and loudness. Then i fire up BF3 and after a few pops with an AK74 i had to look outside for police to make sure they ain't in my grill. Kidding aside the gaming sounds were also astonishing. It sounds that good. This card is better than the old X-Fi if you take the time to go through all the settings correctly and toggle the correct AMP settings for your cans. Smooth it out with EQ if you like. I also hooked up FP (front panel) to the Thermatake High Definition Audio front panel and it works great and the volume and AMP is the same - exactly, but you do need to re-toggle both front panel and then toggle the AMP again to hear the same volume and amplitude. This is the card to get if you want to use basic analog outs and you have some decent cans to use. Highly recommended! it will rock your socks off and beat da brakes off anything under $100.00 US

Pros: Noticeable improvement over onboard audio (Realtek AC892). Definitely worth the money. Headphone amp is a major plus for this card.

Cons: I've been sitting here for like 10 minutes trying to think of a con but I can't = <

Overall Review: For music and movies the speakers I'm using are Klipsch THX ProMedia 2.1. Even on bad sound hardware they perform amazingly so I wasn't expecting to hear much of a difference. I was wrong. I immediately noticed way more accurate bass and crisper highs in music. Before the bass sounded good but it just sounded like it threw generic mud into the song to accent it. It's just what I was used to and I accepted it. Now the bass shakes things in my room that it didn't before and not because of volume but just because the overall bass range is larger now. The headset I use for gaming is the Corsair HS1A. It's a great set but they're not Sennheisers or anything so I felt like this value card would match well with it and so far I'm pretty pleased. At first I felt like the difference was small but then I was like, "oh right, the headphone amp... *click*... !!! =o !!!". The amp just gives all the frequencies a little more boost and of course boosts the volume a bit. Absolutely worth it!