Asus Xonar SE Sound Board

Pros: SPDIF out.

Overall Review: I bought it for my HTPC, needed a SPDIF out. I wanted to be able to turn my TV off while listening to music, but couldn't using the TV's SPDIF with the power off. I'm blown away with how much better it sounds than the SPDIF on my TV. Even though my TV is a Samsung I bought in 2020, and my video card is a GTX1650(using HDMI sound). Highly recommend'd for an entry level sound card.

Pros: Always liked Asus products including their sound cards. The first one was a Xonar DG - this one is even better. Easy installation in Windows 10.

Cons: it's installed in a dual boot configuration with Linux Mint. It took some messing around to get it to work but finally got going. However, it lacks the configuration window that's available in Windows. Asus needs to produce Linux drivers to ease the installation along with a GUI configuration setup. (That's true of a lot of computer accessories.)

Overall Review: Good card that's reasonably affordable.

Pros: Sounds great Cheap Easy to install

Cons: Old software (?) 1/8 line out jack seems to be shorter than expected (?)

Overall Review: Installed with no problems at all and Windows recognized the card at startup . But got a problem with the line out jack and I had to shorten the plug for less than 1mm for it to work so I removed 1 star. Overall, this card sounds way better than the original Realtek chip.