Wow, that looks really good, and it's PCIe to boot. Thinking about ordering one. I would love to expunge Creative from my life forever.

If anyone gets this card, I'd love to hear some first hand impressions.
--Todd

Yeah I thought integrated audio was killing Creative and Creative was killing Creative.

Then combine that with multi-core cpus. It seems like sound cards for gaming are dead.

Interesting. I'll definitely have some choice when i come to make my new PC in the next year or so.

I've always had a creative card. I had a cheap LIVE! 1024 back in the day when my 500 MHz Intel machine wouldn't play Quake 3 without massively stuttering when sound was enabled. Then i moved up to an Audigy 2 ZS. I've never had a problem with the hardware or software/drivers under Win2k, XP or Vista. I think i'm really lucky.

I am building my new machine today and getting rid of my audigy 2 ZS. The drivers are over a year old now and it sounds like sh*t on Vista. I am just going to stick with onboard sound or buy this Asus card when it gets cheaper.

Malor,

If you're set up for it, what I really want to know is there's an effective equivalent for the "what you hear" recording function of the Creative Xfi in vista...

Wow, that's a productive way to channel the hate!!!

please keep us posted!!!!

The last time my computer had a separate soundcard, I was pulling LeChuck's underwear to create a Voodoo Doll, so it's definitely been a while.

Does 7.1 surround for $90 sound too good to be true, or have I been out of the sound card game that long?

--------------EDIT--------------------

Forgot to ask, anyone know of a good brand for 5.1 headphones that don't cost an arm and a leg?

Awesome. I am putting windows 64bit on today with my new q6600. Would love to hear how the sound card is.

Rabbit, I don't know if you followed the Vista threads, but asking me about Vista performance is like asking Greenpeace about Japanese whaling performance. I don't have it or run it, and don't plan to, ever ever ever, unless the DRM system goes away. I'll be happy to report on my experience under XP, though.

I ordered the more expensive of the two cards, because I really like Burr-Brown DACs, and the 5.1 speakers on the computer might be good enough to hear the difference. It's actually cheap home theater gear, rather than the typical computer-sound garbage. That means I can also test the DTS and DD Live encodings, to see how well the card compresses five or seven audio channels to go down an optical cable.

I'm not really an audiophile, nor do I have special golden ears, but I do understand sound on computers pretty well, and have had exposure to quite good ($3k ish) stereo systems, so I'm better equipped to review this thing than most web-based reviewers.

Sadly, I don't see any way for a quick A/B between X-Fi and Xonar; I'd need a method to swap all three audio cables instantly, and I just don't have one. I'll have to think about that. Maybe I can come up with something.

Ok, I've been playing with this a little bit today. I haven't had much time to focus on it, as I had a long WoW raid today, so this is quick impressions after fooling with it for maybe 90 minutes and then playing WoW for several hours.

First, one of the fundamental tests I use with soundcards is, "can it do bitperfect?" Windows, by default, runs all sound at 48Khz internally, and resamples all sound to that bitrate. Even with pure 48Khz signals, it runs everything through a mixer that mutilates it somewhat. This means you're not getting the exact bits out that you put in, which purists find annoying. There are two interfaces that will allow you to do true bitperfect output on Windows; kernel streaming, and ASIO. The way to test if you're bitperfect is by playing a DTS-encoded WAV file, while connected to a receiver by an optical or copper S/PDIF cable. If you get a hissy hash, something in your audio chain is screwing up the sound. If you get pure music, then you're truly bitperfect.

This is generally a real hassle on Windows. Very few cards will do bitperfect output. Oddly, USB soundcards sometimes will, almost by accident. The M-Audio Sonica Theater, for instance, would do bitperfect, but the drivers for that card are so horrible that you should slap yourself for even thinking about buying one. The X-Fi will do bitperfect with some juggling; you have to set it to bit-matched output, which disables most of the DSP features, and then address it with either kernel streaming or ASIO4ALL (which is an ASIO interface to kernel streaming.) So it was awkward, but doable. The native ASIO drivers will not work, you have to use ASIO4ALL.

Basically, this is the simplest of all possible tests: can this card output exactly what's input? And as far as I can tell, the Xonar cannot. I fiddled with it for quite awhile and was unable to get anything but hash, no matter how I fooled with the sound. It's possible I may have missed something (all volumes need to be set to max, for instance, and maybe I missed a spot), so don't take this as a final word yet, but initial tests don't look promising.

The sound quality itself seems exceptional. I thought the X-Fi was pretty good, but the Xonar seems demonstrably clearer; it's the proverbial 'being able to hear music better'. These speakers aren't hugely expensive, but they're real home theater equipment, not just crappy computer speakers. As far as I can determine without an A/B swap, the new sound is quite markedly better, at least through the analog ports. Note, however, that I was expecting that result, and it's very easy to fool oneself with audio. I need to A/B it to be sure, and that's gonna be real difficult, since you're not supposed to have the drivers loaded for other soundcards.

I might be able to A/B between the Xonar and my Squeezeboxes, which are remarkably high-quality output devices, but a straight A/B switch between X-Fi and Xonar will be hard for me to do. I'll try to think of a way I can do it reasonably.

I gotta say, the control panel for this thing LOOKS cool, but the interface is pretty much impenetrable. I was finally able to whip it into some semblance of shape, but things aren't at all logically laid out. They LOOK neat, but they don't make any SENSE; it's hard to even tell whether a given feature is set to on or off.

I ran a quick sample of the Dolby Digital Live and DTS:Connect encodings, which are supposed to work down a S/PDIF, and I was pretty much horrified at the results. Running a game through that sounded like crap. It was, indeed, multichannel, but the compression artifacts were extremely obvious; it felt like I was listening to a 96k MP3 of the game sound, rather than the game itself. There was also some lag in the encoding, so you'd hear things slightly after they actually happened. I'll have to experiment more with it, but so far, it looks like the DDL encoding is a complete and utter bust.

All that said, I thought the sound quality itself in analog mode was really excellent, and I can easily see myself keeping the card and ditching Creative. I'll report back after I've had more time to test.

I don't yet recommend buying one of these. But I'm not saying to avoid it yet, either. I need more time to understand it better.

Well, I just removed it, and am debating over whether to send it back.

Why debate? The hardware is awesome. Music sounds so goddamn good out of this card, you just wouldn't believe it. Even resampling, it sounds incredible.

The software, on the other hand, is pretty awful. The layout is bad, and the compatibility seems poor. What prompted me to give up on the Xonar was when the new freebie "An Untitled Story" failed to run correctly on it -- after running fine on my LAPTOP, which has the worst sound chip in the known universe. And Assassin's Creed stutters, even when setting hardware acceleration to None. There doesn't seem to be any MIDI support, and there's no support for bitperfect either.

Further, there appears to be no way for DVD software to send the DVD audio straight down the S/PDIF to the receiver, which is an incredibly stupid oversight.

It's so frustrating to get hardware this nice, and then have it sabotaged by the software guys. I think ASUS must be in trouble; they really seem to be going downhill in a big way. The ASUS motherboard in this computer was advertised with outright lies about its specifications, and while this soundcard is very good in terms of the hardware, corporate apparently failed to give the software team the resources to do it properly.

Compare this with Turtle Beach, who also appears to be outsourcing their driver work to Asia, but they're getting good results. I really like their USB Audio Advantage SRM in terms of software, although the forced 48khz resample messes up music pretty badly. I'd love to see what their driver team could do with this wonderful hardware.

PC audio could be ridiculously awesome with some effort. They're so close to getting it right. Argh!

Boy, you compare this with the Mac.... on a Mac, you get stereo only, but it's bitperfect out of the box. Raise volume to max, and you can play DTS-encoded WAVs with zero additional effort. Everything just works. Add more sound channels (probably via USB) and you can map them into 3D space with the control panel, and everything stays lossless and bitperfect, hardware allowing. Windows sucks so bad at sound in comparison.

How about Linux? Do Linux next!

You could always use something like Virtual Audio Cable. I have no personal experience with it though.

I am gonna get some descent headphones, and this looks much cheaper than the old X-Fi.

Does it have front panel support?

I rarely tweak settings in mixers or anything, so those can suck. But if the drivers crap out, that is a totally different range of badness. Did it ever work properly for you?