Asus Xonar D2X Sound Card (Black)

The Xonar has Direct, Dolby digital, and DTS (Digital Theater Surround) sound, and works great with my home Studio. This 64 bit card will not work as a stand alone digital recorder, because it has too much latency. However it works great with my mixer, which has control room out that allows me to hear my recordings without latency. Anyone with a small studio mixer who wants to record 5.1 or 7.1 surround will love it. You must have the correct software to do this. I'm using Cakewalk Producer edition to record surround, but it's a wee bit expensive unless you're elgible for an upgrade. Ronnie Bee

A good add-on sound card can really improve your music and gaming experience. This one is expensive, but the sound improvement is worth it. The installation is pretty simple. Just make sure you have a floppy disc drive power connector coming out of your power supply because it does not draw it's power from the pcie slot.

I'm loving this card. Since I upgraded my system, I was forced to abandon my old PCI card (HT Omega Striker) and pick up a PCI-E card. I'm glad I picked this one, it sounds even better! I decided to give it a shot, despite reading a few negative reviews saying that Windows 7 x64 drivers were poor. I'm sure those problems are over, because I downloaded the latest drivers from Asus and they work just fine. I've had this card for about a week, and there isn't a hint of trouble.

The card itself is great, the sound quality is superior to my previously owned X-Fi Fatal1ty but consider this: First, many users have experienced (and, in fact, are experiencing) problems like popping sounds, messed-up channels, troubled microphone in Skype and games, system lock-ups and so on (especially in Win7) - visit Asus's forum to get the idea; Second, don't expect much in games (if you plan to use it for gaming), Asus's GX is a kind of a joke now and is incapable to emulate EAX in most of the cases (I ended up turning it off forever because it causes crashes way too often plus even when enabled it doesn't add much); Last, but the most important: it looks like Asus is NOT GOING TO FIX those problems. Despite their promises that the new drivers "are almost ready" and will be released "in next couple of weeks" the support for the whole line of their audio remains awful and there are no drivers for D2X on the horizon. I must also note that on some systems (mainboards, BIOSes, etc) D2X works perfectly even with the old drivers which makes it a kind of Russian Roulette - you pull the trigger (meaning - you buy it ;) ), you find out whether it'd work for you or not :) Not exactly what I'd expect from Asus though... I got rid of Creative for the very same reason (lack of support) and now I begin to think that going with Asus wasn't the good idea. Maybe one should try Auzentech?..

I had high hopes for this card, but had to return it. I use an intel mother board, with the IDT or sigmatel audio chip set and vista 64. Since the April-09 driver from intel didn't work either, i thought i would spend the money and finally get the most out of my good dolby amp, and JBL 5.1 speakers. So i went through, carefully turned off and uninstalled all the Intel audio stuff, and installed the Xonar 2dx, with the extra power cable. The drivers that came on the CD sort of worked, and looked promising, even though they were dated 2007. the SPDIF worked okay, but didn't sound very robust, instead it was tinny. I went to the ASUS site, and got the latest driver from this year,-March -09 (that was one of the reasons I bought the card, because they had obviously kept up the drivers with some a few months old). Well, with the March version, the menu's were not readible, and settings therefore could not be accessed. Plus, when going through the ASUS site, it's not possible to know if these updates are cumulative, or whether to load the patch, or whether or not the firmware update is really needed. In any case, even though i ended up getting SPDIF sound, it wasn't good, wasn't adjustable, none of the controls worked, the NEO 5.1 real time never worked, i couldn't set up or test the 5.1 speakers, etc. I'm sure that ASUS did a great job on this hardware engineering, but once again, they fall short on the human interface, and the operating system vagaries. I'll be glad when Vista 64 is a distant memory, but in the meantime, i guess i'm stuck with mediocre sound.

So much better than the onboard sound chip. Great with headphones as well as open speakers. Completed my gaming rig nicely.

This card works great under 7x64. The onboard audio sounded terrible to my UMC-1, in addition Fallout 3 would randomly lock up and crash. After using this card for over 1 month I am very happy. No longer does Fallout 3 lock up, no longer does my music collection sound like metallic distortion. I will note that while using the analog connections work fantastic, the optical connection suffers the same fate as the onboard audio. PC: D5 cooled P6T Deluxe V2 (full h20), i920 @4.2 (h20), 6 Gig OCZ, 120 SSD, n285 (h20), Enermax Revelution

First problem I came across was getting power to the card: The box didn't ship with a power cable which is ridiculous considering it requires a mini four-pin that has been impossible to find (even online). Anyhow I finally daisy-chained several MOLEX Y-connectors to reach the board. The last in the series is a Y-connector that converts to a mini-4pin. The card was recognized on boot but complained it still required an extra power supply. Ugh! The drivers installed without any errors (I think) but the card is barely audible so I can't tell what could be the casue. I have every possible volume control max'd out but I still can barely hear anything. As well, the instructions show that for a 5.1 surround the rear speakers plug into the side channel jack...? Not only is this strange to me, but the rear speakers crackle when they do play. I've been losing interest in Creative since they refuse to create a card that is truly a step forward (PCI-X, optical and SP/DIF, etc.), and I thought this Xonar would be the answer. Sadly it is not, so my search for an affordable alternative will continue. I'm not telling you to avoid this card since others have obviously made it work, but if you end up suffering from similar inadequacies with this product then know you aren't alone. -out

funziona benissimo ma i driver di questa scheda sono vecchi di anni e penosi ... a breve tornerò a prendere soundblaster saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti saluti

Great product. Would be better if it had a built in amp for higher resistance headphones.

qualité au rendez vous et emballage soigné rien a dire de plus une carte son qui envoi un son très propre et constant avec un rendu en 5.1 merveilleux

D2X-Soundkarte Auf der Suche nach einer Soundkarte die auf Windows-7 64 Bit läuft, fiel meine Wahl auf die Asus D2X. Da ich mich seit 2 Jahren mit einer Creativ-Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium rumärgerte die nie wirklich richtig auf diesem System laufen wollte, verabschiede ich mich nun endgültig von der Soundblaster. Unglaublich aber die Soundkarte von Asus überzeugte mich schon beim auspacken. Nach dem Einbau und dem Anschluss der Stromversorgung die ich dank eines gut ausgelegten Netzgerätes mit Strom versorgte musste ich nur noch die Treiber installieren. Vor dem Einbau sollten wirklich die neusten Treiber gedownloadet werden und auch das neue Firmware nach dem Einbau nachgeschoben werden. Erst nach einem Neustart wird das Firmware wohl übertragen. Danach wieder ein weiterer Neustart damit die Treiber die Karte wieder finden. Wichtig auch erst einmal die Gebrauchsanleitung zu lesen. In der Kurzanleitung wird der Midiport der als separater Anschluss der Karte beigefügt ist nicht erwähnt. Das beigefügte 4-Polige Kabel ist für den Midiport und nicht wie man Anfangs meinen möchte für die Stromversorgung. Der Anschluss der Stromversorgung, der von einigen früher bemängelt wurde, ist wohl nun stabil genug für den Anschlussstecker. Mein Netzgerät besitzt passende Anschlusskabel, so dass ein separates Versorgungskabel nicht nötig war. Beim Anschließen der Audiokabel an das Lautsprechersystem überraschte das die Buchsen der Karte mit verschieden farbigen LEDs ausgestattet sind. So das beim Anschließen unter dem Schreibtisch, wo es doch meist recht dunkel ist, sehr gut sehen kann, wo die einzelnen Stecker hin kommen. Eine Idee die ich mir bei anderen Karten auch gewünscht hätte. Die Anschlussmöglichkeiten der Karte sind für meine Ansprüche voll ausreichend. Separater Line Eingang und Digitale Ein und Ausgänge erfüllen alle meine Ansprüche sowohl im Mediabereich für Musikendwicklung und Videobearbeitung als auch im Spielebereich. Die Klangqualität der Kare konnte gleich beim ersten Sound überzeugen. Überraschend war auch das das System durch die Karte nicht ausgebremst wird. So hatte ich eher sogar den Eindruck, dass mein System schneller läuft. Besonders im Vergleich zur Creativ-Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium deren Treiber immer noch (seit 2 Jahren) nicht auf meinem Rechner (Win7-64) zum gewünschten Suroundklang führten, obwohl die SB-Kare unter Win-XP-32 anstandslos lief. Mit dieser Karte hat Asus wie auch meine Erfahrungen mit Motherbords gezeigt haben eine sehr gute Arbeit geliefert. Die Software die als Dreingabe geliefert wurde zeigt das volle Leistungsvolumen der Karte. Somit gebe ich der Karte die volle Punktzahl.

Ordered the Xonar D2x/DT sound card as like everyone else I was sick of the onboard supplied sound that is really terrible, especially when gaming. Arrived nice and promptly and layered in packaging - so everything was in top shape when I unpacked it. Once removed from the box I plugged it into the floppy power connector and found a spare molex and the plugging in was complete. Slotted into the PCI-E slot and screwed down - power on and installed the drivers I had downloaded from ASUS website and it worked straight off the bat. I have ordered a cheap 5.1 speaker system as I dont want to always be wearing headphones when gaming and I watch a lot of movies on my PC so I thought a mid range speaker system will run nicely on this card.. I will add my comments once the speakers arrive and I have chance to hook everything up..TBC... It looks great in my case and I have a blue theme going on in my windowed Fractal R4 case and I know a lot of people have taken the cards shroud off and unplugged the orange light. Not me.. It is not a big deal for me having a variety of colors as long as it's not red and it is a pretty looking card so visually thumbs up 5/5 score. I also like the fact that the rear sockets/ports for the RCA and SPDIF connectors light up the color assigned to that input. BRILLIANT got a nice rainbow light show going on behind my PC - you can never have too much color ..lol Once I have used this card some and see how it works with a set of £70, 5.1 speakers I will add to my review.