Asus Xonar D1 7.1 PCI Sound CardItem#: A455-2628  |  Model#: XONAR D1

Excellant Sound Quality

The price on this sound card was perfect, going on sale, with free shipping, and a 20 buck mail in rebate. I have never owned any particular Asus products before; but after dropping this in my rig and connecting directly to my HT reciever with the a Monster Toslink cable, I have to say I will look at Asus for more products in the future. The sound quality and crispness for movies and music is spectacular. With a high Signal to Noise Ratio, the clarity and quality of all pc sounds is something to be heard. My FPS in gaming has jumped up also, and the EX settings for gaming(in particular) is a perfect compliment to home theater pc gaming for total surround sound immersion. True on the fly digital conversion to 5.1 and 7.1 can sound as good as the studio recorded disc, and this sound card proves it. Even without the rebate I will recommend this as an immediate by for anyone wanting to upgrade their pc's sound to the next level.

It never works right

It never works right. No matter how much I fiddle with the settings, it will not play 2 channel audio over all of my speakers. In fact, it randomly shifts the audio between only the front, only the back, or only the center speakers. Current drivers do not work for the current version of Windows 7.

Very Nice

Once I remembered to disable the onboard sound in bios things improved greatly. I was pleasantly surprised at the improvement. I'm sure the more expensive cards do better but this seems like a good compromise between price and quality.

Seems to be working just fine

This was put into my wife's machine to replace a perfectly good SB product that no longer worked under Vista 64 and so far it has worked just fine. The installation was easy and the drivers gave me no problems, the only difficulty was in getting the right sound cable in the right place but once that was finished all 5 speakers sounded better than they had with the SB card that was removed.

Good enough to make you smile

I haven't done THAT much with sound cards in the past. I've been used to on-board interfaces and even one upgrade to an older 5.1 card. Then I decided to build a system all my own. I wanted everything to be worthwhile, and I'm not even close to saying this fit the bill. It accedes the demands I was hoping to fulfill, and then some. The software interface is user friendly, and you can tell an obvious difference in the sound depending on which mode you put it in. Very clear to the point of transparency. Needless to say, I'm very satisfied with this product. Definitely don't be afraid to purchase this because of the price comparison. It's a great card, Dolby tech and all.