Affiliate Review:bit-tech News: Asus Xonar D2X - PCI-Express soundcard

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bit-tech News: Asus Xonar D2X - PCI-Express soundcard

Quote: Originally Posted by bit-tech "In some regards the D2X represents the rather pathetic state of the soundcard industry as a whole – we’ve had PCI-Express for nearly four years now and the only performance card worth buying on the interface has to use a bridge chip. At least Asus has got off its backside and done something about it. As for the Xonar D2X itself, I still prefer not to use any of the extra Dolby or DTS features and leave the core audio sounding as good as it should – and it certainly sounds excellent. But because I prefer to have the audio sounding as it was intended without the use of any Dolby or DTS ‘features’, a lot of this extra value is lost on me. I really wish Asus would launch a no-frills card that sounded just as good – without having to pay for the DTS and Dolby licences or extra OEM software included in the bundle – it would work out far cheaper. The additional power the Xonar D2X requires caused me no end of fuss too. First, my PSU at home didn’t have a floppy connector, so I had to dig around for an adapter, and then I had to re-route all my tidied cables – it’s just sloppy and messy. Even a normal Molex, which every PSU has, would have been a better option. At the very least a Molex-to-floppy power adapter should be thrown in the box gratis. The software package is vast and beats anything from else we’ve seen, although the PMP software and ALT features are still pretty much as good as useless. Thankfully the drivers have improved and it worked flawlessly straight out the box with everything we threw at it; new games, old games, DVDs, music – the lot. Is the Asus Xonar D2X worth the money? Absolutely, if you require a PCI-Express soundcard and want the best currently available, but as an alternative to the many PCI soundcards I’m still not so sure. If you’re a fan of older games and you’re running Vista then this could certainly be very tempting, but it’s probably an expense not worth bearing unless you want to play and use at least some of the many features included." Full Story at bit-tech