Asus Strix Soar 7.1 Gaming Soundcard

I've had this card for around two weeks now to ensure that my review is reliable and fair.To begin, the sound quality on this card quite immense, you can quite easily put the volume at 100% and hear no noise from the audio - only that of the recording. The 192000Hz sample rate and the 24bit accuracy is simply incredible.Additionally, once the drivers are installed, you can manipulate settings on the card such as EQ and surround sound. The drivers offer the ability to clarify voices, boost bass and even add a compressor. However, I have found that the bass boost and the voice clarifier appears just to be a preset EQ function.At this point, the rest of the functions become gimmicks. The driver, for someone who simply wants clean audio, is just a fancy display to control what could be done through the Windows control panel.I could only find one downside with this card. It claims to power 600ohm headphones but it just manages to produce anything loud with my 50ohm headphones. I sit most of the time with the volume at 50 to 60% but when I want to really indulge in the experience of listening, I have to crank the volume up to 100% to get something only moderately loud. Don't get me wrong, this card can drive some good headphones with some incredible dynamics. But relative to what you might be used to, it's probably lacking a bit. This, though, really is only a minor disadvantage to a truly great sound card.

Do not buy this card, worked foe an hour and then packed up on me, thought the reviews were just people who didn't have a clue but they are right, this card looks nice and have a nice driver interface but the drivers are bad, they don't work and have many problems and the card makes clicking noises all the time when switching from speakers to headphones, absolute garbage, stay away. Asus have severely disappointed me. Go creative instead.

I purchased this for my DAW, as I needed an integrated DAC for some applications. It uses an ESS 9006A Sabre DAC, which is capable of DSD and 384KHz sampling but not with the ASUS drivers. I am using an AMD 7950 and it took me months to stablise the platform. The drivers are out of date and not updated - they interact with the motherboard which is also an ASUS.It appears that ASUS like to introduce a new product, then forget it; shame on you ASUS.

After a couple of days getting to grips with the Asus Strix Soar; It's not a bad card, just flawed.Pros:Crystal clear audioSurprisingly accurate surround emulationJack sensingClean & Easy to use Control PanelCons;Drivers are sensitive to DPC latency - Anything that causes too much Processor load will cause pops and crackles and the drivers struggle to keep upVery sensitive to external devices - Further interference was caused originally by a Headphone Amplifier I was using before, it seems anything that feeds power back into the card will cause noise.Asus Driver Support is slow, at best.Not everyone will have an available PCI-E 6-Pin connector, and the card does not include a Molex to 6-pin conversion cable.I purchased this card to replace my previous Asus Xonar DX, which was on it's way out, thinking i'd be getting much of the same, indeed, the Specification of the Strix was near identical to that of the Xonar DX, but after spending some time with the card in a variety of using scenarios; I can honestly say it's better.Having run a wide variety of music through it both over SPDIF to my Speakers and to my HD518 headphones: The sound is very clear, giving a nice wide range, but staying fairly neutral without any enhancements applied, Bass is clearer and more defined than with the Xonar DX and Left/Right channel separation is better, giving a better listening experience, notably; songs that use Binaural audio sound even better on the Strix Soar than they did on the DX it replaced.In games, arguably the area where Asus is aiming the Strix, it definitely excels, while the emulated surround system is a little tricker to setup than the Dolby Surround emulation on the DX: The end result is much better, footsteps and positional audio is very clear and precise, and it's a lot more tweakable to suit how you prefer your audio, rather than the generic "DH1/DH2/DH3" settings on the DX.The only issue I had (Beyond fishing out an extra cable to run it) was the noise being introduced, which I ultimately resolved, but it still seems that anything that hits DPC latency too much, or simply loads the processor too heavily, will cause audio issues.Of note to people who can't figure out how to get the card to output in desired SPDIF formats; Those are found in Windows Sound Options / Recording Devices / Strix SPDIF Out - Right click on that, hit Properties and find the "Supported Formats" tab, in there you can state which audio formats and sample rates the connected device can manage. (Giving you the option of outputting Dolby Digital, DTS Audio & Windows WMA Pro Audio alongside the default PCM output, with Sample Rates ranging from 44.1khz through to 192 khz)On the whole; Now that I've figured out what makes the card tick and had some time to customise the audio settings to my preference; It's an exceptional card, I can't give it a caveat free recommendation due to the little issues with Noise in system intensive moments, but it's a great card and it does exactly what it needs to, and definitely learns from the mistakes of previous products Asus have released.

...ASUS quality as always. Works impeccably with my Steelseries ARCTIS 7 gaming headset. Totally recommended 100%.

windows 10 recognises and keeps the settings for this card and its awesome sound quality means its an ideal choice for people building a system or having issues with the likes of creative labs cards.

Glitchy.. Would only work 50 percent of start ups. Would rarely work from a cold start. Maybe mine was faulty. But I've seen people declaring similar fault on forumsTried on 2 motherboards and 2 psu'sI didn't try it for gamingwhen it did work it was great for the price. Great user interface.Had to return it though

Not sure on why there's a lot of hate for this card.I unboxed, installed and setup the drivers right away there was no problems at all everything installed how it should do.One cool feature is the ability to have a sound sonar so in games you can track which direction sound such as gunfire is coming from.