Headphone-oriented sound cards from Asus and Auzentech

jmke · 11th August 2009, 18:58

To drive demand, sound card makers have been forced to look elsewhere, turning their attention to improving fidelity. Good sound cards have traditionally offered superior playback quality to "free" integrated motherboard audio, and Asus and Auzentech currently make some of the best of the breed. Asus' relatively new Xonar sound cards offer phenomenally good playback quality, as have Auzentech's unique spins on Creative's X-Fi audio processor. Both camps already equip their cards with high-end electrical components, user-replaceable OPAMPs, and the ability to encode multi-channel digital bitstreams on the fly. So what's left to cover?

Headphones, it seems.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17256

12th August 2009, 11:57

Thought it was a pretty good article, it was only a month ago I was debating which card to buy, then a fantastic deal came up on the Forte that I just couldn't resist so I pulled the trigger.

From person experience and other wen articles I think Essence wins out if your using the headphone for music, but if your mainly into gaming and using ventrilo then the Forte is the one for you.

11th August 2009, 18:58	#1
jmke Madshrimp Join Date: May 2002 Location: 7090/Belgium Posts: 79,021	Headphone-oriented sound cards from Asus and Auzentech To drive demand, sound card makers have been forced to look elsewhere, turning their attention to improving fidelity. Good sound cards have traditionally offered superior playback quality to "free" integrated motherboard audio, and Asus and Auzentech currently make some of the best of the breed. Asus' relatively new Xonar sound cards offer phenomenally good playback quality, as have Auzentech's unique spins on Creative's X-Fi audio processor. Both camps already equip their cards with high-end electrical components, user-replaceable OPAMPs, and the ability to encode multi-channel digital bitstreams on the fly. So what's left to cover? Headphones, it seems. http://techreport.com/articles.x/17256 __________________

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12th August 2009, 11:57	#2
Kurgan Posts: n/a	Thought it was a pretty good article, it was only a month ago I was debating which card to buy, then a fantastic deal came up on the Forte that I just couldn't resist so I pulled the trigger. From person experience and other wen articles I think Essence wins out if your using the headphone for music, but if your mainly into gaming and using ventrilo then the Forte is the one for you.