Asus Xonar AE Sound Board

Amazing! Installed this card the day it arrived and the audio is fantastic! Makes the built-in audio of my Gigabyte motherboard sound like an old pocket transistor radio. Easy to install, easy to connect various devices, low latency and high signal-to-noise ratio. Best of all: clean sound with life & depth. ASUS says it's a gaming card, but seems to work well with audio production. The only downside is that it doesn't come with ANY software, although the drivers can be downloaded at the ASUS support site.

I put this on a Gigabyte X670 AORUS ELITE AX WiFi board because the onboard sound card didn't have an optical out plug.I tried an exterior USB sound card I had that worked, except there was a constant cycling noise that sounded like a metronome whenever sound played. Made music suck :DThis was recognized by the OS with no problem, I did have to select the "Digital Output (S/PDIF) - XONAR SOUND CARD" option manually in the Settings > Sound > Output selection. The other option showing "Speakers - XONAR SOUND CARD" does not work.This has great sound output that is very clear, I am using a decent sound bar with a dedicated subwoofer. The sound bar has an option for a simulated 3d surround that works very well in games. Some are Linux Native, some are using Steam/Proton, and this has better sound than the same hardware on a prior mother board using the same onboard sound chipset did (it had the optical out plug).I don't have any high end headphones to tell you how well it works with; based on the range and volume available through the external speakers, I think it would be good, maybe very good.Pros:- Worked great out of the box; I did have sufficient room in the case for it.- Great sound for music and gaming.- Multiple output options, I needed the S/PDIF one.- Packaged well in the box, so it would take a heck of a whack or impact to damage in shipping, I think.Cons:- No dedicated Linux software for the sound suite. Not even a little bit. Linux users are used to this, but if I had found a comparably priced card with Linux drivers, I would not have bought this.There are good Linux sound controllers & equalizers, but if you need something quickly for a professional setup, this may not be it. So the 5 star review is relative to my experience and what I use it for. In a different environment and need, this may vary.

My onboard audio is an ALC897 codec, needless to say, it is underwhelming (thanks MSI for using this on a B560). I then upgraded to an ASUS SE sound card, it was an immediate improvement and provided a rich sound with a deep bass that is fantastic if you are on a budget. I had the opportunity to purchase a used ASUS AE for $40 and though its a definite improvement, there are a few things to be sure to do for installing drivers. Make sure the onboard audio controller is disabled in BIOS and uninstall audio drivers prior to installing the sound card. Once the sound card is installed, go to the ASUS website and install drivers, then restart the PC. The sound quality is a definite improvement over the ALC897 and the ASUS SE. The software is also very user friendly with a number of presets. I am planning on replacing the opamp and am eager to see if it makes any meaningful difference. I will say that it is disappointing that it only goes to 110db and only drives 150ohm headsets. Also, as of 10/11/21, Windows 11 is not yet supported. For $40 its a good buy. However, anything more and I would go with an external dac setup.

So I was pretty excited to try out this card, as I had read fairly good reviews about it, and hadn't actually experimented with anything other than on-board audio before.First, if you have a dual or triple fan GPU installed in the upper-most PCI-E slot (what most motherboards use as the X-16 slot a GPU is most often installed in) in a standard ATX case, you're not going to be able to utilize the X-1 slot for this card, as it almost completely blocks cooling fan flow from the GPU. A minor issue, but still kind of annoying.After using a lower X-16 slot in my motherboard for this card, and installing the proper drivers and Asus software, when using the headphone out, which has a built in Amp and can supposedly drive headphones up to 150 ohms impedance, I heard a faint crackling at lower volume from any bass driven note. As I continued to use the card, I realized this faint crackling can be heard using any of the outputs on the card. Not much in the way of troubleshooting online for this either. After removing the card and reverting to on-board audio, voila. No more crackling.When I tried to use both the front and rear outputs on the card, the card would only output to the front. No audio would be output through the "center" output either.And finally, at random times, a complete breakdown of the audio would occur, with whatever was being input by the computer, resulting in audio which sounded like a crashing noise, extremely low bitrate, and a slowing of whatever speech or music was being played, requiring a system reboot.The software wasn't too great either, with the equalizer, bass boost, and compressor settings providing no noticeable change in audio quality. If you wish to leave headphones plugged into the back of the card on windows 10, you'll need to utilize the program from Asus, as the source is not selectable in the windows task bar.Unbelievable.I've never had much luck with Asus products before (big problems with high end Asus laptops), but this one might be the nail in the coffin for me and Asus.