ASUS Xonar D2 Sound Card Review

At Computex 2007, ASUS wowed us with their new Xonar range of audio products, aiming to take a chunk of Creative’s market share in the high end PC audio category. Now we’ve got our hands on the ASUS Xonar D2, and we’re putting it to the test. Does the newcomer Xonar D2 have what it takes to challenge the X-Fi?

..From the outset, it looked like ASUS was preparing the Xonar products to be X-Fi killers in terms of sound quality, but what they’ve really succeeded in doing is delivering a product that’s an excellent value. It delivers the extremely high SNR and low distortion of Creative’s X-Fi Elite Pro sound card, at a price that’s about $70 less. For that $70, though, you give up the X-Fi Elite Pro’s breakout box and hardware DSP acceleration. What you get instead is one very sexy-looking piece of audio hardware, and a fantastic suite of bundled software. We’re pleased to award the ASUS Xonar D2 a well-earned Techgage score of 9/10, and I’m proud to make it my Editor’s Choice product for September.

Techgage