Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX Pro PCIe Sound Card review

“At its ~$79 price point, the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX Pro positions itself as an accessible upgrade rather than a major investment, and that pricing is key. On entry-level or older systems, the improvement can be tangible: cleaner output, reduced noise, and better consistency. On newer motherboards, however, the gains become more subtle, shifting the value proposition away from raw performance and toward control, consistency, and software-driven customization. That software layer is, in many ways, the defining strength of the product. Creative’s ecosystem—featuring equalization, surround processing, Scout Mode, and CrystalVoice—offers a level of centralized control that onboard solutions rarely match in a cohesive manner. This transforms the card into more than just a hardware upgrade; it becomes an audio tuning platform. At the same time, it’s important to recognize that this is a very analog-focused solution. There is no HDMI passthrough, no eARC support, and no modern AV-centric digital integration. Instead, the Audigy FX Pro relies on traditional analog outputs and optical S/PDIF, which makes it ideal for desktop speakers and headphones, but less suited for living-room or home theater-style setups.

Performance-wise, the Audigy FX Pro delivers incremental but meaningful improvements, particularly in signal cleanliness and channel separation, though it does not compete with higher-end external DAC/AMP solutions. This is further complicated by the growing presence of external USB audio devices, which often provide stronger analog performance at similar or slightly higher price points, along with broader connectivity options. However, those solutions come with added complexity—extra cables, desk space, and setup—while the Audigy FX Pro retains a clear advantage in simplicity. It is fully internal, compact, and integrates seamlessly into a system without changing your setup footprint, which remains a strong argument in its favor.

So, is the Audigy FX Pro relevant in 2026? The answer remains nuanced. It is no longer essential, but also not obsolete. For users with weaker onboard audio, electrical noise issues, or a desire for more control over their sound environment, it remains a practical and effective upgrade. For those already equipped with high-end motherboard audio—or users seeking modern digital audio routing like HDMI/eARC—the justification becomes less compelling. Ultimately, this is a product that succeeds by understanding its role: it does not aim to modernize connectivity or replace advanced external solutions, but to refine traditional PC audio. And in that context, it delivers a balanced, well-priced solution for users who know exactly what they want to improve.“

Source: https://www.guru3d.com/review/creative-sound-blaster-audigy-fx-pro-pcie-sound-card-review/page-9/

Nice thought and idea - modern board and all and both of my PCIE slots are in use. Suppose I could rig an m.2 to pcie adapter but is that worth the effort over my built in Realtek ALC4080 USB‑audio codec paired with ASUS’s ROG SupremeFX enhancements.

I guess one neat thing would be having the traditional audio jacks - something I didnt realize this board doesnt have till after I purchased - not an issue though as I had planned to use optical to the stereo anyways - I know lower data rate but just one cable.



Have/are we moving past the traditional coax type audio with its spider web of cables to either retro optical or hdmi based solutions?

While I’m sure it’s great, I have a Schiit DAC -> AMP, and I use that AMP as both a headphone AMP for my headphones, and a preamp for my powered bookshelf speakers. I’ve compared it to onboard and HDMI audio, and the DACAMP is much cleaner and warmer. It would be interesting to see if this Creative soundcard can do better.

Elf_Boy said:

Nice thought and idea - modern board and all and both of my PCIE slots are in use. Suppose I could rig an m.2 to pcie adapter but is that worth the effort over my built in Realtek ALC4080 USB‑audio codec paired with ASUS’s ROG SupremeFX enhancements.

I guess one neat thing would be having the traditional audio jacks - something I didnt realize this board doesnt have till after I purchased - not an issue though as I had planned to use optical to the stereo anyways - I know lower data rate but just one cable.

View attachment 794716

Have/are we moving past the traditional coax type audio with its spider web of cables to either retro optical or hdmi based solutions?

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HDMI is generally the go-to for audio. Optical doesn't have the bandwidth for modern high definition surround sound setups.

I suppose there's probably a market for cheap pcie cards that give surround sound.

If I was to buy a Creative Labs product right now it would be their Sound Blaster G8. It's just a shame it doesn't do the optical in and HDMI ARC concurrently.

While I certainly don't have a zoomer / TikTok attention span, the review took 4-5 pages of semi-superfluous text to get to the first part I was interested in;
what chips it uses (could see some sort of Realtek chip in the very first photos, but wanted more details)

Overall, seems a little pointless to use up a PCI-E slot compared to older Creative cards (a big reason why I went mATX rather than ITX, that and I'm a cheap bastard)
since this looks like it is just sticking a PCI-E -> USB HA + USB audio solution in a PCI-E slot

It's been almost 20 years since I bought a soundcard.
I figured Creative Labs would be pushing products on another front by now.

Looks like an upgrade for my Asus Xonar sound card. Anyone who thinks modern good RealTek chips are actually... good, don't have good ears. I'm not into the whole external DAC thing since that just introduces latency.

I’ve been on the fence about getting a sound card lately. Are they actually worth it now? The last one I had was many years ago

Niner said:

I’ve been on the fence about getting a sound card lately. Are they actually worth it now? The last one I had was many years ago

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If they released an updated version of the X7 with eARC support, 2-3 usb-c inputs, line in, optical in, 1-2 bluetooth 6 inputs etc and all the inputs could play concurrently, I'd buy it straight away.

Niner said:

I’ve been on the fence about getting a sound card lately. Are they actually worth it now? The last one I had was many years ago
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I remember having full 3D audio back in the days of Battlefield 2 with a 2.1 system in front and a 2.0 bookshelf speaker set behind. That sound was insane.

DukenukemX said:

Looks like an upgrade for my Asus Xonar sound card. Anyone who thinks modern good RealTek chips are actually... good, don't have good ears. I'm not into the whole external DAC thing since that just introduces latency.

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Tell me all about this latency. Please.

Niner said:

I’ve been on the fence about getting a sound card lately. Are they actually worth it now? The last one I had was many years ago
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I have an AE-5 and love it. Not as good as the old cards, but it's close. It has a built-in dac for headphones. It has EFI shielding so I don't get any weirdness with it being right against my 4090. The last gen Zx series was garbage, though. No matter what I tried I could not get it to stop clipping. It had nice full tone in the midrange where it didn't clip, though, which made it all the more disappointing. The AE-5 is good throughout the frequency range.

madpistol said:

Tell me all about this latency. Please.

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If your sound starts to crackle and pop then that's due to high latency. Also, USB doesn't always have enough bandwidth for audio, so there maybe compression which means lower audio quality. That does largely depend on the DAC and whether or not they actually make use of USB3.0, and not just say it. The fact that Schiit even acknowledged the latency and gives a good 50ms to 100ms range, means that yes there's latency. To me that's a lot of latency.

Gotta remember the whole point of an external DAC is to avoid the noisy internals of a computer, but modern computers are really well shielded or grounded. If you can't hear any noise when you raise the volume with nothing playing, then you know you don't have a noise issue. External DAC's have a lot of negatives for what little positive you could gain.

Niner said:

I’ve been on the fence about getting a sound card lately. Are they actually worth it now? The last one I had was many years ago
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most certainly if you like good sound. i run an audigy rx which is basically a pcie version of an audigy 4. but when i finally got a mother board that didn't have pci slots i tried using onboard sound for all but a couple days before i was ordering a new sound card. the difference is night and day if you've got it hooked up to high end studio monitors or what not. i think they finally started running out of chips for the rx but if you can still find one they are an awesome value being i paid $400 for my audigy 4 pro back in the day.

madpistol said:

Tell me all about this latency. Please.

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50-100ms LOL

gtrguy said:

50-100ms LOL

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You missed the part where it says as fast or faster than onboard audio.

I'm done with Sound Cards I had original Audigy with the Lightning remember that think I installed it 30-50 times they become dated with WIn OS releases.
My IFI Zen Dac V3 sounds good as anything connected to my Speakers. I tried two different Dacs the Fosi K7 and the Fiio K13 the IFI is better connected to some Edifier S880DBs.
The Fosi K7 is really good but not for Speakers and games. I even picked up the Creative Katana Soundbar I'm looking to get of it at a Garage Sale in the summer.

Last Sound Card I purchased was the AE-5 I think it either broke or ran into compatiblity issues also had the Recon which sounded pretty good.

madpistol said:

You missed the part where it says as fast or faster than onboard audio.

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Can't say it adds 50ms to 100ms while also saying as fast or faster. It most likely adds another 100ms of latency from audio.

Comixbooks said:

Last Sound Card I purchased was the AE-5 I think it either broke or ran into compatbily issues also had the Recon which sounded pretty good.

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I loved my Recon but one day the front microphone port just stopped working. Actually, this was a thing for a lot of my Sound Blaster sound cards. All having really good audio quality, but the front microphone port craps out.

One thing I could see as nice is if you are into recording analog sources, like say Vinyl or Cassette on an older computer.

Says it supports analog input recording at 16/24/32 bit & 44.1, 48.0, 88.2, 96.0, 176.4, 192.0 kHz. That covers just about everything the FOMOphiles could need.

As cool as it is to see a consumer sound card release in 2026.

No one is really going to buy these. High end motherboards actually have comparable audio.
Low end boards are good enough for people that don't care. Or their slots are being eatin up by wifi cards and such.

For people that DO care. These are still inferior to a high end breakout box. Which the streaming kids all think they need. The home audio types do actually need for the connectivity. And the audio file types are more then willing to drop $200-500 on. I would think anyone that might want something like this was already in the market for a Focusrite scarlet or something.

I just don't really see a market for these.

erek said:

For users with weaker onboard audio, electrical noise issues, or a desire for more control over their sound environment, it remains a practical and effective upgrade.

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Well, maybe so, but oftentimes if someone has noise issues (buzzing and such) on their onboard, then a chip on a PCIe card may or may not fix the issue.

Hell, I got an external FiiO E10K Olympus 2 to buzz when combined with a crappy Logitech G213 keyboard - the DAC was picking up noise from the keyboard RGB's lighting.
I got lucky on the same system with the FiiO K11 R2R - no buzz at any gain level or volume. Maybe because it has an external power supply.

My only fault, IMHO, was usually skimping on the motherboards (but not on the PSUs, mind you).
Even with mobos, there's an exception, however. I had an Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 HiFi (PCI) work fine on a cheapo GA-P35-S3G, but making audible rapid-fart noises when moving the mouse cursor, combined with a (slightly better) GA-EP45-DS3LR.
The Prodigy card looked like this:

They clearly tried to prevent noise, but it was sneaking in anyway.

So, what I'm saying is that nothing's guaranteed with regard to electrical noise making its way into the signal, be it with external or internal sound cards. Hit or miss, too many devices interacting directly and indirectly.

And I'm only talking about headphones here. A setup with an external amp and speakers is yet another level of "fun".

I realize that I only focused on electrical noise here, but it's a pet peeve of mine. Sometimes you just get unlucky.

ChadD said:

As cool as it is to see a consumer sound card release in 2026.

No one is really going to buy these. High end motherboards actually have comparable audio.
Low end boards are good enough for people that don't care. Or their slots are being eatin up by wifi cards and such.

For people that DO care. These are still inferior to a high end breakout box. Which the streaming kids all think they need. The home audio types do actually need for the connectivity. And the audio file types are more then willing to drop $200-500 on. I would think anyone that might want something like this was already in the market for a Focusrite scarlet or something.

I just don't really see a market for these.

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I just feel that Realtek audio is crap, no matter how high end they may seem. My MSI B350 Tomahawk came with a Realtek ALC892. It's the same sound chip in the MSI B550 and B650 boards. High end Realtek is ALC1220 and that's on $300 motherboards. I'd rather buy the $80 Sound Blaster and know I can take that with me to newer motherboards if I want.

DukenukemX said:

I just feel that Realtek audio is crap, no matter how high end they may seem. My MSI B350 Tomahawk came with a Realtek ALC892. It's the same sound chip in the MSI B550 and B650 boards. High end Realtek is ALC1220 and that's on $300 motherboards. I'd rather buy the $80 Sound Blaster and know I can take that with me to newer motherboards if I want.

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I have ALC1220... my board was not $300+. Yes it is actually pretty decent audio. Even on Linux.

That is my point though. If audio matters to a consumer they will either buy a better MOBO. And get other features they want as well.

OR they really really care. Which means they won't buy a $80 soundblaster card either. They will buy a $200-500 superior USB audio unit like a Focusrite or other high end audio device. You can get solid devices like the Focusrite solo now for not much more then what Creative wants for this new soundblaster card. Its going to be superior have a headphone amp, and a couple basic studio inputs. If you care enough about audio to care... you are going to want your headphone amp out of your PC, and being able to do a bit of professional recording is just a bonus. + the streaming gaming kids are sold that they need to have a good breakout box for a proper mic setup anyway. If they are smart they buy a professional audio device like a Focusrite instead of some silly crap streaming audio thing.

I just don't see the market for upgraded on board sound. If you care you spend more then this for something better. If you care just a little you buy a better MOBO. Who does this card cover? Someone who cheaped out on thier MOBO and decided they actually want better sound after the fact? Why not just spend $80 more on your MOBO?

Previous version also the Audio ports are plastic so they break.

I'll just add that, with the onboards, like Realtek, I usually don't focus as much on which specific Realtek they use, but how it's implemented on the motherboard (which is what ends up being the sound). The Realtek itself only does basic amplification, so you still need an op-amp on the mobo if you want to drive headphones really well.

Sooo, if they take an ALC1220 or an 892, they still have to design the PCB around it, make sure it's getting nice clean power for both the digital and analog side, couple it with the right op-amp, and make sure the op-amp also has everything setup right.
That's both difficult and gets expensive really fast - quality capacitors, inductors, copper, all that passive stuff does affect the price of the mobo. Thus, you can mess up even the best-performing onboard codec just fine, or make a mid-line codec sound quite pleasant.

ChadD said:

Why not just spend $80 more on your MOBO?

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in the thought the sound card will follow you around your update.... ( a bit like an external or PCI 10Gbits ethernet instead of paying extra for a motherboard at every cycle...)

that said external option are quite good (and does not need to add latency with thunderbolt/ethernet/optical and what not that are very fast for the professional work for who it can be an issue)

LukeTbk said:

in the thought the sound card will follow you around your update.... ( a bit like an external or PCI 10Gbits ethernet instead of paying extra for a motherboard at every cycle...)

that said external option are quite good (and does not need to add latency with thunderbolt/ethernet/optical and what not that are very fast for the professional work for who it can be an issue)

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I suppose that is fair, one sound card that moves with you. Though I would say a breakout box makes more sense in that case. As you can use it on multiple machines. Laptop/Desktop.

Even professionals use external boxes. There are no real latency advantages to internal hardware anymore.

Average round trip latency on a Focusrite scarlet device on Apple silicon is 3-8ms. Depending on buffer size. More powerful Macs like the Pro and Max units can handle small buffers and people generally report 3ms round trip latency. (Recorded gear->Mac->Monitor). Focusrite also has a Apple Kext that is supposed to shave another 1ms of latency off.

Thing is though devices like the Focusrite ones even their lower priced ones offer direct monitoring anyway. So even if your recording at higher resolutions and your seeing 10-12ms latency (which would have been world class a decade ago) you can still use direct monitoring anyway.

Apples core audio is so much less a PITA then dealing with windows and ASIO drivers. I'm sure windows is better then it was a decade ago for recording, I'm also sure its not anywhere as close to as polished as Mac.

PciX is clearly the best of the best option. But I mean high end PciX recording cards are going to be more in the $2k range (and consumer grade cards aren't any better in terms of latency). The only real advantages over high end thunderbolt gear would be recording many channels simultaneous (thunderbolt can easily handle 32 channels at 192 with no rise in latency) with low latency. Were we are now most studio/prodyucers are running macbooks and thunderbolt/usb gear. When it comes to music/audio production Apple is still king its like the reverse of the consumer market I would say that market is easily 75% Apple. Apple sells a ton of macbook pros to pro audio people.

zehoo said:

I suppose there's probably a market for cheap pcie cards that give surround sound.

If I was to buy a Creative Labs product right now it would be their Sound Blaster G8. It's just a shame it doesn't do the optical in and HDMI ARC concurrently.

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May want to look into voicemeeter banana. Not sure if things have changed, but if memory serves me right you can set it up to take an audio source and send it to multiple outputs simultaneously to get around windows single output limitations. Great if you have multiple audio devices you want to output to. Not sure if it would work for multiple outs on the same soundcard though...something you'd have to try.

Up until my last two builds I used sound cards in every gaming build. This time I went with a Creative DAC. More than enough. Nowadays you don't need to save CPU cycles anymore. Just need clean audio. A competent DAC is all you need. I'll never waste a precious slot on a sound card ever again. Especially if you build mATX like I do.

OFaceSIG said:

Up until my last two builds I used sound cards in every gaming build. This time I went with a Creative DAC. More than enough. Nowadays you don't need to save CPU cycles anymore. Just need clean audio. A competent DAC is all you need. I'll never waste a precious slot on a sound card ever again. Especially if you build mATX like I do.

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Especially with how meager PCI-E slot offering are now-a-days. Heck, most boards will cut your 16x gpu down to 8x by throwing in another card. Still enough for the gpu, but just annoying. I miss the old days where my board would have 7-8 PCI-E slots...Use to have a dedicated sound card, capture card, etc. Now it's pretty much give them the least amount of features for the most money mentality. Blows my mind how it's not standard having a q-code display on all boards....Corpo greed at its finest =P....What's that? You want a display that costs us $1.50 so you don't have to squint your eyes looking at the bright red LED debug on your board?...Sorry, but that's exclusive the $500+ boards...Your x870E creator board you paid $450 for doesn't qualify -_-....ridiculous.

But yea, got a Schit audio stack myself, great investment. Although I do miss some of the features from my Asus Xonar Essence STX II....Got it sitting all lonely in its original box with all accessories. May sell it eventually...lol

michalrz said:

Well, maybe so, but oftentimes if someone has noise issues (buzzing and such) on their onboard, then a chip on a PCIe card may or may not fix the issue.

Hell, I got an external FiiO E10K Olympus 2 to buzz when combined with a crappy Logitech G213 keyboard - the DAC was picking up noise from the keyboard RGB's lighting.
I got lucky on the same system with the FiiO K11 R2R - no buzz at any gain level or volume. Maybe because it has an external power supply.

My only fault, IMHO, was usually skimping on the motherboards (but not on the PSUs, mind you).
Even with mobos, there's an exception, however. I had an Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 HiFi (PCI) work fine on a cheapo GA-P35-S3G, but making audible rapid-fart noises when moving the mouse cursor, combined with a (slightly better) GA-EP45-DS3LR.
The Prodigy card looked like this:
View attachment 794907
They clearly tried to prevent noise, but it was sneaking in anyway.

So, what I'm saying is that nothing's guaranteed with regard to electrical noise making its way into the signal, be it with external or internal sound cards. Hit or miss, too many devices interacting directly and indirectly.

And I'm only talking about headphones here. A setup with an external amp and speakers is yet another level of "fun".

I realize that I only focused on electrical noise here, but it's a pet peeve of mine. Sometimes you just get unlucky.

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nice sound board

OFaceSIG said:

Up until my last two builds I used sound cards in every gaming build. This time I went with a Creative DAC. More than enough. Nowadays you don't need to save CPU cycles anymore. Just need clean audio. A competent DAC is all you need. I'll never waste a precious slot on a sound card ever again. Especially if you build mATX like I do.

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i don't understand the benifits of going mATX for a power user. it's not like it saves you money, runs hotter, less slots, limited graphics card size, limited cooler size, no backup slot for nic if lightning takes out the mobo nic, etc, etc.

but to each their own i guess..? well it least you're not one of those "nuc" people, i guess. they always tell me "you just don't get it" i just roll my eyes and move on.

same with those cheap chinese class d "t-amps" i saw this guy saying he was going to buy like 8 of them for a surround sound setup. i'm trying to explain to him, dude, you're not getting 400w or whatever it says out of it and that's at 4-ohm @10%thd!!? 1%thd is already grating on the ears and house speakers are 8 ohm anyway, and that they never end up giving you more than 50w per channel and that's if you're lucky, but prob closer to 30w and you have to buy an expensive 48v external power supply to even get that out of them. when you could've just bought a receiver and been done with it and gotten better sound to boot. (edit: and a remote) i don't know if i could stop laughing if i walked into someone's house and they had 8 t-amps and 8 power supplies plugged into a big ass power strip and wires going everywhere. i said "just to let you know, anyone that comes to your house is going to think your a chump" and shook my head and moved on with my life. all you can do sometimes.

ChadD said:

I'm sure windows is better then it was a decade ago for recording, I'm also sure its not anywhere as close to as polished as Mac.

PciX is clearly the best of the best option. But I mean high end PciX recording cards are going to be more in the $2k range (and consumer grade cards aren't any better in terms of latency). The only real advantages over high end thunderbolt gear would be recording many channels simultaneous (thunderbolt can easily handle 32 channels at 192 with no rise in latency) with low latency. Were we are now most studio/prodyucers are running macbooks and thunderbolt/usb gear. When it comes to music/audio production Apple is still king its like the reverse of the consumer market I would say that market is easily 75% Apple. Apple sells a ton of macbook pros to pro audio people.

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it's perfectly fine on windows. there's nothing an apple can do that a pc can't do better. sorry to break the news to you. i know how you apple guys are.

edit: btw my $75 audigy can do basically the same thing that focusrite scarlett can do (2 inputs) (asio). the audigy 4's were rebranded Emu1212's used the same chipset and adc/dac's, which use to be the go to recording device back in the day (at one point in time, before things went mostly external). doesn't have phantom power though. but if you can't get a focusrite scarlett to work with a pc then you got bigger problems than a bunch of money burning a hole in your pocket.

d3athf1sh said:

i don't understand the benifits of going mATX for a power user. it's not like it saves you money, runs hotter, less slots, limited graphics card size, limited cooler size, no backup slot for nic if lightning takes out the mobo nic, etc, etc.

but to each their own i guess..? well it least you're not one of those "nuc" people, i guess. they always tell me "you just don't get it" i just roll my eyes and move on.

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I never understood why people buy mATX's either. The only benefit I could see is they're cheaper, but that's about it.

I miss the days of motherboards that had SoundBlaster chips in them.

Like the EVGA X99 Classified.

d3athf1sh said:

i don't understand the benifits of going mATX for a power user. it's not like it saves you money, runs hotter, less slots, limited graphics card size, limited cooler size, no backup slot for nic if lightning takes out the mobo nic, etc, etc.

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Not sure about the other poster, but I wanted a SFF without going too exotic (high $ premium for SFX PSUs, $150+ ITX cases, ITX mobos, etc.)
and more than a single expansion slot.

mATX was perfect for my needs, and I'm happy with what I could fit into ~21L (right at the edge of SFF / MFF)
Builds like a normal PC without needing to cirque du soleil, and parts were cheap

Last 10 years or so I've bought motherboards with the upgraded/isolated audio. Realtek offers a software based equalizer for their audio chips and I've been very happy with it. I love the "Powerful" setting. Makes a massive upgrade over the default install which has no equalizer settings applied.

Just use Equalizer APO; completely sound card / vendor agnostic
Have been using it at work for more than a decade (DP / HDMI -> monitor -> SPDIF -> headphone amp)

d3athf1sh said:

it's perfectly fine on windows. there's nothing an apple can do that a pc can't do better. sorry to break the news to you. i know how you apple guys are.

edit: btw my $75 audigy can do basically the same thing that focusrite scarlett can do (2 inputs) (asio). the audigy 4's were rebranded Emu1212's used the same chipset and adc/dac's, which use to be the go to recording device back in the day (at one point in time, before things went mostly external). doesn't have phantom power though. but if you can't get a focusrite scarlett to work with a pc then you got bigger problems than a bunch of money burning a hole in your pocket.

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Right tool right job. If your doing professional audio why would you use the less then tool.
Microsoft could have fixed the windows sound system anytime they liked. They never have hence the need for Steinbergs ASIO drivers.
Though last year Steinberg open sourced ASIO. And I understand now that MS with Yamaha and qualcomm is working on a complete replacement. Should be interesting. Can't wait for that W11 update push that is no doubt going to be a mess cause you know MS. I imagine once they push it out for ARM, they will want to push some version of it for x86 as well.
https://www.neowin.net/news/microso...ency-audio-driver-for-windows-on-arm-in-2026/

I'm not an Apple person, don't own one nor need one. Been in a few studios though and have never seen one not using Macs. (though I know they exist)

Apple when they released OSx updated their audio back end to what they call core audio. It is superior to ASIO, it just works, provides lower latency and has been the go to for audio production since.

I'm a Linux user. Linux audio is heavily influenced by core audio. Linux ALSA rivals core audio in quality and latnecy, though it has (sever) limitations which require the use of a sound server like pipewire for general use. Apple has the advantage of being 100% in control of their stack. All users have low latency low level audio access. Linux has been constantly improving sound systems. The pipewire server does a great job for every day things. Still end up needing ALSA/Jack to handle actual low latency stuff. It is superior to the current janky windows setup with ASIO... though inferior to the intergrated full low level stack that Apple provides with core audio. Can't wait to see how Microsoft screws things up with their new audio drivers. On the other hand if it does just work with hardware as Qcom/Yamaha are pushing for it might make windows ARM devices perhaps half way decent for pro audio. Might end up being a shame if they never push the improved driver to windows classic. (x86) lol [in all seriousness ARM hardware is perfect for audio production]