ASUS Announces Strix Sound Cards

Michaelius said:
It would be nice if someone compared them to current Xonar cards
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Spec wise, they're a step up from what's currently offered. Let's not forget the CMI-8788 chipset all ASUSs cards are built on is over a decade old at this point; it was about time for the Xonar brand to be refreshed.
 
One thing more. Guys at Kit Guru used Tiamat 7.1 for this card. Can someone with better sound knowledge, explain in a simple way, that just for gaming, would I go better with those Tiamats playing "real 7.1" through all those little speakers, or would I be better with likes of 990 Pro with virtual surround? And no, I won't be doing competitive gaming - I just want beat immersion.
 
Nasgul said:
My Sound Blaster Z sounds amazing and it does not require a power connector.

Why would they do that? Looks fugly.

What's next? 6 pin power connector for MEMORY modules.

Maybe because of the RAID mode. Can't seem to see how you'd RAID the headphones and speakes. Well, it's Asus.
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As someone who uses 3-way graphics card setups at times I find this annoying. My 6 pin connectors are valuable and I hate it when I have to use extra adapters because some asshole engineer decided to put 6 pin connections on the motherboard or sound card. Worse yet these are usually placed in spots that create cabling issues.
 
Ordered Soar version - The Raid DLX is tad too expensive, and the only difference between Raid Pro and Soar is $50 and the volume knob - which might, as with Zx, distort the sound. Should have it by Tuesday.
 
Where are these being sold? I'm not seeing them on Amazon or Newegg (maybe I'm looking in the wrong place).
 
Well, all three had their store release this week in Poland, they are also sold by OC UK or by few German retailers, so propably they will come to US soon :)

EDIT: My Soar just came in... haven't yet time to play with it, but comparing it, to the tiny little USB card I had at my Kingston CloudX II? It smokes it out of the water. Surround is great, positioning too (at least in Black Ops 3) - and that's on the same headphones - buying dt990 next month, so using the HyperX disconnected from the USB dongle. Difference is like night and day.
 
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I'm thinking about getting an Asus Strix Raid DLX or an Creative ZxR.

This card is brand new but it seems it doesn't have any Optical In/Out, and since I also play on consoles it would be great to use the card to get some great audio quality from them.

In the other hand, the ZxR do have Optical In/Out but supports 5.1 channels only.

Any advices? :confused:

EDIT: I should also mention that I've never exerienced a high-end soundcard before. I'm going from onboard common sound quality here. I know any of these two cards will certainly blew my mind, but I'm having a hard time finding 5.1 Headphones for the ZxR (most of them are 7.1), and again, the Strix Raid DLX *apparently* doesn't support Optical audio.
 
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If you don't have or never intend to have 7.1 speakers then just go with the ZxR. If you're using headphones, you'll probably be using some kind of surround downmixing so as long as the card supports 5.1 you'll probably be fine; 7.1 would give the mixing software a little more to work with, but I'd be surprised if it was as significant a difference as when using speakers.
 
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