ASUS XONAR AE

Excellent sound, and no software issues on W10.I don't plan on changing to W11 in the near future, so the W11 issues are not relevant to me now.

I used to use the onboard sound card which was great for my 5.1 surround sound but then it packed up. I had a creative Soundblaster Audigy fx laying around for a spare, so I threw this in my pc and the sound was not always coming out of the speakers on the right all the time and got lots of pop & hissing and in TeamSpeak, the audio from my mic was apparently hissing/humming. so I purchased this Asus soundcard as was rated high and I'm glad I bought it... sound is so much clearer and comes out of the speakers its suppose to, the surround sound works and its not virtual surround sound, in TeamSpeak my mic is nice and clear now. very pleased.

I'd tried one of ASUS top and newest card but it was utter rubbish, in some ways it just seems like an old card with flashing lights added. It had so many bugs too along with a faukty SPDIF socket - nightmare.I went back to the tried, tested and trusty era... Here I found (in the end) exceptional sound quality - smacked the behind of the onboard audio on my new £1600 rig... BUT the software is lacking as it's really awkward, you have to fiddle with things yourself - see if you can get things working and believe me a chunk of things just do not work. This could be down to compatibility issues? But surely a newer card would be ok yet it was 10 x worse! So... In the end, because it was much cheaper and 85% working I've stuck with the AE (for now).Word of warning though, if you do not know how to fiddle around with all the settings etc then just don't bother... You'll find no help with the "instructions".

I bought this soundcard because it came out well in reviews. I have no idea why. This card will not work for me as any normal soundcard would. The sound drops every 30 seconds (if you're lucky) for a short period. Driver uninstall en re-install did not help. Removing all traces from any other device that could also produce sound did not help. Only one conclusion possible: back to Amazon....

Bought this as a warehouse bargain after my new build's X570 board/Win 10 had arguments over the Realtek onboard audio which meant I had no sound. Delivered with Amazons usual promptness and installed in seconds, instant, high quality sound that's so much better than my last Realtek onboard audio. Louder on the headphones too. I downloaded the latest drivers from Asus before install, stuck the card in, clicked setup and working in seconds on the 1909 build of Win10 Pro in May 2020.

This replaces the onboard sound of my MSI X470 Gaming plus. The main reason I went this route is because the drivers for the onboard sound is hit and miss. Sometimes the drivers will install without a problem. Also I couldn't set the audio out to 5.1 through SPDIF / Optical out on the onboard sound on my motherboard.I received this soundcard a few hours ago. I spent over an hour trying everything possible to get 5.1 out through SPDIF / Optical but I just couldn't get it to go above 2.0. When setting it to 5.1 or 7.1 via Sonic Studio what it does is fill speakers and not give proper 5.1. If I try to set the sudio to 5.1 via Optical / SPDIF through windows audio settings the configure button is greyed out.So I had to settle with the analogue audio jacks instead. I can get proper 5.1 audio through analogue. But theres no Dolby surround or DTS 5.1 setting available. The sound from the soundcard is far better than what I have been putting up with on the motherboard sound with over a year but I am extremely dissapointed with the lack of 5.1 out through SPDIF / Optical out. I am alo very dissapointed with the lack of Dolby surround or DTS 5.1 with the sound card.But for now I will stick with it until I can get a better soundcard. For reference I am using windows 10 2204 summer update

Now Amazon Music have the option of playing HD up to 24/192 I decided an upgrade was needed. This card has headphone and SPDIF optical outputs, that later I connected to the DAC input of my Receiver.After Installing the Sonar AE drivers and app, the first thing was to set the profile to 'Flat' (it defaulted to music) to turn off all the effects.I found the card worked perfectly with the Amazon Music app on Windows 10, playing 24/192 tracks without any problems. Using the advanced Windows 10 sound settings, I associated the Sonar AE SPDIF output with Amazon Music app, leaving the default for system sounds an web browsing the HDMI output to the speakers in the monitor.I picked this up from Amazon Warehouse at a reasonable discount so overall very happy.

BOUGHT BRAND NEW FROM AMAZON 30/11 2020 INSTALED IN MY MACHINE BUT WINDOWS DID NOT RECONISE ERROR CODE 0X80096010 DUE TO A WINDOWS UPDATE KB4579311 KB4577671 I AM WAITING FOR ASUS FIX DUE 14/12 2020 THE DRIVER FIX IS NOW ON ASUS SUPORT WOULD RECOMEND