Xbitlabs reviews ASUS Xonar D2 PM sound card
These days, when every mainboard comes with an integrated sound adapter, few manufacturers dare release discrete audio solutions. Many brands have left the market altogether, others have halted the development process and don't care much about driver updates. That's why every new device provokes a huge interest in the PC audio community. We are going to talk about a device like that - a sound card from ASUS.
These days, when every mainboard comes with an integrated sound adapter, few manufacturers dare release discrete audio solutions. Many brands have left the market altogether, others have halted the development process and don't care much about driver updates. That's why every new device provokes a huge interest in the PC audio community. And when a new brand comes to market, it is a real sensation. A standalone sound card is supposed to be far superior to the integrated sound of mainboards. Otherwise, it makes no sense at all. Considering Creative's monopoly on gaming technologies, the single argument in favor of a standalone sound card may be its quality of music playback. More exactly, it is the price-to-quality ratio because expensive components and a meticulously designed PCB make the end product too expensive whereas cheap components don't yield the desired quality. The price also includes the cost of developing and updating the driver. Having weighed all the pros and cons, most manufactures preferred to avoid such an inconvenient product as a non-professional sound card, yet the niche doesn't remain empty. The young and daring company Auzentech announced its arrival by releasing a few interesting products based on C-Media's controllers. The X-Fi Prelude 7.1 brought an international success to the company. In 2007 another serious player stepped on the scene: the world-famous hardware manufacturer ASUS began to sell a pretentious audio solution for PCI and PCI Express buses...
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