ASUS Xonar AE 7.1-Channel PCIe Gaming Audio Card with EMI Back Plate

No better than motherboard audio

Even though my motherboard advertises an ALC1220 chip with 120 dB SNR, it's near useless for external amplification because it's susceptible to interference from everything else in the PC. Moving the mouse causes a 1 kHz tone and it's harmonics to play through the speakers. Even dragging windows around the desktop and hard drive activity can be heard. And forget about playing games, because the speakers continually screech depending on the framer... Show Moreate. I bought this Xonar AE card hoping that the EMI backplate and "hyper grounding technology" would insulate the analog outs from all the motherboard/PC power noise, but it was no better than the motherboard audio. And following a trend where motherboard manufacturers have stopped supporting DTS Connect and Dolby Digital Live, the Xonar AE can't encode 5.1 to pass over the toslink connection. It wasn't advertised as such, but it's still disappointing. That means, for games, I can't use the 7.1 analog outs because they're much too noisy, and I can't use the toslink because I won't even be getting 5.1. So this is really of no use to me. If you're trying to get mutli-channel audio out of a PC, don't bother with sound cards or anything powered off the motherboard; stick to digital. I'm going to have to find some sort of HDMI 8 Channel Uncompressed Audio to analog out solution.Show Less

Reviewed on B&H Photo Video