Asus Xonar DX PCI-e Audio Card Evaluation

Roughly two years ago Asus entered the discrete audio market with quite a bang. Their entry product, the Xonar D2, took everyone by surprise and created quite a storm of talk and not a little bit of controversy. We had one of those first cards in for evaluation and found them to be an amazing first product and, in terms of performance and audio quality, to be more than a match for the X-Fi.
Since then Asus has released a few different derivatives of the Xonar including a USB flavor. We have had the PCI-e variety in house for a few weeks and have been comparing it rather heavily against Creative Lab’s X-Fi Platinum in terms of audio quality and performance impact both for gaming and HTPC usage. Read on to find out if the Xonar can be heard above the noise.

{mospagebreak title=Packaging and Accessories}
Packaging and Accessories:
As with other members of the Xonar family the DX comes in a white box with blue artistic patterns across the front. Where it differs from its older brother (the D2) is that there is actually a picture of the card on the front letting you know what you are getting right away. (Thus eliminating the chance of it merely becoming a decoration on the mantle) The box also has the usual front flap. Upon opening this flap you are greeted with all of the major features of the DX at a glance. The marketing folks at Asus have even added in some nice illustrations to show you how some of the features work in theory. The back of the box lists the contents in twelve different languages.  Inside all of this we find the usual black cardboard box where the real prize is kept.

The DX does not come loaded up with the same haul of loot the D2 does, instead it runs rather light with only the following;
Asus Xonar DX PCI-e Audio Card
Xonar Driver and Utility CD-ROM
Installation reference guide
1 Toslink adapter
Mini-PCI I/O shield

{mospagebreak title=Features and Design}
Features and Design:
When the Xonar was first launched it promised (and delivered) an amazing range of audio specifications. From a 118 Signal to Noise ratio to just about every Dolby flavor out.  But the most important feature that the Xonar offered was real surround sound for gaming on Microsoft’s Vista. This was something that Creative flatly denied was possible. Yet Asus managed it. The DX one not only follows in this tradition but improves on it with a new version of DS3D. Thrown into the mix is also a new voice technology called VocalFX that allows EAX effects to work with voice input for MMORG games.
On the technical side of things the DX uses all solid capacitors, improved opamps and PCI-e 1x connectivity. The Audio Processor is the AV100 instead of the AV200 (as mentioned before the AVxxx Chips do not provide Hardware encode/decode functions but provide hardware positional audio support. The real work of encode/decode it done in software using the CPU. By leveraging the PCI-e bus this allows for faster I/O to and from the AV100). The DX also requires external power in the form of a 4-pin floppy power connector located at the rear of the card. Although the sample I received did not include this I have heard from others that the retail version does. (After speaking with Asus I have confirmed that all new Xonar DXs will have the Power Adapter included)

{mospagebreak title=Multi Media Performance}
Performance:
For Audio equipment performance should be measured in two parts. The first is what impact will it have on the system? Will the device create an overhead that will reduce system efficiency? Will games, movies and other multimedia applications slow down when in use? Each of these needs to be addressed for the first half of Audio performance. The second half of the performance question is sound quality.
This is not as easy to judge. For the first half it is simply a matter of frame rates and system I/O. For the quality of the sound you really should not rely on one person’s judgment.  What sounds good to me might not sound good to you. We at Planetx64 have come up with what we feel is the answer to that second question, that is to use multiple listeners and ask them what they felt about the quality of sound.
I chose five persons and had each listen to both the X-Fi Platinum and the Xonar DX.
Each of the five rated the two cards based on the following criteria.
Quality, Vibrance, and Depth (all as a single score from one to five)
These were in reference to the sound experience running analog output to a 7.1 surround system, using the following media types
Blu-RayDVD
SD DVD
HD-TV (audio)
CD-Audio
Gaming
I broke these down into two categories for simplicity:
Multi-Media

Test System:
Intel QX9770
Asus P5E64 WS Evolution
2GB (2x1GB) Kingtson
150GB Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM HDD
PC Power and Cooling 1kw PSU
Foxconn 8800GTX
Plextor BluRay Drive
Microsoft Windows Vista x64 Ultimate
CyberLink Power DVD 8 used for all Video Playback

For Home Theatre Quality audio the Xonar beats the X-Fi hands down.
The participants commented that the Xonar had a full and clean sound.
I used Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl on BluRay and Rain Man on SD DVD.
One listener commented that the cannon shots in Pirates of the Caribbean sounded very realistic on the Xonar.
The X-fi was not horrible either but most felt it sounded thin and reedy compared to the Xonar.
Voices were not clear and there was noticeable mud in the mid-range on the X-Fi.

{mospagebreak title=Gaming Performance}
Gaming:
Here the gap was a little closer, most of the players did not notice much of a difference but commented that the rear channels sounded cleaner and sounds seemed to move around them during play better on the Xonar.System impact was rated by CPU usage during audio playback and frames per second during gaming.
Something unexpected happened here; the Xonar with its software based encoding had less of a system impact on the higher end audio from BluRay playback.  On Standard Definition DVDs the X-Fi used less CPU than the Xonar by 2% but the audio sounded muddled and “odd”. On the Xonar it was sharp and very clean.

Gaming was also surprising given that most people claim the X-Fi is the clear winner in gaming performance. This was just not the case in our testing. I will concede the point that I only tested with a small number of games but each of these games do have positional audio and HalfLife 2 Episode 2 has settings to utilize 5.1 systems.
Overall the results were not surprising to me given the platform. Creative has been busy bad mouthing Vista for so long that they have missed the boat on getting their drivers running properly.  Even the Xonar DX’s lack of EAX 5.0 hardware was not an issue considering EAX 5 is now supported in the Xonar’s driver package (available for download from Asus.com) granted this is a “fix” and simply reports to the game that EAX 5 compatible hardware is present so that the game will unlock the 128 3D voices for reproduction by the sound card. EAX 3.0 and 4.0 are still not present in the Xonar driver package.

{mospagebreak title=Price/Warranty}
Price/Warranty:
At the time of writing you could get the Xonar DX for around $100. This is a very good price considering the specifications and performance. It was $80 less than the X-Fi Platinum (granted you get more “stuff” with the platinum) and outperformed it in every way we tested.
Warranty is the same as the Xonar D2 with 3-year coverage on manufacturer defects.

{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion:
Asus has made it clear that they are in the sound business to stay. The Xonar DX was and is an impressive card. The move to PCI-e will help as more and more boards are moving away from the older PCI bus (not to mention putting PCI slots in unusable places). For gaming enthusiasts the move away from hardware processing should be a bonus as Asus can now implement new signal processing technologies with a simple driver update. This will allow them to keep the same great card for many game/OS generations without losing performance or quality. The 64-bit (XP or Vista) enthusiast will also love the seamless install right from the Driver CD. No need to run to Asus’ web site for drivers and a patch to run the DX (although I would recommend getting the latest drivers). If you are looking to buy a sound card to replace your on-board one or maybe you want to make the switch from Creative I would give the Xonar series and the Xonar DX a long hard look, and while you’re looking grab one and put it in your box.  

Tags: asus