ASUS Xonar DX Dolby Home Theater Gaming Sound Card

Yes my friends this is the ASUS Xonar DX in all it’s glory. The card is jammed pack with goodies to give you the cleanest/best sound possible for you hard earned money. The Xonar DX is a PCI Express x1 card so that socket that you have on your motherboard now has a purpose. At the same time if you are thinking about getting this card DO make sure that you have a PCI-e x1 socket. 

As you can see the card is a fairly large card and probably a little larger than you would expect to see, after all it is just a sound card. ASUS has made good usage of the real estate by packing on all sort of features such as Dolby Digital Live for real-time 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound encoding. Dolby Pro-Logic IIx which converts stereo or 5.1 sounds to seamless 7.1 surround.  Dolby Virtual Speaker that simulates a highly realistic 5.1-speaker surround sound  environment from as few as two speakers. My favorite, since I am a headphone user, is the Dolby Headphone that delivers a realistic 2-to-5.1 surround or 3D positional sound-field over any set of stereo headphones (yes it DOES work).

All the connection points that you could want are on the ASUS Xonar. Let us say that you have a special setup that you want to do and your not sure if the card can do it. Well let me tell that you may only see five female connections but with them you can do all sorts of input/out port stuff when you use it in conjunction with the software. The included manual has eight full pages explaining different ways to use the card from a single MP3 player to a 7.1 speaker setup to a analog power amplifier.

If you have not already noticed but the ASUS Xonar Dx is a PCI-e x1 device and this is where it connect to the motherboard. On my motherboard I just happen to a PCI-e x1 above the PCI-e x16 slot for my video card. Your location may vary. 

There are a couple of ways to connect to the card from inside the case. At the top we see the Front Panel connection which will allow you to take the cables that comes with most cases for the front panel ports and puts it right into the card. The image in the middle is the Aux Input Header. This four pin header can be used to connect an analog output source, such as from a TV turner card, into the Xonar DX. At the top right, just below our logo is a power connection. 

Yes that is right, the card uses an adapter with a four pin to molex connection on it. So why power the card from the power supply rather than the motherboard, well think about it. You are trying to get the clearest sound you can get and a power supply has to go through many test to insure that it is putting out the cleanest power possible. So putting the best quality power (low interference) to the card should help achieve the best quality sound.

This clean power is needed to help power the AV100 Audio Processing Unit (DuplexHD 192K/24bit) plus all the features on the card. A 24-bit D-A Converter of Digital Sources:Cirrus-Logic CS4398*1 for Front-Out (120dB SNR, Max. 192kHz/24bit), Cirrus-Logic CS4362A*1 for other 6 channels (114dB SNR, Max. 192kHz/24bit and a 24-bit A-D Converter for Analog Inputs:Cirrus-Logic CS5361* 1 (114dB SNR, Max. 192kHz/24bit).  You MUST use the extra power connection otherwise the card will not work.

Digital S/PDIF Output: High-bandwidth TOS-Link optical transmitter (shared with Line-In/Mic-In jack) supports 192KHz/24bit