ASUS Strix RAID DLX 7.1 Sound Card

I am definitely sold on this card over the Creative Sound Blaster ZxR (my previous card). Here are a couple Pros and Cons:

Pro:
– Overall sound quality is superb, best sounding card I’ve owned. I paired this with a nice set of Harmon Kardon Sound Sticks and PSB M4U2 Headphones – both sound wonderful with a rich soundstage.
– Sound is “crisper” versus the ZxR which always had overwhelming bass. Midrange frequencies are considerably better with this card.
– Build quality is top-notch.
– The volume control knob is software based and controls the Windows volume, not a physical attenuator that adds distortion like the ZxR.
– Clicking the volume knob flips speaker/headphone outputs – which is awesome (the ZxR requires you to open the software to flip it – also, the software remembers the last volume setting for both speaker and headphone, so when you flip from one to the other, you don’t blow your ears out accidentally).
– Software package is minimalist, yet powerful. I like that you can dictate bit-rate and dynamic range on the fly.
– POWER! I can see why they added a dedicated PCIe power connector – the amps on this card can power a bus.
– Software virtual surround adds some noticeable “depth” to the sound stage. I wouldn’t call it “surround” per se (I haven’t tried any gaming with my stereo headphones) but it gives a more open presence to the sound that is pleasing to my ears.
– Great alternative to the ZxR for audiophiles. The sound quality is at least on par if not superior. May just come down to personal preference…if you prefer tons of bass, go with the ZxR. If you want an overall flat response with very clear mids and highs, go with this card.
– I also paired it with an external vacuum tube amp (Schitt Vali) – the card supports it just fine. The improvement in sound quality is much less (if any – it’s more preference at this point) than the jump when pairing the Vali with the ZxR. Overall, I’m very happy with this card.

Cons:
– No optical/RCA input (what can I say, that was a nice-to-have with the ZxR).
– The cable connector to the volume control is a 2″ hard molded plastic piece that sticks out really far. This detracts from what looks like a sleek box in the pictures. It would have been nice if the cable could have been more easily concealed. That said though, the cable is very heavy braid and feels well built.
– The lighting on the card is cool, but completely useless. Don’t misunderstand, I love lighting – I have a window case with some awesome lighting effects. But the LED is a bit underpowered (so it doesn’t “pop”), it’s also not addressable (You can’t turn it on/off). Finally, it’s tucked away near the PCIe connector on the shielded side of the card – meaning anyone with a tower case (which most gamers have and is obviously about 95% of the card’s target audience) is most likely not going to be able to see it! Also, if you have a discrete GPU, it’ll completely block it. Cool idea – poor implementation. It would have been better to put LED’s behind the words on the side of the card like most GPUs are doing now. Also not addressable RGB, and in today’s gaming market for glass-case PC’s, addressable RGB is king.
– The card connections are not color coated, so you have to shine a flashlight or look at the manual to identify connections. On-top of that, the provided microphone/headphone/box cord for the control module have colored connector, but the manual doesn’t say which is which, and neither does the connector. I guessed green was headphone, red was microphone and black was the control cable – guess I got it right because it all works.

I debated whether to give it 4 stars or 5 stars. If I could give it 4.5 I would, as the Cons are very minor nuisances and collectively not worth knocking a whole star off over when the performance of the card is stellar.

Pros: Sounds good till you use it for gaming. Or if you only use a single headphone port (Front channel)

Cons: Advertised as a gaming card. Advertised as grounded properly and noise reduced. Two new in box units later, this is proven to be a lie.
Horrible Coil Whine caused by grounding issues on the Strix RAID mode puck’s headphone port; the “Dedicated” headphone port, the Center/Sub, Side-Surround, Rear-Surround ports on both cards had this issue. Tied directly to load on the graphics card.

Software would inconsistently break itself over audio connections, games would use only the side channels, not center or sub channels, while VOIP software crowded into Center/Sub.

Audio from Spotify and Pandora One apps came in only stereo, would not upmix as with other cards (Sound Blaster and onboard Realtek both do this, as does the card I replaced this with after a week, the HT Omega Fenix)

DVD and Blu-Ray playback sounded Ok, but it was readily evident it was not using all channels properly.

How do I know it’s a grounding issue related to the load on the graphics card? Fire up a video-only benchmark program, listen to the horrible buzz coming out of the speakers. stop the benchmark. listen to the buzz vanish. You can use the free program “FurMark” for this test.

I picked up a car audio ground-loop-isolator, and this nearly solved the problem. But then spent a week of calls to tech support trying to make the actual software behave as expected. The software would lose it’s settings game-to-game and randomly decide what to boost, when.

An RMA of the first new-in-box unit I purchased, and a week of testing on the second card shipped later, the same grounding issues occured, on 4 out of the 5 available audio output ports.

The $70 card from Creative Labs didn’t have any problems whatsoever. This noise wasn’t present in the onboard audio.

The HT Omega sounds better, with more stability across all tests.

A little about the System Under Test:
i7 6700k with liquid cooling loop, Evga 1080 SC2
32 gigs of ram, 512g M2 SSD
ASRock Extreme 4 z170m motherboard
EVGA 1000w power supply.
Razer Tiamat 7.1 headset. Pyle PT798SBA 7.1 Channel Home Theater System on pass-through.

Competetitor’s cards tested: Onboard Audio (Realtek 7.1)
Astro A50 Headset over USB + TOSlink digital out
HT Omega Fenix.

今から購入を考えている人はコントロールボックスに注意したほうがいいです。
現在のWindows10,11のバージョン(22H2以降)ではコントロールボックスのボタンが効かなくなります。
対処法として互換モードでSonic Studioを起動させることによって使えるようになります。

それ以外は全く問題ないです。

Pros: as usual with Asus, nice visuals. The orange led and the owl eye effect are kind of cool and subtle, even though positioned in a place where visibility is limited
Cons: only 24bits, Creative offers 32 at this price point. Very old, never updated drivers which might be the reason the volume knob on the ACM does not work consistently on Windows 11: after one restart it does, then after other ten it doesn’t. Despite having a dedicated 6pin power connector and the claims of superior grounding, it picks noise from the MB causing the audio to cut at times. If you are willing to ignore the disfuncional volume knob the device performs and it can be used. The audio quality on the 🎧 amp felt alright but no Wow. I’m sorry, because I think I’m an Asus fan, but I have already owned a Sound Blaster AE-7 and I replaced this with an AE-9, and honestly, Creative impressed me much much more on every possible aspect. I would never switch back from the AE-9 to this. Sound cards are falling out of fashion and it would seem Asus is not putting a lot of effort into being competitive on these devices.