ASUS Xonar DS 7.1 PCI Sound Card

The Asus Xonar DS 7.1 is a nice budget-priced 7.1 sound card, that when combined with a good set of speakers provides a substantial upgrade over standard onboard sound. Movies, games, and music all sound very good with this sound card.

Installing the DS is easy, and there is a driver disk and a low-profile bracket included in the box. Just make sure to uninstall your old sound card drivers and disable the onboard sound before setting up the DS.

The Xonar DS isn’t for hardcore audiophiles, but anyone looking for an affordable audio upgrade will like it.

Following the reviews of others who purchased this card, as I needed a sound card which supported 64 bit windows 7. So far I’m happy, I can continue to play all my music….

Wow, I really don’t know where to start. I simply bought this sound card for my home theater PC & 7.1 surround system. I’m not into headphones.

What I did not realize is what I would experience as I did not have any expectations, but when I started to play my favorite music I was totally blown away by how great it sound. It was like: My gawd what have I been missing? I have listened to many DVD Audio’s, SACD’s 5.1 Music Videos, but the ASUS Xonar DS 7.1 literally converted all my stereo music collection into 7.1 DTS surround sound including older stereo movies!

Please don’t confuse this with DTS NEO, Dolby Digital Prologic or any other simulated surround sound. There a total joke when compared to the discrete DTS conversion the ASUS Xonar DS 7.1 automatically does. Note: your receiver or amplifier must have a 7.1 DTS decoder to have it’s full potential unlocked by the ASUS Xonar DS 7.1.

You don’t realize what your missing. Again this sound card literally transforms all music & movies into 7.1 surround sound including stereo. Even Mono soundtracks sound splendid especially with a subwoofer!

How to Maximally Optimize Your 7.1 Surround Sound System Using the ASUS DS card (or any other ASUS Xonar Sound Card) for Best Music & Movie Sound Performance:

A. Order a high quality Optical Toslink with 3.5mm output cable from either Monoprice dot com or Amazon for connecting the ASUS DS to your 7.1 DTS Receiver. (Make sure you order the correct length for your set up).

B. DO NOT use the ASUS drivers! Bad experiences from many users. Do a search for 3rd party drivers called Uni-Xonar drivers on Google. Then download the drivers before installing the card. You’ll save time & avoid any possible frustration. After you have successfully downloaded the Uni-Xonar drivers

1. Now enter the “DS Audio Center” on your computer:

2. Click on the main button, now if you have a 7.1 surround receiver you’ll need to select 2 Channels under Audio Channel. Do Not Use 8 Channels. But test it & you’ll understand what I mean.

3. Check or select SPDIF Out, then select DTS Interactive (Not PCM) to convert any music or movie soundtrack into 7.1

4. Next check or select 7.1 Virtual Speaker shifter. This produces a noticeable full body improvement. Try it & you’ll experience what I mean. To the RH side of the 7.1 Virtual Speaker shifter you’ll see four vertical buttons scroll over the bottom button with mouse (It’ll say: Manual shifting) then select it, then play some demo music or reference material to manually fine tune the sound by placement of the virtual surround speakers & subwoofer.

5. Next go to Flexbass which is the bass management system & click on next to reset button on lower left hand side.

6. Next select small for all your 7 surround speakers, even if there large speakers. Why? Because the subwoofer does the heavy lifting which is the low frequencies. Hopefully you’re using at least a 30Hz subwoofer for an exhilarating IMAX like bass experience.

7. Next scroll the bar to 80Hz crossover frequency so your 7 surround speakers will let your subwoofer performs lower bass frequencies below 80Hz. Plus this setting is typically recommended for most speakers. Or follow the recommendation of the speaker manufacturer for greater fine tuning.

8. Next click on Effect button on bottom of center panel. Click on Jazz for when listening to any type of music as most audiophiles like the equalizing effect. I agree, it sounded perfect for my listening environment. Now for movies I recommend just using the default effect to get the maximum effects from movie soundtracks.

However, for movies you’ll need to click on the SVN button on RH side of control panel (Note: The Smart Volume Normalizer – Normalizes the volume of all audio sources into a constant level.) If you don’t do the surround sound effects or music may or will overpower the vocals.

This will really help you extract the most from this fabulous EarGasmic sound card.

Btw, I tried the Asus Xonar Essence St card which costs about 4x as much! However, the Dolby Digital Live did not match the sound quality of the DTS Interactive on the DS card. Sadly, it just did not compare.

This is definitely an underrated audio card.

I’m positive you’ll love this sound card as much as I do. Just be patient & try my suggested settings. Please let me know if this review helped you in any way by clicking yes.

I recently returned this card to Amazon – primarily because the Windows-7 drivers do not work! I replaced the card with a SoundBlaster XiFi Gamer which installed perfectly out of the box.

The first time, the Windows-7 drivers crashed my computer, fortunately I was able to recover from the previous restore point. I tried alternate drivers, but the sound was erratic. I followed the instructions and monitored the dpa latency – but that did not work. The Asus support is not very good. (Please note, I own an Asus motherboard and an Asus video card). You would think that an Asus audio card would work with an Asus motherboard and video card.