You mean this? Stereophile: Now on Newsstands: <i>Stereophile</i>, Vol.33 No.1 Actually it makes me feel like the smartest guy on earth for buying my STX - you don't see Creative stuff on Stereophile and perhaps will never do!

Try the PLX fireware update on ASUS support site (it's in the "utilities"). May help

Quote: Originally Posted by ashmedai Never claimed it was, never heard it, my only involvement is to the effect of claiming that there's no way it can even get the power necessary to outclass a decent $700+ dedicated headphone amp when handling high-demand phones. Chaos, boys...

Quote: Originally Posted by ROBSCIX You want your soundcard to give you a accurate representation of what is there. The card doesn't emphasis these bad qualities of the lowbitrate MP3, the card just doesn't mask them. That is a good thing. I agree with Rob here, we all know if...

Quote: Originally Posted by Stimpy_7 Sorry for the delay in replying back, been away! Thank you for the comments. Would a guitar input be any different to that of a mic? I'm not really sure what difference it would make... could it damage it then? What do you use to connect...

You may want to consider if one day you wanna switch to headphones (or have 'em being part of your rig), Essence's got a built-in headphone amp just so you know.

IMO, all audio components related to each other, sometimes it's not exactly better OPs sounded better, cheaper stuff which co-works with other parts well can beat expensive stuff at times.

Quote: Originally Posted by audionewbieyao Looking forward to see final review from Robscix on HWC... the sneak preview has been there forever, when is the final review coming? Yup, I'm also waiting for that, the sneak peak got me so much into this card, bought it and LOVE it...

Just got mine and it sounded........OMG, what can I say. I even used it to monitor some mixes I've done (I play in an indie band) and found all the details previously unnoticed. That's a great combinition with Xonar's ASIO drivers. I hope them make an Essence for notebooks, I'm thinking of...

Quote: Originally Posted by kuben Someone knows when this card will be released in Europe? From my past experience if you're having trouble buying Xonar stuff in your country, one way to go is to get to the dealer and complain the availablity issue, so they may go and wake up...

Quote: Originally Posted by XtremeD Nice first post :P Nice first reply Indeed, if you A/B onboard+Cyberlink's Dolby Headphone with Xonar's Dolby Headphone, you'll find Xonar kicking onboard codec's butt very seriously (I did this with realtek / Xonar D1). But the key here...

Quote: Originally Posted by XtremeD Also, my Cyberlink PowerDVD comes with Dolby Headphone option atm, and I can run it with my Realtek onboard soundcard. So how is this different to having the Essence STX that supports it? I'm quite sure people here ain't buying no Essence STX...