My Asus Xonar Essence STX soundcard seems to be back in order for the moment.  I'm giddily awaiting the arrival of a new set of MrSpeakers Mad Dog headphones to replace my trusty SRH440s.   I lament the rather high background noise of the Xonar (maybe just my PC's overzealous cooling fans?)...

After a happy two years of enjoying music playing through my Asus Xonar Essence STX PC sound card, I'm now experiencing some wacky compression from it.  When playing music from foobar2000, the quieter parts of songs are amplified relative to the louder ones.  Dynamics are completely lost--the...