I've sit on the situation a little and now I'm enraged. Even the cheapest devices have gold plated connectors, even some of the on-board audio, even Xboxes, even the daughterboard of some of the STXIIs.
This is true charlatany, how could they do it? A high end sound card that looks worse than the cheapest 30-40$ sound cards.
I've missed my chance to return it (more than 15 days have passed), but I'll never buy any Asus product anymore. They are petty swindlers, happy to gain 1-2$ per card, not worrying that the product has a part worse than in the lousiest of models from other brands and the product doesn't look like in the pictures that were used to fool people.
I hope some Asus staff comes here and explains how are the silver connectors better than the gold plated ones, how the nickel plating is thicker than the gold one and better, I don't know, just an explanation, otherwise I did a downgrade by changing my old STX.
PS: You could have kept those pliers and spare opamps (the card has already got opams, I don't need the tuning nonsense) and put at least as good connectors as in the old card.
I've got gold plated USBs in my pc, cable connectors, external amp, hdmi, DP, literally everything, so the Asus card looks like a turd among all the electronics in my room. Hope it functions al least the same as gold plated, but for this I need an explanation, what are the connectors made of, plated with and why would it be al least the same.
If you, as a manufacturer, make an upgraded device, you can't take even one little thing away from one generation to the other, people are very sensitive to this, even though you put a lot of new better stuff on it, you can't take any of the old advantages, no matter how little, especially by not showing it in the presentation (swindler style).
