[harbinger66]

  Managed to get the Xonar U7 Echelon working passably well in windows 10 today.
Downloaded and unzipped the Xonar U7-8.1.11.19(3.13-WHQL) drivers.
Installed the latest U7 Echelon edition drivers, rebooted, and went into device management and forced the dac to use the old U7 driver instead by going update driver, browse computer, let me pick from list, removed the check mark by supported hardware, have disk, pointed at the u7 driver folder and hit next. Dolby Home Theater is working fine, mic is working in steam, and everything seems fine for now.
Only been an hour or so though, so time will tell.

Really appreciate you posting this. First off, I'm on Win10 and I have a standard U7, not the Echelon. I had installed the drivers for the U7 on my win7 laptop as well as my win10 desktop. On my laptop I had no issues whatsoever, on my win10 machine i kept hearing crackling. I tried using virtually all of my USB ports thinking perhaps was the problem, tried moving the USB away from other powered devices, switched my mouse, did a bunch of things and I still had the crackling. I used this post and downloaded the 8.1.11.19 (3.13-WHQL) drivers and the method used to switch out the driver. Voila! no crackling whatsoever, I now have clean sound. Thank you sir!

 

[paulkemp]

Considering the Xonar U7, it is 1) cheaper than solid state dac/amp solutions, and 2) it does have mic input at the front, and 3)will let me switch the outputs to speakers. All well a nice. However, there seems to be some issues with the drivers? I am PC capable, but I dislike when things dont work. And, more importantly, my DT990s are 250 ohm, is this amp capable of driving them? 
 
I have a Astro MixAmp today. 

 

[SlashZack]

Hi guys need help here. I just got the U7 today. Browse within the thread and completely lost. 
The "Best" version of the old driver mentioned earlier working on win10?
 
I'm on win 10 64bit. Which driver should i install?  4.14 or 4.16?
 
http://i.imgur.com/7aGzTvb.jpg
 
Thanks

 

[paulkemp]

As a rule of PC thumb, get the newest. Howeve it is simply a uninstall / reinstall and you should be good to go if something strange happens with one of the other. Can't go wrong here

 

[Kitmellow]

Hey guys! In case any new U7 owners have missed the previous posts, the following is where you should download and what to install if you are running Windows 10 64-bit. 

 
 

 
(https://www.asus.com/us/Sound-Cards/Xonar_U7/HelpDesk_Download/)
 
 
The reason people running Windows 10 should use these drivers instead of the Windows 10 drivers offered there is because those are not "WHQL" quality-certified and many people who used them reported quality/usability issues and weird bugs like popping/buzzing noises.
 
It has also been confirmed through my testing that these poorly written Windows 10 drivers degrade the sound quality of the headphone output on the U7 because the bass response performs significantly sloppier with higher harmonic distortion than when using the "WHQL" Windows 8 drivers in my measurement tests. 

 
If you are using a different driver, please make sure you fully uninstall them and reboot before you install these Windows 8 drivers. 

 
 
 
For people potentially looking to buy the U7, my review is that it's excellent sound quality for the dollar, but there are 4 main weaknesses you might want to consider:
 
- The U7 has about 17-21 ohms of output impedance meaning that it's not suitable for use with low or medium impedance Balanced Armature Driver earphones if you have any. Most Dynamic Driver headphones/earphones should be fine and should sound great. This higher output impedance can be negated if you are using a good amplifier with the U7.
 
- The U7 has a relatively weak built-in headphone amplifier pushing only 1.3 Vrms at an unknown amount of load, which means that headphones rated at 250 ohms of impedance and above might not get as loud as you want them to, in which you'd need to run it through another amplifier.
 
- The way the U7's headphone jack has been designed, means that any headphones/earphones you plug in that has an inline-microphone will sound distorted with missing frequencies. To fix this, you'll have to not fully insert the jack in (maybe 90%) until you get full range sound. This means that your headphones/earphones with inline-mics will be prone to disconnecting from the jack with small tugs, but this can be remedied if you connect your headphones to the jack with any cheap 3.5 mm 4 pole to 3 pole adapter.
 
- Finally, unlike Asus' internal Xonar soundcards such as the Xonar DSX, the Xonar U7 does not have built-in "Stereo Mix" hardware capability, meaning that you cannot record everything you hear from your PC even though basic Realtek onboard audio has that capability. If you want to record the sound that you hear through your speakers, you'll need to utilize 3rd party software such as Voicemeeter (it's free).

 

[SlashZack]

Not able to install the mentioned win8 whql driver  "Don't support this platform"
 
I'm having problem with the latest win10 driver. After installation it causing serious lag on my desktop browsing.
Dolby panel crashes all the time. 
Also for the U7 Sonar panel all i got is volume control and all other setting are not available. 
Really annoying. Now still trying to troubleshoot after many method. 
 
Asus product often have the worst driver and support. Guess i forgot all my previous learnt lesson. 

 

[Fujibayashi]

Is it any info about new Windows 10 driver? (Xonar U7-4.14(W10-PR))

 

[CaptainAwesome]

Yeah, there's a new win10 beta driver for regular U7 (nothing for Echelon) that's less than a week old now with beta support for DDL again. Anyone give that a go yet?
There's some weird things happening with the driver versioning on Asus's site, but it seems new at least based on the date.

 

[NarTa]

Hi guys. i have some question. When i change Audio Config from 7.1,5.1 or 4.0 to Stereo why the sound out put is decrease so much.Do you have a way to fix it? or my U7 have a problem?

 

[ciarlatano]

  Hi guys. i have some question. When i change Audio Config from 7.1,5.1 or 4.0 to Stereo why the sound out put is decrease so much.Do you have a way to fix it? or my U7 have a problem?

I am having exactly this same issue since I upgraded to Win 10. I tried the 8.1 drivers, and it was actually fine until I changed the sample rate. As soon as I did, volume decreased significantly. I also can't get DHT4 to install no matter what I do, and that is actually the biggest reason I am using the U7 at all.
 
EDIT: I used the Win8 WHQL driver, used compatibility mode with the setup.exe to install and everything is working perfectly. The Win 8.1 driver was a no go for me in Win 10 x64 Pro.

 

[igytech]

Does anyone use some amp with Xonar u7. What can recommend for $100?

 

[Rasket]

Hello,

I wonder if someone can please help me, i'm going crazy.
 
I have normal Xonar U7 since January last year. It works fine for my headphones, my speaker output is disabled because I have other USB speakers. But this works all good for one year. Then two things break. One, lots of crackling in headphones. Two, Microphone doesn't work unless you turn levels to 100. 
 
The crackling is annoying but I don't know how to fix. The microphone is TERRIBLE though now. I try with 4 different microphones. No one can hear my in team speak or Skype unless I turn the Microphone Levels all the way up to 100. Then people can hear me but also can hear every single click of my mouse and keyboard, Also SO MUCH STATIC. Just terrible, all the noise.
 
I contact Asus for warranty repair (as I assume maybe no power getting to microphone). They tell me to **** off. So I go to Amazon and they amazingly send me a new one straight away! Today I get the new one and...still quiet mic. So this means it must be driver??? Perhaps the reason it breaks is because Windows 10 update? I don't know if the microphone break when I upgrade (i didn;t even upgrade, I just go away for a few minutes, come back at windows 10 installed ((((()
 
So Windows 10 breaks Xonar u7? Right now I am using the Windows 8.0 driver like this thread says but still no mic.
 
PLEASE help.

 

[CaptainAwesome]

  Hello,

I wonder if someone can please help me, i'm going crazy.
 
I have normal Xonar U7 since January last year. It works fine for my headphones, my speaker output is disabled because I have other USB speakers. But this works all good for one year. Then two things break. One, lots of crackling in headphones. Two, Microphone doesn't work unless you turn levels to 100. 
 
The crackling is annoying but I don't know how to fix. The microphone is TERRIBLE though now. I try with 4 different microphones. No one can hear my in team speak or Skype unless I turn the Microphone Levels all the way up to 100. Then people can hear me but also can hear every single click of my mouse and keyboard, Also SO MUCH STATIC. Just terrible, all the noise.
 
I contact Asus for warranty repair (as I assume maybe no power getting to microphone). They tell me to **** off. So I go to Amazon and they amazingly send me a new one straight away! Today I get the new one and...still quiet mic. So this means it must be driver??? Perhaps the reason it breaks is because Windows 10 update? I don't know if the microphone break when I upgrade (i didn;t even upgrade, I just go away for a few minutes, come back at windows 10 installed ((((()
 
So Windows 10 breaks Xonar u7? Right now I am using the Windows 8.0 driver like this thread says but still no mic.
 
PLEASE help.

Have you tried the driver for Windows 10 that is dated 2016/07/13?

 

[elemunt]

So after 16months of annoying and troubled use with this thing, today my Xonar started ******* my PC up. Firstly my PC wouldn't boot past the mobo logo, so I disconnected usb devices one by one by power of deduction. Once unplugging the Xonar it boots into windows fine (???). And now once I'm in Windows and I plug it back in it detects absolutely nothing, just the speaker LED starts flashing. I've had it to wits end with this products and it boggles my mind that there is no alternate solution to buy, just a nice little DAC with amperage and a good microphone input.
 
Can anyone recommend me another product that won't break the bank?

 

[Rasket]

 
Have you tried the driver for Windows 10 that is dated 2016/07/13?

Yes, no joy.