[chriscu1]

This is a bit difficult because I can't have my mobo sound drivers and the Claro installed at the same time, so I can't do any good before/after tests. Here is what I do know:

1. It is quite a bit louder and can actually drive my HD650's fairly well straight from the card. This probably has something to do with the front L/R jack having the AD8620 opamp. I'll still be using it connected to my HR Micro amp, but I wouldn't be grumpy if I had to listen straight out of the card.

2. This thing installed in Vista (in my case, 32-bit premium) with no hiccups with HT's drivers. I deinstalled my mobo realtek drivers, disabled the mobo audio in the bios, stuck the card in, turned the pc back on, and ran the setup for the vista drivers. No problems at all.

I am a casual gamer, so I'm not really looking to gain frame rates, which is why I had no reason to go X-Fi. I wanted something that just gave me good sound for music, movies, and the occasional gaming session. I watched one of the LOTR movies in Media Center using the card's Dolby Headphone decoding...absolutely stunning.

If I come across anything else useful, I'll post, but so far, I definitely recommend it!

 

[chriscu1]

Something else I wanted to note, although it's more about the company. I sent them an email just asking about something that was unclear in the manual, and I got a very knowledgable (and friendly) reply back in about 3 hours. These guys have the reputation of good customer service, and I can see why.