Movies and Music

Results in gaming may only be moderate, but movies and music is where the D2X really shines. The Dolby Digital and DTS support doesn’t disappoint, and when hooked up to a decent amp and speakers produces a wonderful audio experience. Should you encounter a movie with only stereo sound, the myriad of virtual speaker options will help you reproduce a very good facsimile of proper surround sound.

Using the same virtual speaker options to upmix music was a little more hit and miss. That isn’t suprising, as upmixing music, be it CD or MP3, can produce interesting results. Some genres sound fine, while others just don’t sound right. Personally I prefer to just run my music in stereo and in that area the Xonar D2X performs as well as can be expected from a discrete sound card. Even thought the virtual speaker settings may not be the best, you can still tweak your music settings to what is the best sound with the features in the sound card’s control panel. In the end, this card is definitely suited more towards entertainment then gaming.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Across the board, the sound quality produced by the Xonar D2X is quite excellent. In movies and music, the output is clear and crisp. The added Dolby and DTS features make for an even better movie watching experience, and music is helped along nicely by some of the audio tweaks offered in the control panel. Gaming was also a treat with this card, and if you are running Vista this is pretty much the best card to use.

While this card sounds sublime in games, it still causes a performance hit when using EAX. The D2X also doesn’t support EAX Advanced HD, which may or may not make a difference to you depending on your application. And when it comes to applications, the package included is deep, but the software included by ASUS themselves comes up short. The control panel for the sound card needs some usability tweaks, and the PMP ripper needs to be upgraded or dropped altogether.

Then there’s the issue of the floppy power connector. To hook up this sound card in my system, I first had to locate a cord for my modular power supply that had such a connector on it. I then had to completely undo and redo my cabling job for everything to be kosher. The severe lack of use of the floppy power connector means it’s slowly being phased out. Some power supplies don’t even have them. This could have been rectified simply by including a Molex to floppy adapter, or just using a standard Molex connector.

This card is a jack of all trades, and a master of only a few. Those who should consider this card will be those looking for a solution for their HTPC or content creation rig, or those gamers running Vista. All others can still find decent cards in Creative’s stable. This card still comes in as recommended from those of us at Futurelooks though. It just sounds too good, and has too many good features.

Pros

• Sounds wonderful
• Easily trumps onboard sound, and best X-Fi in some areas
• Excellent accessories and software package
• Vista compatible with all features available
• Oh, pretty lights

Cons

• Performance hit with EAX
• Software needs some tweaking
• Floppy power connector used for external power
• No front panel output for caes
• Still can’t best X-Fi in some important areas

Overall Rating: 8.0/10.0

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