Very good, but can be disrupted by external device
After a couple of days getting to grips with the Asus Strix Soar; It's not a bad card, just flawed.Pros:Crystal clear audioSurprisingly accurate surround emulationJack sensingClean & Easy to use Control PanelCons;Drivers are sensitive to DPC latency - Anything that causes too much Processor load will cause pops and crackles and the drivers struggle to keep upVery sensitive to external devices - Further interference was caused originally by a Headphone Amplifier I was using before, it seems anything that feeds power back into the card will cause noise.Asus Driver Support is slow, at best.Not everyone will have an available PCI-E 6-Pin connector, and the card does not include a Molex to 6-pin conversion cable.I purchased this card to replace my previous Asus Xonar DX, which was on it's way out, thinking i'd be getting much of the same, indeed, the Specification of the Strix was near identical to that of the Xonar DX, but after spending some time with the card in a variety of using scenarios; I can honestly say it's better.Having run a wide variety of music through it both over SPDIF to my Speakers and to my HD518 headphones: The sound is very clear, giving a nice wide range, but staying fairly neutral without any enhancements applied, Bass is clearer and more defined than with the Xonar DX and Left/Right channel separation is better, giving a better listening experience, notably; songs that use Binaural audio sound even better on the Strix Soar than they did on the DX it replaced.In games, arguably the area where Asus is aiming the Strix, it definitely excels, while the emulated surround system is a little tricker to setup than the Dolby Surround emulation on the DX: The end result is much better, footsteps and positional audio is very clear and precise, and it's a lot more tweakable to suit how you prefer your audio, rather than the generic "DH1/DH2/DH3" settings on the DX.The only issue I had (Beyond fishing out an extra cable to run it) was the noise being introduced, which I ultimately resolved, but it still seems that anything that hits DPC latency too much, or simply loads the processor too heavily, will cause audio issues.Of note to people who can't figure out how to get the card to output in desired SPDIF formats; Those are found in Windows Sound Options / Recording Devices / Strix SPDIF Out - Right click on that, hit Properties and find the "Supported Formats" tab, in there you can state which audio formats and sample rates the connected device can manage. (Giving you the option of outputting Dolby Digital, DTS Audio & Windows WMA Pro Audio alongside the default PCM output, with Sample Rates ranging from 44.1khz through to 192 khz)On the whole; Now that I've figured out what makes the card tick and had some time to customise the audio settings to my preference; It's an exceptional card, I can't give it a caveat free recommendation due to the little issues with Noise in system intensive moments, but it's a great card and it does exactly what it needs to, and definitely learns from the mistakes of previous products Asus have released.