Asus Xonar DS 7.1 PCI Sound Card Review

👤by Sahil Mannick Comments 📅25-01-10
Closer Look






The Xonar DS 7.1

The card is a low profile sound card and uses the PCI interface. Despite this, it still packs in many features. The card supports analog connectivity and can decode DTS over the optical for ultra high fidelity sounds. Unlike its bigger brother, it doesn't make use of an EMI shield or a heatsink but this isn't a problem. The card is very nicely laid out overall.


The AV200 Processor

The AV200 HD audio processing unit is the heart of this sound card, the same one found in the more expensive D2/D2X so we can expect very good quality audio from this little card. The Xonar DS features an output signal to noise ration of up to 107 dB and an input SNR of up to 100 dB.


The swappable OPamps amongst the capacitors

On the left, we can see the capacitors and the OPamp tucked nicely in between. Unlike the D2/D2X, ASUS have kept to using normal capacitors with this card rather than the more expensive box-style ones. The card also uses 24 bit Wolfson WM8775/WM8766 DACs with a maximum resolution of 192khz on all 8 channels.


The Front panel HD audio, Aux In, and S/PDIF out headers

On the side of the card are three connectors, one labelled "Front panel" to switch the output to the front panel of your case, the next being the "aux in" 4 pin header for line-level analog input and the final header is the "SPDIF out" one. The internal S/PDIF header can feed digital audio to HDMI ready graphics cards.


The I/O back plate

The Xonar DS has 4 analog output jacks 7.1 support. From left to right, there's the front, side, centre and rear outputs. The right most connector is the Line-in/Mic-in jack. For cost-cutting measures the DS does not feature the same gold plated back plate as the D2/D2X and also lacks the external S/PDIF, optical and coax input and output jacks. The latter aren't crucial so for a media PC, the I/O connections are more than sufficient.

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