Setup, Design & Observations
The setup is remarkably easy, plug the USB cable in, and wait for the drivers to install and away you go. Of course to get the best out of the U5, it is best you install the Sonic Studio software. The body is light and tough, the microphone control buttons click nicely, and the dial turns with squishy increments. Clicking in the dial changes the output channel which is quick and convenient compared to having to do it via Windows Sound menu. When you plug in a headset, it will automatically detect the impedance, to which it registered the Bitfenix FLO as high (68 Ohm). The max volume of the headset was fairly weak, similar to the U7, but was acceptable.

Multi-Media

Headphones
Listening at 16/44 and 24/96 with the headphones, the bass seemed very sludgy, with the highs diminished quite noticeably, like if someone had poured custard into your ears. Upping the resolution to 24bit/192KHz was like waking up from a bad dream as the audio became clear and acceptable. Listening through a list of go-to music tracks in lossless format was enjoyable though seemed to drop various nuances. Testing out the virtual surround was actually interesting, as it seemed to work fairly well in Battlefield 4 in a way that made the game feel more open, but lacked spatial precision, but that is the same with most virtual surround features. The effectiveness of virtual surround can also depend on the headset you are using so it is worth considering that too.

Speakers
Plugging in my Logitech X540 5.1 speakers, the surround sound was good in games and gave that cinematic immersion for films and games. Running around in Battlefield 4 with shots whizzing by, explosions rumbling up ahead places you right in the action. The downside to this surround setup for gaming, is that, to get the best of it, you need to be playing with some room shaking volume, and while the audio reproduction too will depend on your speakers, the U5 will be enough for most £80-150 5.1 speaker systems, but the saving grace for the U5 is being able to playback in 24/192 as the sludginess was still present in the speakers at lower audio resolutions.

Microphone
Something that has always confused me, is that many complain about the quality of their headset microphone. To which many end up complaining, or resolve to get a USB headset and are more-often-than-not, impressed with the results. So I would like to use this as an opportunity to remind people that audio processing has a big impact of the quality of the recorded input too, I have friends who have that 'static', 'hissy', 'picks up loads of noise', microphone and it turns out they are often gaming on a laptop, or have poor onboard motherboard audio, a simple upgrade in the soundcard department can often solve all of those issues, and the Xonar U5 would be a great option for laptop gamers who not only want to improve their own sound, but if they consistently get complaits about their crackly microphone audio others receive too. The recording ability in 24/192 in tandem with the 'clear voice' feature went down very will in DOTA2 and in SKYPE conversations, with little to no background noise recieved and crystal clear voice picked up.