The ASUS Xonar Essence ST is quite impressive when it comes to overall performance. Signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) give you a ballpark figure of the sound quality and tell you a lot about a sound card .

The output and input SNR is well above the standard

The card does not have basic 3.5mm audio ports

Im satisfied with this purchase, bit still it is somewhat expensive. You will need a high quality headseat like sennheiser PC 350 to see the difference.

-Sound quality is very good; -Nice to have amp directly on the sound card for headphone; -Can switch Headphone or speaker mode with one click

-Somewhat expensive; -Dont like Xonar essence audio center

I've had this card for over a year and I'm very happy with the quality of audio reproduction. I use it primarily for headphone playback (Sennheiser 595) of my compressed lossless audio music collection (FLAC, created with EAC) on a Windows 7 x64 desktop.

I sold the stx to buy this card and I'm glad I did. even though the differences may by slight they make all the difference, like perfect Karaoke recording and play back. what I mean is using the PC speakers the voice blends in perfectly with no lag for karaoke and it records each session perfectly.

I upgraded from my X-fi Fatality card of 3 years and all I can say is wow! Don't get me wrong the X-fi was a great card but I didn't realise what I was missing out on until I read some reviews and took the plunge.

The price was the cheapest on the web, and it came the very next day. That was surprising given that I only paid the standard shipping fee.

This is a great card I currently run it with my Beyerdynamic DT 990s and they sound great together. My card before this was a DX and there was a pretty good jump in audio quality even when not using the AMP.

Excellent built quality and wonderful sound, use it majorly play back computer audio file, only disadvantage is all its outputs are control by the software comes with it and it doesn't come with XLR balance connections.

People said this card is significantly better than Claro Halo because this card output much louder sound than the Halo. Other than louder sound, no much different in terms of sound quality.

Sounds fabulous; Low jitter clock

Software; Construction quality is lacking compared to Claro Halo; Components on Claro Halo are much higher quality; Lots of cracks and pops than Claro Halo