Thoughts and Rating
The first thing to stand out is the poor pairing of the ASUS sound card and the BeyerDynamic DT 231 headphones. It seems the card really does want to drive higher impedance headphones and telling it not to bother seems to make it give up. Sure, the sound is often warmer than the Audigy, but the loss in detail, texture and separation far outweighs any benefits.
The good news is that when paired with higher impedance cans the Xense performs much more admirably, especially in films where they create a much more cinema-like experience, and music. It's not perfect though, with fairly loose bass and a slight lack of treble detail. These small flaws could probably be fixed with even better headphones.
The control panel software is easy to use and fairly flexible, although the additional DSP modes are useless and even effects like Dolby Headphones and trying to upsample/downsample different numbers of channels ends up reducing the listening experience rather than improving it.
In the end, comparisons with all-in hi-fi systems aren't too far off the mark - it all works together well, and you have everything you need to get a great sound experience out of the box for £200. Just don't be surprised that upgrading a few parts could buy you something even better.
The other question is whether it's much of an upgrade over the Audigy 2ZS/DT 231 combination. For music I'd definitely say 'yes'. For movies it's also an improvement, though listening with the Audigy/DT 231 is still a great experience.
For games though, and this is the target of this particular combination after all, I think it's unfortunately a bit of a stretch for the additional outlay. In my books Creative still offers the most consistent, detail-rich and positionally-sensitive sound products - the biggest negatives of my setup seem to be lack of EMI shielding or poorer component quality, and the coldness of the DT 231. Both of which I think could be addressed by a higher quality Soundblaster-based card (possibly such as the Auzentech X-Fi ) and better headphones.
Reader rating: 4/5 stars
Pros
Great sound out of the box
Cinematic feel to films
Fantastic with music
Cons
Not significantly better than cheaper competition in games
Room for improvement with the headphones
HEXUS Where2Buy
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
