Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Or ASUS ROG Phoebus

Asus. The Recon3D is junk. Doesn't even offload openal. Shit for headphones. It's just terrible. Look at the PCBs. Epic difference.

I agree on the Asus card, personally I would not buy anything from Creative, especially not a retarded Fatality branded card.

Well, ASUS isn't much better. Last time i checked, they don't even offer support for soundcards. There just isn't any category for soundcards on their support page. And software is typically asian. Rubbish. I wasn't impressed with Essence STX when i had it. Sure the sound was great when it worked but that wasn't too often. Where on the other side in 14 years i never had any major problems with Creative soundcards. Sure drivers suck when major OS changes happen coz Creative just doesn't bother with them but other than that, i only have positive experience. X-Fi is especially good. Core3D looks ok on paper but on the other hand some specs are weird like non-harwdare OpenAL. And 4 dedicated cores just for some stupid mic processing? My calculator can do all that, let alone Core i7 920 at 3,8GHz. You'd expect 3 out of 4 cores to do the gaming sound processing but all they apparently did was dedicate every basic thing to each core.
It's like dedicating a tic tac toe game to a dual core CPU where one core handles the X's and the other one O's... just pointless.

The whole ear/headphone damaging random noise thing on the Asus cards is enough reason for me to avoid them. I'd personally get the card I have, the Titanium HD. For whatever reason creative revamped the driver just for it, much snappier. Just don't ever expect timely updates. Been beta since September. Whatever bizarre driver issues I have with them always seem to resolve themselves.

Have you considered the HT|Omega Striker its a pretty good sound card with DDL and DTS.

All the other fancy bells and whistles on the x-fi's and others go mostly unused as most games have there own sound engine that does 5.1/7.1 and the virtual surround with headphones.
Making the sound card pretty much obsolete except for the higher quality low noise circuitry vs onboard.

still look at the price even ino u get what u buy for, bcs if u look at the Asus Xonar Essence ST/STX cards the price is the same since they came out (it is in my country)

i choose the STX bcs when i change my Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z when it comes home from RMA (exchaning) i don't have a PCI slot anymore only 2x PCI-Express 3.0 x16 and one PCI-E x4 slot.

but i was amazed going from onboard Realtek to a Auzentech X-Fi Bravura 7.1 and than to my Asus Xonar Essence STX i could clearly hear the sound difference even on my old mp3 files i got laying around my pc, i was like wow with my headphone ^^

In case anyone (besides Asus) was still unaware. http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20090222084608127&board_id=21&model=Xonar+Essence+STX&SLanguage=en-us&page=6

2 years, no acknowledgement.

I say neither because I believe spending $200 for a sound card is just a sheer waste of money. Unless you use all of it's features that other sound cards do not offer.
Spending ~$100 will probably get you the same exact results for half the cost. Just my 2c.

LAN_deRf_HA said:

In case anyone (besides Asus) was still unaware. http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20090222084608127&board_id=21&model=Xonar+Essence+STX&SLanguage=en-us&page=6

2 years, no acknowledgement.

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i don't have that problem with my card, maybe it's also depending on the machine it's in, i dunno about that, but i don't have any problems and i think my card is around 6month old sooner or later and i bought it used from a dude in holland/nederland and he haven't had a problem with it neither.

Price is going to be a big difference here. You can pick up an Auzentech X-Raider from NCIX for about $40 bucks shipped. The Recon3d is $99 and the Fatality version is around $150. The Asus card looks like it's going to be awfully expensive. For headphones, I'd just get the X-Raider.

Honestly, I don't think you are going to find anyone who has any experience with those brand new sound cards yet. They are too new. Why not just get a USB headset and avoid a sound card altogether?

RejZoR said:

Well, ASUS isn't much better. Last time i checked, they don't even offer support for soundcards. There just isn't any category for soundcards on their support page. And software is typically asian. Rubbish. I wasn't impressed with Essence STX when i had it. Sure the sound was great when it worked but that wasn't too often.

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Asus support is SHIT! Totally non-existant, i run a Xonar HDAV 1.3 for the last 2 - 3 year's and the thing still does NOT work as it's supposed to. I've sent it in for RMA, i've called, emailed, posted on their forum and got fock all assistance. I called their "tech support" line just yesterday for some clarification on BIOS setting's for my MOBO and guess what? How hard can it be to listen to my issue for 45 second's then tell me the 1 minute fix?

I have always purchased Asus MOBO's and had great luck so this last build i decided to go full Asus (MOBO/GFX?Audio) and got the shaft! Never again will i buy anything Asus.

If you decide to go with Asus be prepared for what may ensue, if you have no patience or limited PC skill's avoid them like the plague. My $0.02

Next audio card will be Auzentech

Well I haven't heard many good things about the Recon 3D's. Most are saying it's pretty "chopped down" feature wise compared to the previous X-Fi's. I know for me your gonna have to pry my Fatality from my cold dead hands. I have never had any serious issues with and the sound on it is all I could ever ask for.

Me Personally, neither of these.

BGears
HT Omega