The professional sound industry has been under the domination of Creative for quite a while now. Other soundcard manufacturers would only dare to show up with more modest - mid-range at most - offerings. Everything was OK if you had to choose between more on-board soundcard chips, but if you needed some big guns, you had to go Creative.

It's true that the vast majority of users are perfectly fine with the on-board audio to go along with an inexpensive set of stereo PC speakers, but audio enthusiasts would rather pick a better solution to deliver crystal-clear sound on their four-digit high-end sound systems. Asustek has come up with another offer you can't refuse: the Xonar DX PCI-Express soundcard has just hit the retailers' shelves.

The new audio offering from Asustek delivers 7.1 channels and a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) that can go as much as 35 times cleaner than onboard audio solutions. The output specifications are also attractive: the card can reach a SNR of 116dB, In comparison, an average built-in soundcard can only deliver a signal-to-noise ratio of 85 decibels at most. Those of you who are wondering why the card is 35 times clearer than other solutions, the small difference is justified by the fact that the decibels are logarithmic.

The Xonar DX does not only play on the quality card. It comes packed with other goodies, such as broad support for Dolby's audio technologies, such as Dolby Digital Live, Dolby Headphone, Dolby Virtual Speaker, and Dolby Pro Logic Iix, that try to render surround-sound experiences on sound systems that don't have the right number of sound channels.

The Pro Logic Iix technology converts the standard 5.1-channel audio into the superior 7.1-channel audio, while the Dolby Digital Live transforms the stereo output into Dolby Digital 5.1-channel bitstreams.