ASUS Xonar Essence STX or Creative Sound Blaster ZxR

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Hi well i want to know which of these sound cards ASUS Xonar Essence STX and Creative Sound Blaster ZxR are in 7.1?
Also i am bit confused in which to buy i plan on using it for gaming and watching hd movies so which one is the best?
I have a question about which one has optical out?
Which is the best sound cards out of these two?
 
Soldato
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I have a Xonar Essence STX and it should be perfect for headphone users and 2.0 speaker system(or as some call them 2.1 if it has a sub) or 7.1 through Coax.

Gaming BF3 and listening to music and watching blurays is a joy if you have the right speaker set. Its important to remember that the sound is only going to be as good as the weakest link and most cases its the speakers.
 
Soldato
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Hi well i want to know which of these sound cards ASUS Xonar Essence STX and Creative Sound Blaster ZxR are in 7.1?
Also i am bit confused in which to buy i plan on using it for gaming and watching hd movies so which one is the best?
I have a question about which one has optical out?
Which is the best sound cards out of these two?

What are you going to connect to the card, in the way of speakers and/or headphones?
 
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Hi well i want to know which of these sound cards ASUS Xonar Essence STX and Creative Sound Blaster ZxR are in 7.1?
Also i am bit confused in which to buy i plan on using it for gaming and watching hd movies so which one is the best?
I have a question about which one has optical out?
Which is the best sound cards out of these two?

neither is 7.1. the zxr is 5.1 like chaosophy says and the stx is stereo. the zxr can do 5.1, has a "dbpro", an "acm", and a native pcie chipset (which may account for its higher snr). the native chipset might improve quality due to producing less jitter, but it's unlikely to be audible. but they both use the same opamps, headphone amp, and dacs, as well as nichicon fg capacitors. apples and more expensive apples... £80 more expensive in fact!

also it's not worth spending this money on a sound card if your speakers aren't up to task. your speakers or headphones should be at least as expensive as the sound card. any less and you should be looking at £50-70 cards like the xonar d2x or creative z instead.

edit: having said all this, if you want to use optical you need to know two things. 1. optical quality isn't affected by the sound card quality. 2. optical can't transmit true 7.1 signals. what are you connecting the sound card to?
 
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Soldato
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11,175
STX was released first. I guess Asus meant it to be stereo only and not have any multi channel at all. At some point they changed their minds I suppose and decided to have the H6 from the HDAV Deluxe as an optional extra for the ST. Pity they didn't consider that when they were designing the STX.
 
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