The chaps over at VR-Zone compared Asus' Xonar D2 sound card against six other sound cards from Auzentech, Creative, Audiotrak, and Tokyo Style in a group listening test. According to VR-Zone's findings, the Creative cards fare the worst, and the Xonar seems to be among the better performers. The card reportedly offers a 'much better' sound stage and separation than other offerings, and the resulting sound is said to be more detailed. However, the card's mid-range 'seems to be lacking a little,' and some of VR-Zone's testers believe audiophiles will prefer the Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 XT.

The Creative cards were crippled by lousy Operational Amplifiers and Capacitors and the tokyo style is crippled by lousy opamps, but the Tokyo Style, like the prodigy XT comes with a interchangable OPAMP sockets. Overall, The Xonar comes out top in the looks (bling!) factor and soundstage, but the mids seems to be lacking a little, and domho7 and yantronic pointed out that most audiophiles might prefer the sound that's coming out from the Audiotrak Prodigy XT. The X-Meridien isn't too bad but loses out to the Audiotrak Prodigy XT in terms of Mids.

The Creative cards sounded really muddy on my pair of studio monitors, many of us shook our heads when we compared it neck to neck with the rest of the cards. Some says even the onboard sound of the Asus sounds better.

Some of the users have pointed out to me that the X-Meridien's ASIO drivers are buggy and have suggested that I conduct the test with another alogorithm. I will, as I will be recieving the X-Fi Prelude tomorrow! Please keep a lookout of our soundcard shootout

Well, now we need a real performance review... not just subjective listening...:\