I've posted a thread earlier today about an issue I had with my recently purchased Xonar D2, which with some advice, I was able to fix. (Turned out to be drivers.)
Before my new Xonar, I owned a X-Fi Platinum (the first generation that came out all those years ago) which after 8 years, it completely failed and died. My PC simply did not enter post with it in. During the period I waited for the new card, I was in a sense "forced" to use onboard sound. (EVGA P55 SLI mobo, with a generic Realtek audio chip.) I will say with
extreme confidence that the quality/clarity of sound that onboard sounds gives simply cannot compare with a dedicated sound card. Music, movies and games all sound far greater with a sound card.
Even the 8-year-old card I had sounded many times better than the onboard. Of course, there are motherboards with very good onboard sound these days. A good friend of mine has an ASUS board with onboard X-Fi (which I find rather amazing) but motherboards like those are very expensive.
You don't need to be a musician to justify buying an expensive sound card. Personally, I think of a sound card as an investment. Something that will last very long, and no matter what happens, you always have great sound quality. Of course, it can be seen as somewhat of a "waste" if you don't have a powerful speaker setup to fully take advantage of the card. I mean, if for example you had a basic 2.1 or 5.1 system, there's only so much that they'd be able to deliver anyway. Still, you WILL hear a definite clarity difference. Especially in games. Also, if you're like my brother that bought himself a massively expensive home theater system (which has it's own amplifier), you don't need a sound card either - because the amplifier, obviously, does that job.
Many people I know don't even consider the effect of a sound card. They're just happy with plain sound from their onboard. Honestly, a sound card makes that difference. Good quality sound has an enormous effect on immersion, and so on. A few games that I can think of off the top of my head that really did make great use of the sound card (I had) was Half-Life 2 (and expansions), NFS Shift 1 & 2, UT3 and most noticeably Battlefield BC2 and BF3. (BF3's award winning sound engine truly sounds beyond incredible!) ... (which reminds me, I still have to test that with the Xonar :/)
However, a sound card does require quite a bit of tweaking with options and settings to get it sounding just how you want it. It's not a simple matter of putting it in, installing drivers and expecting an enormous change immediately. But that ability to tweak everything is what I enjoy. There are several options available to really make it sound how you want it. Far more than onboard anyway.
Anyway, if you are looking at buying a sound card, there really isn't anything else to look at besides ASUS. I was also looking at the D1, but I ended up choosing the D2 because .. well, just because.
Better numbers and features and sh*t lol. But the main reason why I chose the D2 and not the D2x was because of the PCIe x1 interface. Seriously, that is retarded. Well, in my case it is. the only x1 slot I have is directly above my GPU. -_- With the standard PCi I could mount the D2 right at the bottom - which is what I wanted. Be aware however that ASUS drivers are no good. (Which I learned the hard way after much frustration.) Download the 3rd party drivers. (Thanks Bakerman! ^^)
Also. I also owned a ROCCAT Kave 5.1 headset. It was good until it caused issues. (With the X-Fi I had, plugging in the headset made windows no longer recognize the audio device -_-) I ended up buying the Corsair Vengeance 1500 7.1 USB headset - which are absolutely astonishing! (USB headsets need no sound card obviously, but that set has quality that is on par, if not better to an extent that my Logitech Z5500's! Minus the bass, of course.) Also the application it uses automatically loads itself when the headset is plugged in, and exits when the headset is plugged out. (So no unnecessary app will be running in the background.)
