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Jtsessions · ‎11-06-2013

Hello,

I've got a solid gaming build but no sound card and am looking at taking my first step into high-end audio. I'm aware of the driver issues that the phoebus faces, but things like dolby home theater have me interested and I like what I've heard about the audio quality when it's working.

It seems like a lot of the people experiencing trouble are running win 8/8.1. My setup runs windows 7, and it seems that the phoebus is substantially more stable on it.

Do any other windows 7 users experience issues with the drivers? Is this card worth picking up as a windows 7 user?

Thanks!

KILLER_K · ‎11-06-2013

Not until they show proper support for this sound card. You are basically giving them money for a half working and half supported sound card. All these problem threads should have been enough to honestly answer your question though. But if you still would like to purchase on after all these threads then knock yourself out on it. As of right now me and about 25 others have a $200+ paper weight now. a new driver was suppose to be released in October 2013. But you also see that didn't happen.

Pm if you still would like to buy one. I will be glad to get rid of mine to you.

Jtsessions · ‎11-06-2013

KILLER_K wrote:
Not until they show proper support for this sound card. You are basically giving them money for a half working and half supported sound card. All these problem threads should have been enough to honestly answer your question though. But if you still would like to purchase on after all these threads then knock yourself out on it. As of right now me and about 25 others have a $200+ paper weight now. a new driver was suppose to be released in October 2013. But you also see that didn't happen.

Pm if you still would like to buy one. I will be glad to get rid of mine to you.

I am aware that the card has driver issues; Rather, I'm wondering how it affects windows 7 users in particular. I've yet to see someone with problems say they are running Win7. It's always Win8/8.1. I was hoping to get some OS-Specific feedback on the problems xD

Thank you for your response!

pandiapanda · ‎11-06-2013

Go for Creative don't go for this card....

pandiapanda · ‎11-06-2013

Mic huming issues, sound issues in games (BF3,BF4)... and it's not driver related for the mic huming but hardware issue...

Jtsessions · ‎11-06-2013

Just to clarify; For those that are having issues, could I please get a little more elaboration and your OS? My theory so far is that the card is RELATIVELY stable on Win7, but so far, I haven't really had anything to confirm/reject that theory and would like a bit of reassurance either way. I think that it might be useful to determine where the problems are centered.

Thanks for your input, pandiapanda!

I can see that this post already has 100 views, but very few responses. Could I please just get a couple of people throwing in their commentary on how the card plays with windows 7? Has it been good to you? Do you have problems? Is it true that it's more stable on 7, and would you pick it up for 7?

Thank you for your time!

Luxion · ‎11-07-2013

Speaking as someone who's had their Phoebus for about fifteen months now: in my particular case, on my particular rig, under my particular Windows 7/x64 installation, the Phoebus has bizarrely been the most stable sound card I've owned in close to five years (since my beloved X-Fi Elite Pro, which ironically I could never get to run under 7/x64 when it first manifested). Apart from a bizarre speaker mapping quirk that only seems to manifest at random with foobar2000 (I think it's some quirk with the FreeSurround DSP plugin and this card's drivers), it's been fairly well-behaved for me--no system-level crashes, no hangs or loops, nothing. That said, however, I should note that I'm using mine exclusively for 5.1 analog output. No microphone, no headphones, and the most advanced tweaking I do at driver level is via the Dolby Home Theater applet.

And with all that said: would I recommend a Phoebus now? Not at retail prices, no. When it came out it was Asus' flagship card (or nearly so--the Xonar Essence STX may still have that title, I'm not sure), with no real competition, and it was $250 USD then; now it's up against the slightly cheaper Sound Blaster ZxR, which Creative is more actively supporting (and to be fair for years they weren't really supporting jack) and has similar performance...with no significant Windows 8.1-related issues, which is arguably the Phoebus's borderline-crippling bugaboo at this point...and it's still somewhere around $230 USD. I may revise this if and when Asus QA reaches their internal tipping point and releases the next driverset for this card, but right now it's just a little too pricey for its quirks versus its competition.

Jtsessions · ‎11-07-2013

Luxion wrote:
Speaking as someone who's had their Phoebus for about fifteen months now: in my particular case, on my particular rig, under my particular Windows 7/x64 installation, the Phoebus has bizarrely been the most stable sound card I've owned in close to five years (since my beloved X-Fi Elite Pro, which ironically I could never get to run under 7/x64 when it first manifested). Apart from a bizarre speaker mapping quirk that only seems to manifest at random with foobar2000 (I think it's some quirk with the FreeSurround DSP plugin and this card's drivers), it's been fairly well-behaved for me--no system-level crashes, no hangs or loops, nothing. That said, however, I should note that I'm using mine exclusively for 5.1 analog output. No microphone, no headphones, and the most advanced tweaking I do at driver level is via the Dolby Home Theater applet.

And with all that said: would I recommend a Phoebus now? Not at retail prices, no. When it came out it was Asus' flagship card (or nearly so--the Xonar Essence STX may still have that title, I'm not sure), with no real competition, and it was $250 USD then; now it's up against the slightly cheaper Sound Blaster ZxR, which Creative is more actively supporting (and to be fair for years they weren't really supporting jack) and has similar performance...with no significant Windows 8.1-related issues, which is arguably the Phoebus's borderline-crippling bugaboo at this point...and it's still somewhere around $230 USD. I may revise this if and when Asus QA reaches their internal tipping point and releases the next driverset for this card, but right now it's just a little too pricey for its quirks versus its competition.

Got it! I really appreciate the detail in your response, as this is my first audio purchase and I'd like to make sure that I get the most for my money. I'm looking at the Sennheiser 598s and was attracted to the superb surround that I had heard the Phoebus has. I'm looking for maximum positional audio - not for "hearing footsteps" and blah blah, but for more immersion in the games that I love so much. Dolby home theater seemed like a really solid suite of audio features. I listen to music, watch movies, and play games, so flexibility in a card is important to me.

If not the Phoebus, would you recommend anything else for my particular situation? (Surround, music/movies/games, good balance of features and high end at around a $200 price point)

Thanks so much!

Myk_SilentShado · ‎11-07-2013

I got the Phoebus on Win7 with no problems whatsoever. It does exactly what I want it to do and I haven't had any sound problems in the few games i've played. BF3, Red Alert 3, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Star Craft II.

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Jtsessions · ‎11-07-2013

Myk SilentShadow wrote:
I got the Phoebus on Win7 with no problems whatsoever. It does exactly what I want it to do and I haven't had any sound problems in the few games i've played. BF3, Red Alert 3, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Star Craft II.

Gotcha; Thanks for the positive vote! I'm hoping to see a trend, there, as it does sound like Win7's phoebus drivers are actually pretty stable.

Do you think the card fits what I'm looking for/is what you'd buy in my shoes?

Thanks!

(Hey, I'm set up with an NZXT Phantom as well!)

Phoebus worth it for windows 7 64?