Share your opinion/experience on the Phoebus here.

[hingj0n]

So a half year later since I bought this card, nothing changed really... The drivers suck monkey b*lls, especially on Windows 8.

The following problems are those which I find the most annoying;
Game Crashes
Incompatible Games
Controller volume knob buggs (sound hangs and if you turn the volume up using the knob, the volume goes up and down randomly
Sample rate on 192khz just doesn't work well, pitch changes, sound pops in background applications like youtube
Sometimes the audio is a low volume when changing from headphones to speakers even though it's on max volume
Xear Surround sounds really awfull, and it locks the sample rate to 48khz.
Dolby Home Theater v4 Volume leveling is sometimes really annoying (I think this is on Dolby)

DTS is buggy as hell, it's like that the surround effect is only coming from the left side.

Okay, Raja@ASUS, let me clarify the 192khz part, if you start a game in 192khz, the sound on iTunes or Youtube starts popping, just like the game sound itself. Though you can close the background apps and restart the game (then you won't have popping sounds), you still have a different pitch when your graphics card starts working (like in SimCity) it's so annoying that I just go back to 44.1 khz.

And the worst of all:
Microphone Noise... Damn... even though this card doesn't use anything from the motherboard its power, I still get an anoying noise.


If the drivers were well-made, I would be glad that I've bought this product, but... I'm very dissapointed at the moment and would be glad if ASUS would make a trade offer or gave me my money back.

So guys, what do you think?

[tboo72]

Ive had my Phoebus now for just over a year & it has been rock solid.

[KILLER_K]

So have you tried testing all the issues we have tested? Or are you saying it works right for just how you are using it so far? Because some don't even have a clue to the other issues as they only use their sound card for certain things.

tboo72 wrote:
Ive had my Phoebus now for just over a year & it has been rock solid.

[tboo72]

KILLER_K wrote:
So have you tried testing all the issues we have tested? Or are you saying it works right for just how you are using it so far? Because some don't even have a clue to the other issues as they only use their sound card for certain things.

I use my card to listen to music, play games, and to Skype. Ive had no problems. Music sounds awesome, the desktop mic works great for Skype, and Ive had no problems playing games(including BF3). I do use a set of headphones though about 90% of the time. Dont know if that makes a difference.

[thegovernment]

I had 2, my first one crapped out and the second one was a disaster (well the drivers were anyways) After the BF3 disaster and the tons of other issues, I was happy to smash mine with a hammer on my sidewalk..... My Forte was a fill in until I got my current Creative ZxR. The whole experience of this card and the run around and list of excuses we all got from Asus is enough that I will never by another asus product again. Not like they will care but it is what it is.

[dan_ivan]

KILLER_K wrote:
So have you tried testing all the issues we have tested? Or are you saying it works right for just how you are using it so far? Because some don't even have a clue to the other issues as they only use their sound card for certain things.

Hey KILLER_K, I have tested the board in windows 8.1 with latest drivers with netflix and games including BF3 and I haven't encountered any problem in any situation. I also use all settings except DTS emulation software because I have a native 5.1 speakers and I love the sound as it was produced without any other crap emulation added. For those who want to use emulations like DTS or Dolby surround, it is good to know that this type of software was created to transform stereo sources into surround emulation which will never rise at the quality of a native true DTS and Dolby 5.1/7.1 surround.

[Glasofruix]

Quick necro to avoid creating a thread, the presets in the driver (hif, fps & co) not the DHT panel, what do they tweak exactly?

[Luke_]

I use my phoebus for games, movie watching (DVDs, BLURAYs and Netflix) and playing music (Foobar 2k). I have not had any trouble. I love the sound quality of this guy and the convenience of the control pod (i frequently switch between my stereo speaker setup and my headphones). I keep the settings in the Asus UI/control panel thingy mostly at defaults. The thing that I use often is the dolby home theater. I change the profile depending on the situation: gaming, music, movie, etc... and occasional tweak the built in EQ.

[onyxx]

I using my card to playng games, music and video. Works great...I waiting now on Vulcan Pro headset...

[Florin]

Beside the humming in the mic, the card works great for me, though i`m not sure how that Dolby Headphone settings that the DX cards had relate to this card since the option is gone and the Xear 3D is a piece of crap, other than that is a very good card, though i`m not pleased that i have to use a 6 pin PCI-E connector to power it, was it really necessary ASUS ?

LE: Oh and the Stereo Mix not being available it`s annoying, i have to use my laptop to record windows sounds or my Zoom H4n connected to my soundcard, i don`t get it why ASUS decided to remove this .. since it doesn`t stop anybody to record windows sounds, it just makes it harder while using this card... so some people might avoid it for the "little things".

[Neumi]

1. I had to buy a separated 5$ sound card for microphone input, the distortion in the Phoebus Mic input was not acceptable.
2. Having Dolby Home Theater or PCEE active when headphones AND speakers are being used always caused the computer to crash. That is a problem if you have set the speakers as main soundcard then for example switch to a game which uses the hadphones. So before starting the application you need to switch to headphones as main sound card. Creative Recon3D uses a better solution. It only has ONE sound card visible in the system. a switch then directs the sound either to speakers or the headphones, that avoids that conflict.

I use this sound card for 2 reasons:
1. it has 7.1 support while Recon 3D only offers 5.1 support
2. My Recon3D switched chanels randomly, sometimes several times per second due to a bug in the drivers.

My favorite card so far which I would still use if it still worked was my X-Fi 2, which was superior to both these cards in almost any way, it only supported 96 kHz however and missed the switch on the front panel to quickly change between headphones and speakers (like the Recon3D has).