Fenix PCI-Express Sound Card

I just upgraded to this card from the ASUS ROG Strix Raid Pro DLX. I was experiencing hardware failure after hardware failure with the ASUS card, and contacted HT Omega about how their products had been doing. Their support answered my questions and I purchased this card as a result.Asus tech support had me hanging more than 3 weeks with no resolution in sight.Pros:*Great price.*Amazing sound. My primary games I'm playing now are Mass Effect Andromeda, Elite Dangerous, Doom (2016) and Fallout 4.I was seriously looking around for what was making all the new noises I was actually hearing now.*Truly 7.1 audio*Games understand it inherently. Sounds travel as they should.*Supports DirectAudioCons:* Make sure when you're plugging in your speakers you can test each individual port. In the dim light behind my computer case when I went to wire everything up I had everything shifted out of order, and had to redo it after a confusing sound experience. (I'd swapped the center/sub with front, and rear and side surround channels)*Coil whine is present but much more manageable than artifacts coming through from the competition card (Recently returned ASUS STRIX RAID DLX Sound Card] and only discernible when the game / video benchmark has zero audio.About the system under test:i7-6700k watercooled. 32gb / 512gb m2ssdASRock z710m Extreme4Evga 1080 SC2 cardEvga 1000 watt power supply.Razer Tiamat 7.1 headset w. Pyle PT798SBA 7.1 Channel Home Theater System on pass-thru

Works well for surround playback over discrete 7.1 outputs through 3.5mm stereo outputs requires 7.1 input on your receiver, does not seem to pass 7.1 over optical. For stereo music play back for recording I feed a preamp output from integrated amp with USB DAC function back in through the Omega SC's line in jack for computer-based recording, very clean sound is recorded. I do not know why I could never get any type of sound card's "mic" input to do the same thing as the line in on this card. This allows me to stream music over computer "Amazon Music" and record a copy for playback at later time on other devices.

Was choosing between this and an outboard asus u7 but since i already have an objective2 and a schiit magni 2 uber/modi 2 uber stack i went with the fenix. Also the fact asus has really awful support and the fact that i needed this to replace onboard that took a dive on an asus mobo made me stay clear of asus. Overall I think asus has really gone downhill and my next mobo will be a gigabyte or msi. As for the fenix it was recognized right away by win 10 enterprise. Sounds awesome compared to the now dead onboard realtek sound. Not really sure how it compares to the o2/uber or magni/uber. Really don't know the output impedance of the headphone output. I thought twice because of the snr figure of only 100db but since the objective 2 by jds labs really doesn't specify it i didn't take much stock in it. If you've read the blog by nwavguy you'll know that the figure is most likely the snr of the dac chip and really isn't representative of its true performance when coupled with the analog output stage. It sounds clean. It has all the outputs. The package was clean and undinged. I really love this card. It fit in the top pcie x1 slot on my mobo above an sli gtx970 setup. I figure I can move the card when i switch to a single gtx1080 ti. Overall great card from a company based in CA.

DO NOT BUY THIS CARD!!! I may have wasted over a hundred of hours recording on it. I bought it to digitize a bunch of punk shows I recorded years ago. It seemed to work fine but recently I noticed it sounding slow. So I decided to time it while playing it through this card and then my built in audio card. I also compared the stopwatch with the time shown on my media player. On a three minute song this card's play time came out to 3:20 on the stopwatch. My built in audio card played fine and the play time matched the stop watch. To triple check I booted the PC with a fresh windows install and installed the drivers for the card then retested and the same thing happened. I also tested it on VLC (which kept skipping, but only with this card) and itunes. BTW this card is less than 10 months old.UPDATED - After many many hours I solved the problem. Apparently this card can change speeds depending on standard mother board settings. My MB was set to the standard default settings, not over or under clocked and had no unusual cards in it. I originally bought this card to archive some old recordings at 24bit 192k quality. Even though the card is now working (how long that lasts I have no idea) I now have over 600 cassettes that have been digitized and I have no idea what speed they were really recorded at. The only solution will have be to to repeat the entire job. This card is crap.Updated again----The problem has once again returned. THIS IS THE WORST TECH PURCHASE I HAVE EVER MADE. DO NOT BUY THIS PIECE OF CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!

i had a Striker 7.1 PCI card for my old computer, now i have a new one and i am thinking about upgrading to a HT OMEGA Fenix PIC-Express Sound Card but i am not sure why they want to make the op amp swap able? i guess they place the cheap op-amps on the board, so if you want better audio you have to buy a better op-amp huh.

You still have a lot of choices in PCIe internal Sound Cards, and most of those choices I would not take a second look at. Between fair signal isolation, bloated stupid drivers, etc., there are a lot of subpar choices that come out worse then just the Motherboard on board sound. The HT Omega Fenix is a nice exception, and is a great start to the exploration of obtaining better sound out of your system that is better then what is on the Motherboard. The drivers are lean, and the interface may seem a bit dated, but the "sound" and functionality is great. This sound card is not for everyone, as many will not appreciate the superior sound or wonderful music this card can facilitate, but if you are looking to step up to something better, this is an excellent first choice to explore with. Happy Listening.