We repeat the mantra in almost all of our motherboard reviews – if you have decent speakers or headphones, you owe it to yourself to not use the onboard audio controller used by your motherboard. It’s not that all onboard audio codecs suck – they can actually be very good, and the manufacturers often make high end codecs as well – it’s that most do.

You don’t even need extremely high end audio equipment to benefit from a better audio solution. Any decent set of speakers or headphones will make full use of improvements over most of the low end codecs such as lower end Via and C-Media codecs, and pretty much anything with a crab on it (Realtek).

So do you need to upgrade to an expensive soundcard like the $130 Asus Xonar Phoebus Solo we reviewed a while back? Not necessarily. The Diamond Xtreme Sound 7.1 uses a very similar audio controller and codec as the Xonar Phoebus. However, the latter adds several audio converters and amps for even higher output quality. If you are just going to use a set of decent Logitech speakers or headphones, or a digital home theatre system, something like the Diamond Xtreme Sound 7.1 may be just what you need.