Conclusions

As I moved towards writing the conclusion to this review, the word 'comprehensive' was rattling around in my head to describe the Xonar HDAV's list of features.  Then it began to dawn on me that 'comprehensive' really wasn't a strong enough word considering just how much functionality is on show here, so let me try this out for size: As discrete sound cards go, the Xonar HDAV 1.3 Deluxe offers a complete set of functionality worthy of any audiophile's attention.

The more you look at it, the more 'complete' is the only correct word to associate the Xonar HDAV 1.3 Deluxe with - It supports top-notch eight-channel analogue audio that even Auzentech's X-Fi Prelude barely matches for sound quality (although the Xonar D2X seems to beat it out, I'm assuming due to its simpler design), it supports every Dolby and DTS technology under the sun including that ever-wonderful Dolby Digital Live and DTS Interactive support for real-time audio encoding, and to top it off it's the first sound card I've seen with HDMI 1.3 support, including both the ability to pass through any audio stream you like via HDMI as well as including a hardware scaler and colour/image quality adjusting chip.  Perhaps the easier question for me to ask here is - Is there any functionality missing from the Xonar HDAV 1.3 Deluxe?  Personally, I can't think of anything.

It's fair to say that the Xonar HDAV isn't perfect - It feels like there are still some driver bugs that need ironing out - But our overall experience with the board was overwhelmingly positive, and indeed the functionality available here opens up some interesting possibilities.  If you're happy with your current graphics board but are interested in HDMI support, then the HDAV's ability to input a DVI signal and output HDMI complete with audio may well be valuable, especially if good audio quality in a Home Theater PC or the like is important to you.  The bundling of ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theatre is also a good move, giving owners of this hardware full access to the HDAV's functionality (give or take a few HDMI 1.3 options that will be added in an update shortly) while playing back any video format including DVD and Blu-Ray via an application that is arguably better at its job than PowerDVD these days while still posting a very similar interface and back-end.

As is so often the case with cutting-edge hardware, the biggest downside to the Xonar HDAV 1.3 Deluxe is the price - Over £220 is a lot to shell out for a sound card, although thankfully if you can do without the additional analogue inputs of the Deluxe model's daughter board, then the standard HDAV 1.3 is closer to £175 and thus saves you a fair amount of cash.  However, it's hard to complain about this price point given the wealth of functionality on offer - If you're an audiophile that needs the HDMI capabilities offered up here, then ASUS' offering is most likely worth every penny to you.

If you're happy with less advanced audio quality and support, then all of AMD's latest graphics boards support both video and audio processing and output over HDMI, while NVIDIA's recent GTX 200 series parts can also pass-through audio from most sound cards via HDMI, but if you want to go the whole hog in creating a home theatre or simply don't want to upgrade your graphics card to gain an HDMI output, then the Xonar HDAV 1.3 is both an innovative and attractive proposition if you can stomach its price point.

Product information

ASUS Xonar HDAV 1.3 Deluxe sound card

- Vendor web site
- Vendor product information

Recommended UK retail pricing (At time of going to press):

Scan Computers - £223.24

Many thanks to ASUS for providing the sample for this review

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