Thread: Sound card problem Essence STX / ALC 890B

I bought a few days, the Xonar Essence STX from Asus, because I assumed that it provides a much better sound quality than the Realtek chip ALC890B in my Asrock motherboard. But strangely, I had to find that it's the other way around. When I hear music with the Xonar, everything sounds as if one screws on Youtube the quality to 240p down. The ALC890 everything is crystal clear.
BTW I use the Sennheiser HD595 headphones.

What now? Was the sound card may be a bad buy?

You really should hear no difference at as neutral settings.
Do you have your headphones directly plugged into the sound card?

Properly installed, connected and set?
On what is the sampling rate? How many channels are set?

not a failure buying was definitely not the Xonar, With one for less money would have a "smaller" model can take, the difference between good today onboard sound and a good sound card is also not as serious as it was several years ago ... However, the sound is not bad but better.

Even if I repeat myself: The sound is different, but not (heard) better. An improvement could be in this case, if all goes purely analog and the headphones are plugged directly into the sound card.