New PCIe and USB sound cards aim to put high quality audio back on the tablet for PC gamers.

CES 2012: Asus says soundcards are back

Sound cards are making a come back, at least if Asus has anything to say about it given the firm’s unveiling of a new ROG Xonar Pheobus PCIe sound card.

Apparently offering a pretty impressive 118dB SNR (signal to noise ratio), VR-Zone caught a glimpse of the card at CES and revealed some further details such as an built-in amplifier to drive headphones.

The board appears to be based on the C-Media DSP and a Realtek AL889, neither of which is particularly unusual in a sound card although Asus do appear to have gone to some lengths to clean up the power supply, something that’s fairly tricky to do in a noisy PC case. The PCIe even uses a PCIe power connector which Asus presumably believes will help.

Asus also showed a ROG ThunderFX external USB sound card. The box looks to offer a selection of audio sources including consoles and PC audio as well as catering for audio headset connections.

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