Review on 🎧 HT OMEGA Fenix Sound Card for PCI-Express Slots by Cris Drew

I am using this as an enhancement to onboard audio. It does a good job and HT Omega offers first class support for Windows 10 issues. The drivers clearly need to be optimized for Windows 10 and my conversation with CSR HT Omega shows that they are pushing CMedia to do their part. As for SQ, it's very good. I used to have an Asus Essence STX II and it's pretty close in comparison. Without going into too much detail, I'd give the Fenix a 90/100 while the STX II would get a 97 (I prefer the op amps that come with it). I'm deducting a star because I get a lot of high frequencies. Noise from PCI-E interference, while my STX II didn't have it (it used external Molex power supply). This suggests to me that the power decoupling on the Fenix could be better. The sound from my graphics card in the speakers is very annoying when I play an intensive game. I'm not an expert on PSUs or PCI-E PSUs so it could be anything but it still affects my SQ while my STX II does not. ---------- UPDATE ---- ------ I ended up bringing this back because of the high frequency noise. Speaking to Jason, HT Omega CSR, he said that the signal-to-noise ratio of this device is 105 dB, which is amazingly low, especially when compared to similarly priced sound cards (Soundblaster Z, Xonar DX). I tried a friend's Xonar DX and its noise level is much lower than the Fenix. I could only hear the same high frequency sounds when my ears were pressed against the tweeters. I think for the most part I would recommend the Xonar DX as they cost almost the same (the DX is actually cheaper!) and they use pretty much the same op amps (the Fenix is all RC4850 and Xonar DX is a combo from RC4850 and NE5532). I'm giving my 4 star rating because the SQ is still pretty good, the build quality is way better than Asus and the support is fantastic. It just didn't work for my noisy system.