Overall and FV
Even after taking extra time with the Phoebus I had a hard time finding any flaws in its performance. The audio quality in all of our testing was top notch. The on desk control panel with the headphone and microphone ports were also very helpful and one of the unique features of the Phoebus. In fact there was really only one issue that I ran into when doing any of our testing and some people will never notice it. The documentation provided with the card really only gives you a few different ways you can hookup all of your audio devices. You have to go onto their website to be able to download a more robust manual if you have any questions on how anything works or for troubleshooting. Of course Asus did their best to make things easy even without the documentation. The built in lighting in the headphone ports for example make hooking your headset up simple, even in the dark.
At just under $200 the Asus Xonar Phoebus isn’t cheap. Asus does their best to try to make it a better value by packing in the control panel for example. But even then this might be a hard sell for the gaming market that it is focused on. There are options out there that are available at a slightly lower price. Having said that, this one of only a few gaming focused options on the market and if you already have an Asus ROG theme going on your build this is the only way to continue that styling.
