Xonar Phoebus Driver Control panel

The Driver Software

The Phoebus drivers installed without any difficulty and we were surprised to see a very different driver suite in comparison to other Xonar products we have tested.  It would seem there is a new driver set to go with the new native PCI-E chipset used in this design. 

We used this card for a few weeks prior to putting down word one to get a good idea of any issues and any new features or options available on this card.  We were quite impressed with the layout and overall functionality of the driver set.  Options and features we found:

The cards Line outputs (Speaker outs) Muted automatically when a set of headphones was connected, this features has been seen on other cards but this worked flawlessly on the Phoebus.

During initial setup for 6channel output we found the Bass redirection allows normal cutoff control and a level fader offering -12db to +12db of signal swing.  There are also individual speaker settings for each stereo pair for small or large.

A very interesting feature on the Phoebus is the end user can set Bit rates for headphones and speakers, S/Pdif, Microphone and Aux input.  What is so interesting about that you ask?  -they can all be different bit depths and frequencies.  Which is unique based on the countless cards we have seen and tested.

Xonar Phoebus Driver Control panel