I have an old Xonar DX on which lately one of the channel relays disconnects more often and I have to disable/enable the card to "reclick". For buying I'm considering the Xonar SE 5.1 and Xonar AE 7.1 Does the AE sounds better because of the shield? If you have another suggestions, I only need a good stereo output, no headphones/microphone amps.
I am giving you suggestion on base on my experience, buy Xonar AE 7.1, its great and working very well, I bought it last year from Black Friday deal and still I dont face any issue, I also saw it yesterday on Black Friday Offers 2019 at Reecoupons, when I was ordering my stuff, then I saw ith there, if you wanna must go there you will also find many others too.
I bought a Xonar AE a month ago, but there are some problems. The sound it's clear, but on my old DX music sounded more "full" maybe because I was boosting the bass a bit in the equalizer. With the new card I disabled Sonic Studio 3 from start-up because it was asking for permission every time (also boot & shutdown were slower). Also in some games and youtube videos the sound volume is low.