ESI MAYA44 eX | 24-bit/96kHz PCIe Audio Interface with 4 in / 4 out

Excellent PCIe sound card, very low noise in my experience.

Muy buena

Todo bien, rápida entrega y en buenas condiciones

Doesn't work the way that I expected. Waste of my money

I have 3-4 of these cards in various workstations. The Windows 10 drivers for this product are stable and the card generally works good. The software utility/control panel application isn't bad and the DirectWire utility can be useful at times. Unfortunately this card has some serious engineering flaws. The worst is the noise problems. It's easy to get noise on the inputs/outputs from various sources...video cards, PSU's, peripheral devices, etc.. High end MB's and PSU's don't solve this problem either. The next flaw is that all I/O's are Unbalanced. Unfortunately this is the only card on the market I could find. I would prefer a PCIe card over a USB audio interface, but if sound quality is your primary concern go with a USB audio interface. Out of the 3-4 cards I have running, 1 of them had an output channel go bad after about 2 years of use.

There is no EMI shield or Isolated audio power, and not sufficient power filtering, there was artificial computer noise introduced from the gain in the analog 1/4th output. The card did however have a very high quality spidif, however that defeats one of the most important aspects of the card. When comparing to the ESI JULI@ which was a PCI sound card, it does not even come close. Additionally the card only goes up to 96khz, which in all honesty is a travesty. The PCI ESI Maya44 goes up to 192khz. Do not attempt to use audiophile quality high impedance headphones with this card as the 1/4th is not sufficiently amplified. Card has less hiss than the ESI Julia xte (PCI-E), but the ESI-JULI@ PCI was the superior product to them all.