The Inquirer reports that the standout item from Asus' plan for the show is, oddly enough, an internal sound card, distinguished by the inclusion of a secondary music chip designed to provide, in hardware, the so-called "Analog hole" that legally circumvents the bought-and-paid DMCA laws that prohibit the circumvention of digital rights management. In essence, the card plays sound internally and re-records it instantaneously: this means fair-use ripping that's completely and inarguably legal.
This is interesting also because Creative has the market for store-shelf plug-in PCI sound pretty much all to itself, and competition from a big manufacturer might help tighten up some of the rough edges to Creative's offerings. Though not an expert here—I make do with onboard audio—the reason I washed my hands of fancy audio was because I got tired of faffing around with bad drivers last time I owned an Audigy.
Asus's new card, the Xonar D2X, is targeted to compete with Creative's X-Fi series, and has a PCIe x1 connector, 118dB SNR playback/115db SNR recording, and is certified for Dolby Digital, Dolby Live, DTS connects and DTS 5.1.
Asus attacks Creative where it hurts [Inquirer]
