Soundcards have come a long way from the early days. Once the ability to create MIDI music was absolutely mind-blowing. Then Creative and Turtle Beach released soundcards that really did enable sound, as we'd expect it.This new technology quickly caused an explosion in the soundcard market with everyone and their granny releasing stereo soundcards. These were quickly supplanted by 5.1 soundcards but still the market showed no signs of relenting. Choice was almost too great, especially at a time when drivers still weren't always utilising the DirectSound API.Like most emerging technologies though, quickly the pretenders died off and one or two models were left standing proud. With soundcards this was Creative and their Sound Blaster. For a long while it was pretty much the only choice which gave benefits to the consumer as nearly all software was compatible, but like any monopoly had the drawback that development almost stopped. Driver updates became infrequent until finally Windows Vista left thousands with a soundcard that did anything but produce sound.This opening in the market was swiftly filled by Asus with their Xonar range of soundcards. Bringing fresh ideas and regular driver updates it blew away all the cobwebs that had accumilated in the soundcard marketplace.The Xonar model range expanded quickly and now runs from a basic model all the way up to HiFi quality options. With more and more gamers using headphones as the PC has moved from the bedroom to the lounge, Asus have paired their Xonar technology with a headset from the daddies of headphones, Sennheiser, to bring us the Xonar Xense with PC350 headset in a single package. That's what we'll be looking at today.