[roblo]

Getting a new PC together for my room and I need a decent sound card. Can you recommend a sound card for around £50-£100 ($100-$150) with more preference toward the lower end of the budget (this thing is getting expensive). I havn't got a clue what I want but I want an optical out. Apart from that im open to suggestions. i listen to mainly dance/house music with quite alot of jazz thrown in and will use it with a pair of Beyerdynamic DT770 and a pair of UE Super.Fi 5 Pro's. I will be getting a micro stack and/or hornet in the (nearish) future also.

Cheers Rob

 

[jet_dee]

A lot of people are going to suggest the Emu 0404, which costs £70- 80, but the problem there is that the outputs of that card are two mono 1/4 inch sockets, so you can't plug your headphones directly in, and need an amplifier instead inbetween.

I am going to stand on a very thin fence with gunmen pointing at me from all sides, and suggest the x-fi xtreme music. Also £80, but you can plug your headphones directly into the card, and it has a coaxial digital output, so when you buy something like the Microstack, you can connect the two digitally with bitperfect signal going to the dac and amp. It's what I'm going to do unless better stuff comes out this year.

Oh, and the best way to listen to the x-fi is to disable all the software settings, i.e. entertainment mode... they have an audio creation mode, where every option is set to what are considered here to be minimum audiophile settings: no special effects, no resampling, nothing. Doesn't sound too bad to me, if a little on the pricey side.

 

[sgrossklass]

Since an amp is planned anyway, one would be hard pressed to do better than the 0404. Of course one could also take a look at the ESI Juli@, another nice card in the same league and less fussy to operate.

 

[Tachikoma]

*points a gun and blows jet_dee's brain all over the forum*

Lol, jokes aside, the x-fi isn't that bad a source

I'd go with jet_dee's solution and consider getting a NOS dac like the dialogue II later if you need to upgrade, but thats also because I like the x-fi's gaming features too.