[hughwi]

Hi all,

I have just finished building myself a new computer, as I no longer need a laptop for portability.

In my last desktop rig, I used an old M-Audio Delta DIO 2496 sound card however, the new system is going to be running Windows 7, and there do not appear to be any drivers for this particular card! (its quite old and long since discontinued)

There is also only a single PCI slot on the new motherboard, and I want to use this for a PCI graphics card for a 4 Screen setup.

So.... having not had to look at soundcards for quite some time (I use a USB/SPDIF converter on my current laptop), I need your help and collective knowledge!

I know I need a PCI-E sound card, and having read several reviews/comparisons, am really not sure which one to choose! I do not feel I have to rush into this however, as the motherboard has built in SPDIF which will suffice for the moment, or I could continue to use the USB/SPDIF converter.

For simplicity's sake I would like to arrive at a high quality integrated solution eventually. I will be feeding a Buffallo DAC with a single Coaxial SPDIF input.

I will be using the rig for all my music listening (headphone and 2.1 stereo) and gaming.

I am intrigued by the ASUS Xonar Essence ST, but not sure if I need to go this far?

Any suggestions would be welcome!

 

[hughwi]

I have bought a Hiface and am really happy with it!

 

[Equus]

Happy with my Forte, which comes with a headphone amp on board.  It uses X-Fi, which seems pretty standard for gaming uses, and it sounds pretty decent when I've set it for headphones or 2.1.  I guess it depends on how "overboard" you want to go. 

 

[chinesekiwi]

Just get the cheapest Xonar if ya going to optical out tbh. You only need the Dolby technologies. Xonar DX is the cheapest PCI-E x1 one.

 

[robochrist]

I also come from an M-Audio with discontinued driver support. Also using W7. I'll keep an eye on this thread since I too am looking for a new soundcard. One that can replace my Revolution 5.1

 

[santsant]

 
and the limited edition one
 

 
dual mono design, 6 op amp,  wm 8740 for dac
 
they're not quiet famous around here though..

 

[Hybrys]

WHY soundcards?  Only good applications are inputs and gaming.
 
Your USB to SPDIF converter is probably good.  If you wanna step it up, get a M2tech Hiface.

 

[CooLy_oNE]

excuse my ignorance...but if you are using a DAC why you even need a good soundcard? won;t it by pass your soundcard and go to your dac?

 

[Hybrys]

Quote:

excuse my ignorance...but if you are using a DAC why you even need a good soundcard? won;t it by pass your soundcard and go to your dac?

It would be used as an SPDIF transport.  And yes, it would pass 90% of the soundcard.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Quote:

excuse my ignorance...but if you are using a DAC why you even need a good soundcard? won;t it by pass your soundcard and go to your dac?

Well, the only thing that is bypass is the output section on the soundcards.  So for instance, say you buy a high end DAC and a X-Fi based gaming card.  You can connect the X-fi to the DAC through S/Pdif and then all features of the card are still avialable but the digital to analog conversion is being done by the external DAC.  This way you get all the gaming features but higher quality sound.  There are quite a few around that run systems like this.