Hmm, I'm leaning towards that Asus Xonar... $160cad, not bad...
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX18908(ME).aspx

It says only EAX 1.0/2.0, is that right? The Auzentech says it's supports EAX 5... The S/N ratio on the Xonar is the best of anything from the looks of it. Never seen a soundcard with a fan before, sort of ironic?! (edit: pardon that moronic comment... it's not a fan :doh

Quote from Jakg :

XtremeAudio - POS.
XtremeGamer - Good.
XtremeMusic - Same HW as more expensive models, includes (iirc de-activated) X-RAM. Can be modded.
Fatality, Elite, Pro etc - XtremeMusic + useless features ()

For £50 (the price of an XtremeMusic) theres nothing else on the market for the home gamer / occasional music recorder i'd recommend. For ~£100 you can get a Auzentech X-Fi Prelude or the Asus Xonar which are both based off the X-Fi chipset.

Modding guide is here - http://www.overclock.net/sound ... e-x-fi-mod-will-void.html

It's soldering stuff like better OPAMPS on the card and adding extra magnetic sheilding to the card etc. No idea if it's up your street, though...

Sorry Jakg, but I have to correct you on one point. The X-Fi Elite Pro has better quality DAC's than the others in the X-Fi range. (the same ones as in the E-Mu 1820M, if you're interested :P ) Not at all useless to BBT if he wants to record audio.

I have the Elite Pro, because I produce music as well as play games on my PC. I agree with you that if you don't use the card for in depth audio work then the Xtreme Music will do quite nicely..

I have no idea about the EAX support of the Xonar, although i'd recommend PM'ing someone that owns one (theres one on this forum, can't remember his damn username - he owns a Subaru Legacy and won't stop raving about it, though...!).

@ Origamiboy - Thanks for the info, didn't know that!

It depends on the application... but is sound quality what you have to expect from sound card, don´t buy one of them for fps improvement.
When you use an integrated sound card you don´t miss this quality simply because you don´t know it exists

Well, crappy onboard audio defenately eats more fps than a crappy sound card. A decent sound card may not eat more fps than a crappy sound card if the software doesn't use the capabilities of the sound card. As for common sense I'd guess these hold up pretty well .

As for the differences between better sound cards I have no idea, depends 100% on the software I'd guess. Not to mention that onboard audio isn't really bad at all on these days.

As for LFS I'd guess that most of the sound processing is done by the cpu so the sound card has minimal effect on performance with LFS. As for the effect on sound quality... it sounds awful still . With iracing and their 3d audio and other "effects" the effect of better sound card is probably more audible than just better sound. The iracing probably uses more of the capabilities of the sound systems than other sims...

(I'd guess :tilt

I didn't bother to read this giant thread, but to answer the op's question, YES sound cards improve performance. I found this out when moving from onboard sound to dedicated sound card. My fps increased in games, and I even got more sound out of some areas of some games which had no sounds before. Definitely buy a dedicated sound card, you will notice the difference right away. But make sure you have some better speakers though, cause some crappy usb-powered speakers won't give you a better experience.

For anyone reading this thread thinking "£50 for a sound-card? F*** that!", you can pick up something like a Soundblaster Live! for less than £3 delivered off eBay (got mine for that) and not only do you get an extra output (i.e. your onboard sound, which i use for TS / Ventrilo), but you will get marginally increased sound quality (which I could notice) and perhaps lower CPU usage.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

It says only EAX 1.0/2.0, is that right?

EAX is Creatives technology and they have kept the later versions to themselves. EAX1 and 2 are open to everyone to use so pretty much every sound card has those, but EAX3 and up are exclusively on Creative cards, only exception being Auzentechs one model.

As to the difference to your onboard audio: It all depends on what kind of solution your mobo manufacturer has decided to use. Some mobos might have the audio parts as a separate entity or it might use the CPU. Some mobos have better audio chips and some have worse. So there might be a difference in quality or there might not.

Quote from Origamiboy :

Sorry Jakg, but I have to correct you on one point. The X-Fi Elite Pro has better quality DAC's than the others in the X-Fi range. (the same ones as in the E-Mu 1820M, if you're interested :P ) Not at all useless to BBT if he wants to record audio.

DAC's are useless for recording audio
You need a good ADC for that, and i don't think the Creative cards really do any better than other less expensive sound cards (not including on-board audio).
To be honest, i highly doubt anyone will notice a better DAC (obviously comparing to "quality" sound cards, not your 5$ Sweex soundcard). A proper hifi set is connected digitally, skipping the whole built-in DAC. Even those crappy 5.1 speaker sets are digitally connected these days.
Yes, crappy 5.1 sets. There is the built-in amplifier with up to 10% distortion on higher volumes (that was a THX labeled Creative set :shy, a cheap subwoofer that is tuned to have a massive bump in the 100-150Hz range to give a "nice fat bass that shakes everything in your house" (hello Logitech :shy and a bunch of cheap fullrange drivers in a plastic case or "wood" that's so thin it's almost cardboard.
Maybe you can hear the difference with a good headphone, but who carries a headphone all day? I don't know about you, but i don't.

Quote from kingfag :

DAC's are useless for recording audio
You need a good ADC for that, and i don't think the Creative cards really do any better than other less expensive sound cards (not including on-board audio).
To be honest, i highly doubt anyone will notice a better DAC (obviously comparing to "quality" sound cards, not your 5$ Sweex soundcard). A proper hifi set is connected digitally, skipping the whole built-in DAC. Even those crappy 5.1 speaker sets are digitally connected these days.
Yes, crappy 5.1 sets. There is the built-in amplifier with up to 10% distortion on higher volumes (that was a THX labeled Creative set :shy, a cheap subwoofer that is tuned to have a massive bump in the 100-150Hz range to give a "nice fat bass that shakes everything in your house" (hello Logitech :shy and a bunch of cheap fullrange drivers in a plastic case or "wood" that's so thin it's almost cardboard.
Maybe you can hear the difference with a good headphone, but who carries a headphone all day? I don't know about you, but i don't.

'eeeeeees not wrong.

If you are serious about recording, just don't bother with Creative really. There are many different better products availble.

i rather doubt that there truely is much of a difference... and dont bother with creative they have an aweful track record of putting plain old lies in their specs

I'm using rather cheap headphones (Sennheiser 497) and yet the improvement going from SB Live to Audigy2 was more than just "noticable". I just can't understand people who spend ludicrous amounts of cash on building a "gaming rig" and decide that onboard chip of suck with 5$ plastic boxes as speakers are good enough.

On my old Asus, HDD activity causes weird high-pitch noises on onboard chip's line-out. As for current P5K mobo, level of line-out backround noise is directly related to how many USB devices are connected. With no devices the sound is ok but life without keyboard, mouse and wheel is would be a sad one. Found this out after one of the WoW patches broke hardware sound support and had to find a temporary solution.

Quote from kingfag :

DAC's are useless for recording audio
You need a good ADC for that, and i don't think the Creative cards really do any better than other less expensive sound cards (not including on-board audio).
To be honest, i highly doubt anyone will notice a better DAC (obviously comparing to "quality" sound cards, not your 5$ Sweex soundcard). A proper hifi set is connected digitally, skipping the whole built-in DAC. Even those crappy 5.1 speaker sets are digitally connected these days.
Yes, crappy 5.1 sets. There is the built-in amplifier with up to 10% distortion on higher volumes (that was a THX labeled Creative set :shy, a cheap subwoofer that is tuned to have a massive bump in the 100-150Hz range to give a "nice fat bass that shakes everything in your house" (hello Logitech :shy and a bunch of cheap fullrange drivers in a plastic case or "wood" that's so thin it's almost cardboard.
Maybe you can hear the difference with a good headphone, but who carries a headphone all day? I don't know about you, but i don't.

Sorry, my mistake. What I meant to say was that BOTH the DAC and ADC on the Elite Pro are the same as in the Emu range of cards. Not much point on just depending on the DAC when recording from an analog source... Trust me, for a compromise between gaming and music production, you could do a lot worse. I am listening to it through studio monitors, and to my ears it does a good job when recording and mixing, with a clean, well defined sound, especially in audio creation mode with all the other effects etc turned off.