Sound card recommendation, best sound... Options

[ElephantTLK]

Hi!

I am looking for high quality sound card. I want pure good sound. Nothing else. Support for games is in last place. I will use it mainly for listening to music and a little of watching movies. And maybe for occasional recording use... I have made a list of cards that i am looking:

- E-MU 0404
- E-MU 1212M
- Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1
- M-Audio Audiophile 24/96
- M-Audio Audiophile 192
- ESI Juli@
- Audiotrak Prodigy HD2
- Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 HiFi

And card must have full Vista support. What to choose?

Thanks

[cabbagerat]

The E-MU 0404 USB is a transparent unit(just as probably all of the units you listed are), but it's super versatile; it has I/Os for virtually any analog or digital device, and can be used stand alone for most functions, even. It's like a Swiss Army Pocket Audio Box.

Agreed, but it is also extremely CPU-intensive, and very jitter-sensitive. On my P4 3ghz, doing anything with it uses 35% of my CPU time - all of it in the kernel. On my (much faster) Core Duo laptop, the thing skips like crazy - probably due to induced jitter from the wireless adapter. And it still uses 10% of the CPU time in the kernel!

Please don't muddy the waters by calling this Jitter. Ok, so it's a variation in the time of digital events, and can technically be called jitter - but isn't what most people understand by the term. Kernel latency is probably the right concept - and can often be caused by drivers.