Another sound card thread, The dying art of finding a new audio card Options

[Rubeus]

Let me start by saying I've frequented this forum a lot in the past years. There is a lot of great information here.

My issue is this: I'm upgrading my computer, and my new motherboard does not have a regular PCI slot on it. This means I can't use my Audigy 4 Pro any more, which I have been extremely happy with, aside from a few bugs with it. What I need is something comparable. The external box/front panel isn't a requirement, but it would be nice. I would like the 192HZ 24bit playback, which seems fairly common these days. SPDIF in would be nice, but, not required. I'm looking for something in the 7.1 flavor.

I use my system for music, movies, gaming, and recording. From what I've seen, most cards these days are either high-quality in/out without 7.1 support(Like Emu cards, afaik), or HT/gaming cards with no features for people doing recording(XFi based cards afaik). I haven't been able to find anything that combines those features, but I may have overlooked something. If there is no such thing, I can use my current machine as a dedicated recording box, so the HT type features are a little higher on my list.

It seems like most sound cards currently available are at least several years old; I'm guessing with the spread of digital sound via SPID and HDMI, sound cards are becoming a thing of the past, possibly because of the nature of digital audio, that the sound card doesn't matter any more? From what I understand, it's the DAC that really determines the sound quality when being output to an analog device.

Anyways, I know Aurentech used to be well-respected back in the day. What would your opinions be on something like the Forte? Can anyone tell me how Asus Xonars and Omegas compare? Any thoughts or comments would be much appreciated; I'm a bit stumped here.

FYI- This will be connecting to a Yamaha Aventage 3010 w/ Paradigm speakers.

[andy o]

If you buy any AMD or NV card nowadays, it will have an HDMI option which can perfectly take care of your 7.1 needs. Then you can buy one of the pro cards for recording.