I'm sorry if this question has been asked before, i've done some searching and found some close results but not quite what I was looking for.

I've been curiously looking for a card that will output pure, unmodified PCM. This would mean no mixer, no volume control, no dsp. "Bit identical" output. In other words a CD (or lossless copy) would be output exactly as a cd player with digital ouput sends raw pcm.

Surely this must exist? 24/96 would be nice..

Thanks for any help any are able to give, apologies again if it has been asked before, seems like it would have been but I can't find it.

Check on M-Audio's website: http://www.m-audio.com/. Also take a look here: http://www.avsforum.com/

Just note one thing. Under Win2k/winXP, all standard WDM soundcard drivers make the sound go through the Windows kmixer, which mangles the latest bit, making impossible to get a bit-perfect digital output.

The only way to overcome this is to use a player that is capable of using kernel streaming or ASIO output, or to get a card that allows hardware directsound acceleration and doesn't resample by hardware. Or to get a card that doesn't use standard WDM drivers and that can avoid this kmixer mangling. RME cards for example use that kind of drivers.

If you use vxd drivers (Win98 , WinME) this kmixer bit-manging problem doesn't exist.

The Marian Marc 2 can deliver true digital out even in WinXP. The drivers are quite non existent, DirectSound support is broken (noisy), and don't expect to play Unreal Tournament 2003 of something like that with it (no sound).
The bit exactness was tested in loopback with Winamp 2 waveout, at a non standard sample rate (something like 42815 Hz)