I need advice before I purchase. I'm not an audiophile, and I don't need the highest quality playback, though I want something thats good. If you can tell me of a soundcard that has all of the pros listed below for less than $90 (Audigy 2 ZS Price @ Newegg.com) then that will be great. Also keep in mind that the most speakers I'm going to ever be using with this are 2.1 or headphones

Pros: True 24/192 Stereo playback/True 24/96 7.1 Playback
24/96 Recording
Good gaming performance (I'm not a big gamer so this isn't a huge importance)
7.1 Output (though this is totally useless to me)
SPDIF In/Out
IEEE 1394/FireWire (this feature is important to me because it saves me $25 on a firewire card)
108dB SNR (Most reviews put it actually at ~100dB @ 48KHz, ~90dB @ 44.1KHz)
DD EX/DTS ES Decoding

Cons: Resampling/Resampling Quality
Not best quality ADC/DAC (but still really good/much much better than my current onboard audio)
Horrible software interface (it's soooo ugly )
Lack of included DVD-Video playback software
Poor quality included DVD-Audio player (not important to me as I don't have any DVD-A disks).

After reading through a bunch of posts I decided to get the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 instead. Not nearly as many features as the Audigy 2 (specificly lacking hardware DTS decoding and a Firewire port) but the better quality DAC/ADC will make it worthwhile for what I do mostly (listen to music), even though it is a bit pricier.

You don't count the possiblity that you will (probably in the future, when it becomes supported) be able to use kX drivers, which, IMHO, have much better interface.

I just installed the base drivers, so no visible interface at all, plus uICE for using the remote control. Granted this means no control over recording options I suppose, so you might still need the control panels. No need for their media player, however!

I own an Audigy 2 and I can tell from my experience that the internal DD-Decoding almost never works properly. Most of the times it works when using a recent version of WinDVD, but not with other players. It appears to to work properly when e.g. setting AC3Filter or whatever to SPDIF-out and using wave-out, but as soon as you seek, the sound stutters and becomes desync.