Simply:
What is the best PC soundcard (for music basically, movies/DVD's to a certain extent, gaming means absolutely nothing to me) one can get for under 150 euro ($190)?
There should be available drivers for Windows & Linux.

The Terratec Phase 22 and M-Audio's Audiophile are both commonly recommended entry level semi-pro cards, which feature excellent sound quality.
If multi-channel (5.1/6.1 etc.) support is important to you, you might rather look for the more consumer-oriented products, like the Revolution or Terratec's Aureon.

dev0

All four of those cards are supported in linux, even with the same driver :) they've all got VIA Envy24 chips, though the ALSA driver is called "ice1724".

You should make sure you've got a recent version of ALSA though (check w/ your linux distro for an upgrade), as there's been many bugfixes in that driver recently.

-N

If it comes down to music listening through a hifi-setup, I would prefer the EWX2496 over the Phase22 for it's RCA jacks ... the 6,3mm jacks of the Phase 22 would need adapters to connect an RCA cable.

My suggestion for 2-Channel playback would be

1. M-Audio Delta Audiophile 2496 if you need coax digital connectors
2. Terratex EWX 2496 if you need optical digital connectors

(on playback, both cards perform on the same level although on analog recording, M-Audio's A/D shows some 2dB less noise (which is negligible in the range of -100 dB IMO)

If you need multichannel audio, I totally agree with dev0 in recommending the Revolution or Aureon series ... you'd get comparable sound quality to the 2-channel solutions, multichannel playback but minijacks which are believed to be less reliable and stable and missing digital inputs on the slot brackets IIRC.

Thanks people!

The Prodigy 7.1 has much better drivers than the Aureon and Revolution cards. The hardware is almost identical as the Aureon Space.