I have no clue about sound cards, but I have been looking at getting a new 5.1 sound card to go with my 5.1 speakers. I have a standlone DVD player that has a coaxial s/pdif audio output, and would like to be able to hook it up to the sound card for watching movies, etc... (would rather use it than the PC dvd player when possible).

So far I was thinking of getting an Audigy 2 NX, and adding a coaxial to toslink optical converter to be able to hook up my dvd player to the audigy since it only has an optical input. Would that setup work?

For the above setup I'm looking at about $115 and would not want to spend more. Those audigy 2 platinum cards are nice but too expensive. The Extigy would also do the job but am wondering if it is not a bit dated as compared to the audigy series. I don't know about other brands since I'm a complete noob to sound cards like I said.

Any other recommendations/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

The Terratec DMX 6Fire has both coaxial and optical SP-DIF ins and outs...

You should know, though, that if your speakers have a 5.1 decoder in them (like, say, Logitech Z-680s) then your sound card has absolutely no effect on the digital sound -- it just gets passed through.

Thanks for the suggestion. It seems to be a great card (especially for recording, apparently) but I can't spend too much cash. I have a gift certificate that would let me buy the audigy 2 nx at best buy but not sure yet if I want to deal with an external sound card... Ideally I'd like to have a card like the Audigy LS or Audigy 2 ZS but with S/PDIF in and out, but not as pricey as the platinum series.

I have the Z-640 (also gotten with gift certificate ) so I would need a decoder.

Noob question: Do software DVD players like powerDVD decode DTS or AC3 even if the sound card doesn't have a decoder? I'm not very clear on this stuff...

There are a lot of benefits to external sound cards...