Hi
I'm searching for a sound solution for my computer.
This could be USB, PCI soundcards or combinations of those and DAC / ADC's or other amplifiers/converters.
If there are only Firewire solutions i'd even stick to that, but an integrated PCI solution would be best.

My needs:
-a dedicated headphone output with separate volume control (in hardware?) would be very, very nice
-a good quality line level in- and output (-10dBV and 48kHz/16Bit seems sufficient for now, as i want to backup some LP's and MC's and record radio)
-optical input with bit-perfect stream (important!, backup MD recordings)
-good resampling quality 44.1kHz->48kHz for output (resampling seems to be inevitable for now, right?)

What I don't need are DTS AC3 or other surround capabilities.
I'd like to build a dedicated music player for my room, so the only applications that should output sound are fb2k (if I find a usable Bluetooth remote controlling plugin) OR Winamp (with ControlFreak) (though i don't now if that's important).

Someone suggested M-Audio for soundcards with dedicated headphone outs, but i couldn't find any solution without at least 6 channel analog input ect.

Splitting the line signal (to speaker-amp and headphone-amp) does lower the signal power and thus decrease SNR, whereas switches tend to pick up noise, right?

My budget is limited, but I want to know what your solutions would before I decide what's too expensive and what's not.

I really appreciate your help as I'm quite new to this topic.

Splitting the line out to two different amplifiers (for speaker and headphone amplifiers) does not reduce quality or increase noise. If by chance it happens, something is wrong, i.e. not working properly.

Gaming/multi-media soundcards resample, professional soundcards do not. Therefore resampling is not inevitable if you stay away from Creative cards, and a few others. However, I don't know of any PCI card with a dedicated headphone out except those kind. I suspect none of them have hardware volume controls. Converter quality should not be a concern with any modern professional quality card.

Many firewire and USB cards provide a headphone out with volume control. I believe coax digital output is quite a bit more common than optical so that may be the detail that narrows your choices. There are format converters (e.g. M-Audio CO2) that work just fine but that is certainly less convenient than being able to plug directly into a toslink connection on the soundcard.

Since your requirements are not mine, I don't know what soundcard will have the features you want but it doesn't seem as thought it should be too hard.

The only card I know that comes to mind that supports either an optical in or an optical out I can't remember is the Chaintech AV-710. Chaintech uses Wolfson ADC / DAC converters



Creative cards historically use an EMUk1 or 2 chipset, while most hi-end card use the Via Envy24 chipset. These includes M-Audio, Chaintech, and Audiotrak.



Indeed it is. I have never known of anyone who has used an optical output exclusively or had the need for one. I would like to test it myself someday though.

My reply was lost. In sum:

1. Look at the Waveterminal U24. It has just what you want and is supposed to be pretty good.
E-MU is also coming out with a couple of cards the 0202 usb and the 0404 usb. The 0404 will have a phono input if you need that.

2. Only gaming cards and some really cheap others will require you to resample.

3. Map your remote to whatever keys you want and then map those keys to whatever functions in foobar you want. (Using latest foobar version.)

3. Splitting the line out shouldn't cause any problems. It will change the input impedence seen by the output but in most situations it shouldn't make any difference I don' think.
I got my RCA splitters from here:
http://www.meier-audio.homepage.t-online.de/

4. foobar and winamp will be able to use ASIO with I think any sound card that satisfies your requirements.