I've never been too serious about the audio playback quality on my PC (if I want good sound I just head out to the living room:), But now I listen to a lot of audio whilst I'm working - usually either streams (64k aacPlus or 192k mp3) or CD's that I own (yeah, I know, one of these days when I'm not so busy I need to get them encoded....). I don't game. On my PC I listen to a LOT of trance and a fair bit of classical, but also blues, jazz, and bluegrass, mostly via cans. I've a decent set of mid priced Senns (HD570) that are way comfy for extended wear but considering upgrade to some AKG K701's. My current PC uses a Tyan2864MB w/an onboard Realtek ALC655. It's okay but now that I'm on some modern hardware I know I can do better. I run FreeBSD so chipset and compatibility are a bit more of a challenge. I'm considering AV710 as it works well under Linux but wondering how much of an upgrade it would be and whether I should be thinking more along the lines of EMU or M-Audio? Comments and suggestions welcome, especially w.r.t *BSD compatibility of higher end units.
TIA-
