Hi!
I got sick of my little guitar amp and decided, that a good PC soundcard and some amp modelling programs is all I need for an everyday's practice.

I've been doing some research in the interweb and this site too.

It seems to me, that the following features are important:

• 1/4" jack input
• the card itself to be external (USB)
• ASIO 2.0 support
• a headphone jack

I'm not sure that direct hardware monitoring is so important, because I want to hear the effect added in the computer anyway.

Budget - up to 190$ the very most, but cheaper solutions are preferred.

Hoping for good advice

I do many recordings (mostly vocals from lectures etc.) using the Edirol UA-25. I have never been dissapointed. The limiter has saved me many times. If you don't want through the roof sample rates, the standard mode is driverless. I want to explicitly say I have never used with a guitar, so use this as something to start looking at and consider others to be more knowlegeable.

I will say that there are many people that are dissatisified with cheaper interfaces. Beware of seeing the in/outputs you want and just going with it! Sorry, I know that the UA-25 is out of your price range, but maybe you can find something on this site that could help:

http://www.zzounds.com/prodsearch?q=&c...amp;form=search

This site gave me a pretty good idea of what is available and some review that I could dig through. READ REVIEWS!!

OK I'll keep that in mind.

Mine will most probably probably be a temporary solution, before I get some real money in the summer and buy a new amp or a a more expensive solution this kind.

There are many simple solutions too.. I've seen:

• Edirol UA-1
• Edirol UA-4FX
• Alesis IO|2
• Line6 Toneport UX-1
• etc

I just don't know what to choose.

USB doesn't have the best latency. May be an issue to consider.
The dimensions of the inputs are not important but having a preamp is, whether it is in the soundcard or you use your own.

Why? What difference does it make?

It concernes me, because neither of these cards I just mentioned in my last post have nothing mentioned of a preamp in their descriptions.
But still.. An example from the Alesis's description:
GUITAR IN (unbalanced) to SPDIF/USB OUT: 94dB

When it makes 94dB out of nothing, it, by all logical calculations, has a preamp?

My suggestion would be to go with a DI box into a small mixer (http://www.behringer.com/UB502/index.cfm?lang=ENG) and then take the out from that into something like an M-Audio 2496.

Ok, a possible solution that I hadn't thought of. By the way, what's the difference between the mixer you recommended and this: http://www.behringer.com/502/index.cfm?lang=ENG ?