I am currently writing an article where I discuss specifications for multichannel soundcards that are to be used on a workstation for sound effects in movies, and I am looking for input on what to include and arguments for inclusion of specific features.

What, for instance, are the differences between a sound card used for gaming or music listening and one to be used in a sound effect studio? What bit depth is the minimum required? Should there be one DAC per channel on the sound card, or will the space constraint prevent this.

Do any of you know of any good resources to read about DACs in sound cards?

Many professional studios have a Digidesign Pro Tools setup although there are systems available such as Steinberg Nuendo and Apple's Final Cut Studio + Logic Audio.

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=...langid=100&

Professional standard resolution these days is 24bit 96KHz although many systems can do 24bit 192KHz, most professional systems are not "cards" they are external boxes which are connected to the computer via FireWire or to a custom PCI/PCI Express card.

In the case of ProTools all the DACs are in the external boxes and the cards have DSP engines on them.