Sound Cards

[GDS_Starfury]

fwiw all my pc's have sound blasters in them and Ive rarely had any issues.
having said that one of the few issues Ive seen is them interfacing with the equipment pictured
above.  doing that is kind of ghetto style though as midi boards and mixing boards do better
with proprietary extarnal/stand alone sound cards/boxs.

[MIGMaster]

Most of those are straight USB or firewire connections aren't they ? I use a Edirol/Roland UA-25 in my home studio set-up and  run the monitors directly from it - damn sound cards just get in the way on my recording rig  ;)

[GDS_Starfury]

its the firewire to usb conversions that suck when using pc's to run traktor and its associated equipment.
unless you have that step of external sound cards.

[Knavery]

I'm writing the final part of a PC audio piece for the site and was interested in what people are doing for PC audio these days......

After a lot of research, I went with a ASUS Xonar DX that I picked up at Microcenter. I was kickin' it with onboard sound, but since I use my computer as a stereo, I needed something with more options. I also ditched the 5.1 surround for a really nice 2.1 Logitech system with a crazy 500W or something.

I'd have gone with another SB, but the higher end cards were more money than I was willing to spend. I just checked out their site and it looks like they're cards are getting exponentially better.

[GDS_Starfury]

Creative has a lot of nice cards for under $100.