Sound card recommendations?

[Beyz]

Quite recently I spontaneously ended up buying a new pair of speakers given that my old ones were extremely crappy.

Thing just is that I'm having a bit of troubles with my old external sound card to cooperate with it since it's 5.1 surround sound. Is there any way I can make a Lexicon I-ONIX u22 interact with a 5.1 surround sound system?

And if not, does anybody have some recommendations for a new sound card? External or internal doesn't matter. I'd like it to cost less than 400$ / 300£ if possible. Thanks in advance.

[Snixs]

Quite recently I spontaneously ended up buying a new pair of speakers given that my old ones were extremely crappy.

Thing just is that I'm having a bit of troubles with my old external sound card to cooperate with it since it's 5.1 surround sound. Is there any way I can make a Lexicon I-ONIX u22 interact with a 5.1 surround sound system?

And if not, does anybody have some recommendations for a new sound card? External or internal doesn't matter. I'd like it to cost less than 400$ / 300£ if possible. Thanks in advance.

Without being an expert i heard http://store.razerzone.com/store/raz...ctID.169415400 is kinda brutal, i would buy it if i had the money for it atleast, it looks like it can pull off what you got aswel

Merry Christmas!

[BicycleMafioso]

Are you looking to use it for games, for movies, for music or if all, what do you intend to do primarily and what is more interested in sounding as good as possible?
What kind of ports does your motherboard support and have free? PCI-E 16x, PCI-E 1x, legacy PCI AGP?

Without being an expert i heard http://store.razerzone.com/store/raz...ctID.169415400 is kinda brutal, i would buy it if i had the money for it atleast, it looks like it can pull off what you got aswel

Merry Christmas!

You can get a Creative X-Fi for less. And most of the ASUS Xonars.

[Beyz]

Using a Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 motherboard and only one socket is used for the GPU.

It's primarily for making music as well as listening to it, but I guess the ladder isn't affected that much by the soundcard.

[BicycleMafioso]

Most any Auzentech, ASUS Xonar card will work then. You don't need to go too expensive to get the additional oomph needed as far as sound cards go.

EDIT: The Creative X-fi is also slightly better for games, but performs worse in media.

[Beyz]

Just out of curiosity, what exactly are expensive sound cards used for? I always figured it was for making music since... well.. it just made sense somehow :P

[BicycleMafioso]

Just out of curiosity, what exactly are expensive sound cards used for? I always figured it was for making music since... well.. it just made sense somehow :P

Diff between a lower priced and a higher one?
Headphone amps, better OPAMPS, better capacitators (ie, higher quality Japanese, no different functionality), better connectivity, better chip (slightly - some lower doesn't have one at all).
Most of the boost comes merely from lifting it from the integrated chip and off of the CPUs processing power onto another PCB. Which is why any sound card will usually net an improvement if your equipment and source is good, obviously.

If you want to be really serious, consider an external, high quality DAC.