I'm shortly going to be looking in to buying a new sound card, because that's the only constant value that I have on my PC which still crashes. Especially at boot (It boots to windows, waits a few moments after nearlly everything has loaded then crashes. Then won't start up. Then etc etc)

The only thing I can still point the blame on after a complete system rebuild with all new parts except this, is the sound card.

It's a peice of dodgy crap anyway, (though it was good for a couple years)

So, what do you guys have? Want? Recommend?

Budget isn't really an issue - I don't have any cash, but I can save and this matter isn't urgent.

I haven't searched around properly yet as I'm at work and most sites either don't load or load very slowly, or are blocked by websense (Which is easily worked around but shush) so I'll post back here at some point with what I think looks good, then you guys can all point and laugh and say it sucks.

P.s. I'm looking for at least 5.1 Surround.

I'm using the onboard sound chip. If you have a fairly new motherboard that's good enough IMO. Perhaps a separate card is useful for gamers, but for the money you could also buy some extra RAM.

I use the onboard sound for most of my PCs.

A word of caution, do NOT buy Creative (sound blaster). They suck. They are the de facto standard or whatever, but I've had issues with Sound Blasters for years...pc after pc, soundlbaster after soundblaster. I thought it was me, but it's not.

Intermittently the sound will just crackle out or blow up in games... very jarring. The drivers suck...you can't even download the full drivers...the ones on the website require you to install other drivers off the cd first, so I always had to find the damned cd if I needed to reinstall. Sometimes the sound would crap out entirely and I'd have to "restore defaults". Like...daily at times. SuXoR!

So, onboard sound. If you like sound cards, I have nothing but good experiences with Turtle Beach. Check them out.

I'd like to add to the Creative hate. They used to make decent products about ten years ago, now the only functional part of the company is their advertising department. If you already have a Creative card, you might be interested in the alternative kX drivers.

I pulled all my creative cards out of my computers. I have an Audigy platinum sitting on my desk, collecting dust. But I did try those, actually, and they were certainly significantly less bloaty.

Thanks for the rec's guys Me's will search on my lunch break for the brands.

My advice is, think what you want to connect to it, if its just 2 speakers then theres no difference, but if you have a set of speakers that should have somekind of teamwork (ie surround sound) then make sure the card supports that.

For instance, my built in soundcard has two lines in, front and rear speakers so what this means that my JBL surround system is kinda useless since i can only use either front OR the rear plug in.

I'm using a 5 satalite + sub woofer set up, one day I'll upgrade that too!

well, the pc I built recently (my home theatre one) support 5.1 sound with the onboard sound card. In fact, it's my damned stereo that's limiting my sound quality from that thing, since it only accepts stereo inputs. I need to upgrade that bastard.

I know crap all about sound cards, but I do know that nearly all my friends who game and know their hardware prefer the mobo onboard audio to spending heaps on cards. They also tell me that, given how powerful (gaming) pc's tend to be these days, the burden you take off your system with an external card is negligible at best.

Well nice story that about Creative. If it is true it will spare me come extra money for a sound card that has a name. Yet there is an other problem. I am composer and although I know for VST and stuff I find SoundFonts most fitting to my needs. So if I want a new sound card, I am after something that supports SoundFonts. And hardware level support (I didn't find any free SF2 emulator yet - but would be curious) for them as well as for various operations over sound (reverb, flanger, phasers, chorus etc.) will be nice thing. Yay, that all I have in my Creative SB Live (have it since 2000).

Now is the question: if something give me all that and it isn't Creative, what is it?

As for kX drivers - I used them for three years, for the time I paused with composing. But since I started again, I faced issue EXACTLY with SoundFont reproduction, which is in kX solved in a pretty clumsy way - boohoo to kX. At the other side, I realized that with careful done settings I can achieve more less everything I need with the last version of Creative SB Live drivers - which I fund scalable well enough. I am a living example of someone who does not need kX at all, but uses sound card's abilities probably more than most of users.

I believe M-Audio is good for composing.