SOUND CARDS: for Windows XP. Anything better than CRAPive labs?

I'd be interesting in having an answer to this as well... except I'm looking for an external (USB) card. I really only need a solid set of line-level stereo inputs with a high S/N ratio, since my main need for the card is to transfer vinyl to digital.

The Chaintech AV-710, at about $25-$40 is perhaps the greatest ever soundcard deal for output. I'm not sure if it has the inputs you need, but everything I've read says that it sounds better than any SB card.

head-fi.org is a great place to research this kind of stuff, they have a specific forum for dealing with soundcards: http://www4.head-fi.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=59

I think you have to register (free) to search.

i am nervous,

even my crappy Soundblaster live card can digitize vinyl. You just need a card that will record to CD Audio quality wav files.. anything that has at least a 3.5mm stereo jack input will work. The trick is what you do with the digitized vinyl afterwards. Knowing your way around a wav editor, and removing the most notable pops and clicks is as easy as highlighting that sharp squiggly pattern in the wav data and just removing it, making sure to match up the sample data smoothly afterwords... TRICK #2 is getting some mastering software. Usually raw digitized vinyl sounds weak, but some clever EQing, a little compressing possibly, and generally normalizing, pumping up, all you can get with mastering will make a big difference. It won't make any vinyl sound CD quality, but it will be a vast improvement.

Spencer,
I love you. Thank you!

donut:

Yeah, I had a Griffin iMic before (which I also used for playing live because my laptop's internal sound card had too much noise) but I've gone through two units and they both just randomly stopped working, so I'm not going that route again. I just ordered a "Creative Labs USB Sound Blaster MP3+ External Sound Card Sound System" because it was on sale for like US$35 and I figured I'd give it a shot. It apparently has RCA inputs which saves me a bit of cable confusion (I run my turntable through a pre-amp/mixer thing as it is) but I don't know too much about the quality, so we'll see how it turns out.

Thanks for the advice on post-digitization cleanup though... I've been removing pops and clicks for a while but I never thought about doing anything beyond that.

Yeah, the trick is to be diligent with the mastering. it's tempting to "PUMP OP DAT BAYYYSS!" but it might make the file sound worse. :)

this might be a little overboard, but for near zero latency midi: http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile2496-main.html

Yeah, I took a look at that.

The thing is: after doing more research, there was pretty much a HUGE difference in the market for these cards...

* Sound cards : mainly targetted towards people who are really into gaming and have some affinity for being an xtreem audiophile
* Audio cards : mainly targetted for music makers, and also those with an affinity for being an xtreeem audiophile

I hopped on a bus over to pick up a discounted Echo Mia MIDI card at Guitar Center (yup, roll your eyes, I understand. But GC had it cheaper than even the cheapo hardware online outlet sites... $50 less than the cheapest in fact.). So far, so good! The output on this thing is great! The only thing that sucks is that there's no software side input level control on the card, so I have to get a little stereo preamp, but I've been needing one for future purposes anyway, so oh well.

(And yeah, the card was designed by M.I.A. herself! The card comes with hardware encodings of her latest album Arular!)

I'll let you know if this card is made of evil in future incidents.

i know I said thanks in advance, but thanks again. :)