hi folks
i’m about to buy a new ASIO soundcard and i need your opinions guys
for now i use Renoise with an Audigy 2 platinum soundcard and i’d like to upgrade it cause i have a lot of latency issues with the tunes i’m working on.
what affordable soundcard (less than 500 euros) would u recommend ?
Most everyone here recommends an Audiophile 2496-card. Latencies below 5ms, plus more. It’s quite a cheap card though, with not too many ins/outs (IIRC) so if you’re looking for something a bit more extensive and expensive, you’ll have to wait for other users’ feedback. 
as far as i know - the Audigy series come shipped with an asio driver. The pity is, they simply just operate on 48 kHz using Asio.
Try http://www.tippach.net/asio4all as long as you stick with your audigy.
Low Budget soundcards which you may want to have a look at:
ESI Juli@ (+playback recording at 32 bit /192 kHz , cool for homerecording - no internal midi chip, external Midi) www.esi-pro.com
Hoontech DSP 24 V (+ internal XG sound) www.staudio.com
Phase 88 www.terratec.de (no internal midi)
Emu 0404 is a smart one it`s a 4 Channel limited 1212.
M-Audio Delta1010LT - (the little sister of Delta 1010) www.m-audio.com
If you`d like a more dj orientated thingee:
hercules djconsole (Midi 5. 1 Surround div. in and outputs, djcontroller) works like a standard external soundcard but comes with a DHJ Controller (about ~ 160 Euros) Asio 2.0 driver of course, but you are in need of Windows XP, although it`s stated on the cards box, I tested it using 98 with no luck, but using XP everything should run just fine.
thanks for your views, the soundcards u mentionned are the ones i checked already and i guess i’ll have to try a few ones out until i find the one that suits my needs. I don’t need many ins/outs as i use an external mixer console for multi tracks recordings. The audigy 2 ASIO capabilities really suck and i have to work on directx instead. I just want to make sure that an audiophile card will really help me with latency issues. I don’t need to work above 48khz for now but i really need to be able to play all the multi VSTi/VST fx tracks in my tunes without setting latency to 150 ms !!
anyway thanks again for your replies, i haven’t heard about the emu 0404 but i will check it right now, sounds pretty cheap…
wow i tried this ASIO driver and it greatly improved my Audigy 2 ASIO performance, can’t even compare with the original audigy asio driver, i have to thank you a lot for this one mate !
I may be getting some money over this summer so I was thinking about (finaly) buying a new soundcard.
For a long time I’ve had my eyes on the Audiophile-card. But now I’m thinking maybe audiophile is getting a bit old. I mean, it’s been around for atleast a year.
So… would I be better off with a Emu 0404 or a ESI Juli@.
In sweden the cards are priced like this:
Audiophile: ~ €180
ESI Juli@: ~ €160
EMU 0404: ~ €140
…so I’m kinda hoping that someone is gonna say: “Go for the EMU, the other cards suck in comparison.”
My local music store recomended a ECHO card but I’ve never heard anyone mention these here in the forum and I’d rather listen to your advice than take the word of some sleazy salesman.
Furthermore Jam.se recomends Audiotrak Maya 44 MK II (~ €160)
Bottom line people. There seems to be an infinit number of cards in the same pricerange and for a guy like me that has no idea what “balanced inputs” means it’s damn near impossible to know what card to pick.
PS. This must be the one milliont post of this kind. I think it should be mandatory to write a review when you buy a new soundcard… that’s what I think 
…oh yeah… and I kinda forgot what I really wanted with this post… I’ve been trying to finish it all day but I got constantly interupted by different tasks here at work… 
edit: I forgot some words…