I've tried the triple fi and it has a nice full bodied sound to it but the sound seems bloated to me. I also hated the idea of always cleaning my ears, the buds, and inserting in and out of my ear canals so a step up would be to wear headphones.
Onboard sound is terrible because its shared with the motherboard so its power is very polluted, probably not a very good onboard sound chip and affected by EMI easily.
The Auzentech X-meridian 2G looks good. I don't know how Auzentech got the rights to the CMI8788 back but this is one good...
Have you tried connecting an external USB bracket to the Front USB of your motherboard and then connecting the mouse USB receiver to it? It should stabilize the signal.
I recently tried replacing my Gigabyte Socket 754 motherboard to a ARock Socket 754 and it didn't the Cool n Quiet feature so I guess Socket 754 isn't Cool n Quiet reliable.
This is related to fixing the control module for the Klipsch Promedia 5.1. Does anyone know if radioshack or some other place sell the headphone input plug or the Mp3/Jack output plug soldered onto the chipset? They kind of look the same. I don't know if they are different.