Looking for decent soundcard

[shadowwyvern]

I have a few specific requirements, so I figure I might as well make a new thread.

I am looking for a somewhat inexpensive sound card, preferablly under $70. Obviously I want the best I can get for the money, but soemthign I am really after is an awesome driver set and configuration system. I am sick of this stupid "auto detection" (present on my friends nfroce 4 sli board), my integrated sounds card's (analog devices SoundMAX) stingy menu and generally unpleasent software end. Just yesterday I had to mess with a mircophone, and granted I had no idea what I was doing, the interface seemed rather unintuitive. If somone here has this series of sound card, and would care to tell me how they handle inputs, I would appreciate it, as I hate leaving thigns unexplained...

So, any recommendations? Would I see an amazing improvement by buying a bank breaking high end card? I do have some decent headphones (Sennenheiser HD212Pro) and hope to get some nice speakers soon. Having many options for output is nice too, I have a friend who is into professional audio and it would be rather neat to be able to have a plethera of input/output options. Sadly though, it really comes down to price and driver set.

Any suggestions?

 

[Bleedblue12345]

really nothing martches a x-fi xtreme music, although the drivers are utter crapola..... but.... even if u game fairly infrequently its the only card that supports eax.... and the drivers are fairly easy to navigate...... the sound quality is decent..... although u may be able to find better if you look around at the m audio's and other stuff..... but its a pretty good bet for around $70 (look at cirquit city and pricegrabber/the egg)....