[ale] Hi-Def Soundcard

[David W. Millians]

Omar Chanouha wrote:
> Anyone have a hi-def soundcard they are happy with? I want one for the
> living room.

I really liked the aureon card from terratec:
http://www.terratec.net/en/
back when I had an actual pc in the living room.

It was hooked up via optical, and worked great. Took and played 
everything I threw at it. I have no idea about hdmi sound and blu-ray 
and more modern techniques, though. Now I have a logitech squeezebox, 
and am hoping to have a xmbc soon to handle the video, since I can't 
find a decent DLNA server for linux to talk to the 360.

It appears they only have one pci card, the aureon 5.1, and it's listed 
at 20euros. They had some better quality (7.1, etc.) ones I thought.. 
When I got it, it was at least $150! I think I spent $200.

That box had windows, but IIRC it was fully supported in the kernel.

If you're not planning to do it optical, or hdmi, I'd get one of the usb 
audio dongles. I never could get rid of ground and pc audio hums, but 
this was before I got on the list here and read the enlightening bits 
about grounding a while back. Terratec has some external sound units as 
well, but I can't testify for them.