Turtle beach VS ..???

[RamaX]

Hi, im building 3 systems and am begining to get down what i want in soundcard. Tell me where i go awry here please

Im gonna use an outside surround recvr/speaker kit, prob 7.1 or 5.1 min with optical input.

So i looked and found that Turtlebeach seemed to be only one with optical in and out (my directtv recvr has optical out which id like to pass thru PC)
Too bad TB only has 96 khz sample rate, i cant figure why. SBlaster has been up to 192 for awhile now, and i wonder what im losing But i cant find any SB that has optical in or out, even RCA in/out, at least not without $46000 front end piece.

Any ideas...or maybe im overestimating sample rate importance (i dont think so tho) Also will any/all of these support 7.1 dolby surround coming out of directtv HDTV box and output it well ?

Thanks

 

[uncle_ben]

96kHz is really max what you would use for even professional recording so do not overestimate this factor. If you are set to use only digital connection and let dolby and dts be decoded externally your soundcard does not matter so much. Most features that makes one card better then the other refer to DACs and analog connections. I'd say Chaintech av710 for $25 is a safe bet for your purposes. Have a look on this review: http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-75454.html