If you want true "audiophile" sound from your PC, your not gonna get it from an internal soundcard or even most external soundcards for that matter. Theres a few reasons for this, the first being that most soundcards are made for gaming and/or HT surround sound with little attention paid to quality 2-channel stereo. The other reason that most sound cards dont produce audiophile quality sound is that they are located inside an electrically noisey PC case with a power supply that is not optimal for good sound. An external soundcard solves some of these issues but not all and most are still mainly for gaming. The exception to this is the "pro-sumer" recording soundcards from RME, LYNX, EMU....etc. So for high quality 2-channel sound the only reasonably priced soundcard i would reccomend is the EMU 1212m. The other way to go and my reccomendation is an external USB DAC. Since you say ur going to be using headphones, check out the stuff from Headroom. The Headroom desktop amp would be perfect for what you want to do and will sound far better then any soundcard, it is basically a heaphone amp, pre-amp and DAC rolled in one. Good Luck and Happy Listening