gamerk316,
Your links listed at the bottom of your post don’t work. For those wanting reviews, he was trying to save you the trouble of a Google search, but you can find your own reviews as well. Just do a good search and type whatever product you want to find out about and then the word “review” (ie: “Xonar DX review”). You will find everything you need to know.
gamerk316, I disagree with you about the Creative sound cards. I'm not a Creative fanboy, by any means, and have had problems with some of their cards in the past. However, running the "Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional" card has given me great results, and Vista even installs all the drivers and software for you automatically (I’m running Vista Ultimate 64bit). I’ve owned about 6-7 different sound cards, all dedicated (no onboard), and this is by far the best card I’ve ever used. Yes, I know the name is extremely long, but they’ve had several renditions of this card, and I guess they need to keep adding to the name as they come out with new models.
Nisallik, I recommend that you do the following: go to the Egg (newegg.com) and so a search for “sound card.” Then sort by “BEST RATING” and then see what is listed on the page. The Creative card I use is listed as 18th. There are other cards ahead of it, but keep an eye on the number of ratings, as well as the cost. Now re-sort by “MOST REVIEWS” and my card is listed 4th. The top spot for number of reviews is also a Creative card, and is listed 1st by over double the reviews of the number 2 card. It also has more than 6x the reviews of the highest rated Asus Xonar card.
I’m not saying that Creative is better than Xonar (I’ve never used a Xonar card), but I recommend that you go through and read the reviews that hundreds of people have written, and see what the majority thinks, and then decide for yourself.
I do this for just about all the PC products I own, and it has paid off. If I wasn’t happy with my Creative card, I’d probably look into the Xonar DX, or try to find a special sale/deal on the Xonar D2X card, which looks promising
Now for my input on headphones: Do some research on Turtle Beach’s surround sound headsets. These things are amazing. I own a set of HPA2’s (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826502011&Tpk=hpa2) and they are the best sound I’ve ever heard from anything, including surround sound speaker setups. These literally have 4 speakers in each ear piece (1 front, 1 center, 1 surround, and 1 big wubwoofer speaker (yes, there are actually 8 individual speakers in this headset). Not only that, the complaints that some people have of low rear speaker volume in surround sound headsets in general is resolved in this set by the controller on the headset cord itself that allows you to individually control how loud each speaker set is (you can make the rear set as loud as you like!
Check them out, that is my recommendation. I’ve used good headsets in the past (you never run a cheap $13 Wal-Mart headset with a $100 soundcard), and last set was the Plantronics GameCom 777. The Plantronics is a great virtual surround sound headset that I’ve always really enjoyed using and costs $100. After using the Turtle Beach set (yes, I’m definitely a Turtle Beach fanboy), the Plantronics sounded hollow and empty.
Just my opinion, and I’m not telling anyone here that they know nothing, I’m just stating my experience.
Ransom