Sound card replacement - jack detection/output select?

[fishkake]

Hi there. Many years since I've been here, it was all blue and white the last time I came. I like the revamp

Last time I asked about replacing my motherboard due to dodgy onboard sound - and you advised me to buy a new sound card instead, as well as lots of useful advice towards fixing my problem without buying anything (unfortunately in vain, the hardware is fubar).

A year later, I'm finally fed up of it and I want a new one! My onboard sound is Realtek, and it has the Realtek Audio manager which I like. My sound setup is a bit odd as I have a projector which is not always in use, so I tend to use two outputs for "front speakers" - the Realtek software lets me plug an audio jack in to ANY of the ports, detects the jack, and then choose what I want to output on that port.

So the question is, what's the cheapest half-decent card I can get that will let me do this? Do they all do it nowadays? I'm not particularly fussed about quality, can spend £20-30 if necessary but I'd rather get one of the £3 ones on eBuyer if they'll do what I need! I'll be getting a home cinema sound system in the next year or so, so when I get that I'll upgrade to decent sound hardware, but I'm just after a quick fix for now.

Thanks!

 

[fishkake]

Ooh, also I'd like to get he sound to output on the HDMI output f my ATI 3650 - I tried to get this working for AGES a while ago and never could, if a sound card would let me do that I'd be happy

 

[gamerk316]

1: I don't recall if the ATI 3000 series has an onboard chip built in; I think they started doing that with teh 4000 series chips...

2: Most soundcards do not let you do jack assignment, but thats not a big problem. The only issue is if outputing to RCA equipment, you need a cheap 3.5mm->RCA converter cable.