New sound card for MP3 encoding?

Hello all.

I need to pick up a new sound card for my system. Primarily what I want to use it for is recording external audio to wave files (via line in), editing them, and then encoding to MP3 format. Some of these files will be 30 minutes long. I want to keep the sound as clean as possible.

I also play a lot of 3d games, and listen to music (MP3's of course). My current speaker setup is 2 channel with a New-Q digital EQ because the volume know is handy and it looks cool. :-)

I am now using a SB PCI128. I replaced my SB Live full version with it. The Live developed hang on shutdown problems, ate up my IRQ's, and generally wouldn't play well with others. It also had a funny reverb for the first 3 or 4 seconds of any ingame sounds.

So, as you can imagine, I want to avoid Creative from here on out.

So, what cards get good reccomendations? I'm not scared to drop $300 on a good card, but it has to be worth it...

Anyone? Bueller? :-) (Thanks in advance...)

"My inferiority complex is not as good as yours is."