I just upgraded my computer which is turning into more trouble than it was worth. Among other things I need a new sound card. I had hoped to transfer my old X-Fi Xtreme Music from my old computer but this new motherboard has no regular PCI slots! I have been looking all over the internet but the market for PCI Express cards looks pretty miserable. I was going to go for the Xtreme Audio thinking it was the modern equivalent to the Xtreme Music but I discovered it isn't a true X-Fi chipset and doesn't have built-in ASIO. Then I saw the Auzentech Bravura (found selling for $85) which seemed more serious and it has a nice headphone preamp, but it doesn't have ASIO either!

The Creative driver software could use improvement but it did everything I needed. I left it on the music mode where I could route regular stereo music to the surround speakers.

I bought my old card on eBay back in 2008 for $17. Obviously that was a steal but I am hoping to find a replacement for under $100. I just want ASIO, 5.1 surround and perhaps a few other nice things for audio creation. Can anybody help find a reasonable solution? My best hope right now seems like the X-Fi Titanium but that is at the upper limit of what I want to spend. I guess using ASIO4ALL is possible if it will work just as good as native ASIO. The problem I have with the onboard audio is that my DAW takes over all sound when using ASIO so no other applications can play.

buy emu 1212 or if you are really "serious" ESI 1010 PCIe interface. both top quality for a little money.

You missed the part where I wanted something for less than $100 and with 5.1 surround.

i actually did. but you can set up esi 1010 to 5.1 setup as it has 10 outs and spdif. re price you can buy them second hand below $100.

Hmm, where can you get them second hand? How much work is it to configure for 5.1? I don't know if I want that extra rack hardware though. I don't know where I would put it. But thanks for the suggestion, I never would have looked into that sort of thing on my own.

I think I found a better option than the Titanium. I discovered the Xonar DX. It is categorized as a gaming card but it does support ASIO and has plenty of software bells and whistles. Wouldn't that be comparable to Xtreme Music?

well, i suggested the above from the quality for music point of view. unfortunately I haven't looked for gaming and general use sound cards for years so can't make any sensible advice. hopefully someone here will point you into the right direction.

why not go usb or firewire?

Such as?

The Xonar cards are the best consumer cards I've used due to some rather nice convertors being in there. In fact the STX edition would make an amazing studio card if they could only sort out the rather lame ASIO drivers that come with it.

I've spoke to any number of Asus guys about it through and nothing has ever been forthcoming from them directly. As it stands we found the ASIO tends to lock itself to something unusable for real time monitoring and you can't change it in the drivers, making it rather pointless. Perhaps its changed in the last 6 months since we benched it, but I'd be suprised. We did try the Asio4All drivers on there too, with mixed results which were usable but hardly blinding.

My mate used the modded drivers to fix the 5.1 upmix which he also finds a bit poor natively http://brainbit.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/asus-xonar-unified- drivers/ althrough I don't know if they might also have an impact on the quality of the ASIO.

The Creative X-Fi Titanium is PCI-E it has ASIO upto 96khz and surround sound it also has a built in amp to power large headphones. It also does EAX sound in Windows 7 . It has better sound quality than the Audigy 2 ZS which is what the extreame X-Fi has for its hardware.

Had the X-Fi Titanium two years and no problems in games or using its ASIO in Ableton Live 8, Studio One 2.