Which sound card?

[shannonb]

I really want the best sound possible. I have about $350 AUD for a sound card so I looked on eBay and I can get M-Audio USB for $310 or M-Audio FIREWIRE for $360 or Audigy2 ZS for like $100. Which one should I get?

[bubbagump]

The only one of the cards you name that I have experience with is the Audigy 2. If I was looking for a lot of bang for the buck, I'd probably try the Audigy 4 (Creative skipped the Audigy 3). I'm not a big fan of soundcards that offload processing to the cpu. The two m-auudio cards I've owned performed well but tied up a lot of cpu cycles. The Creative cards have an onboard dsp chip that handles this. If you're not a gamer or heavy multi-tasker however, this won't make much of a difference. Or you have one of the new dual core processors. A nice external at a modest price is the m-audio Transit. I've been using one with a mac mini for a while and get what I consider high quality, two channel play back.