The integrated soundcard on my computer's motherboard has been progressively picking up more and more noise from the fans, power supply, hard drive, etc. I see that Best Buy has an external Soundblaster card for only $40 plus I have a 10% off coupon. The idea of keeping the soundcard away from the noisy computer internals greatly appeals to me. I'm not interested in surround sound or 192 kHz/24-bit sampling or even too much in its own fidelity since, well, it's only going to be used when I'm working on the computer, obviously. It does have an optical output that I would be connecting to my old Sony ES pre/pro so the quality of its D/A converter doesn't really matter to me anyway, and also has an optical input which may prove to be useful someday. Anyway, I'm assuming USB2 should be fast enough to stream PCM. Is it?

NP: Steve Wynn - Here Come The Miracles