can anyone recommend me a good external sound card? for SXPS16

[dellstudio15]

i dont know much about these external sound cards so can someone else with experience help me out? i am looking for an external sound card for my studio xps 16 and i cant decide which one to get. thanks guys!

[joeytav]

What do you require it for? Audio recording or just surround sound?

[Persnickety]

What do you require it for? Audio recording or just surround sound?

Exactly, but I'll just add a few more questions:
Headphones (stereo)?
Stereo line-out?

If audio recording,
How many inputs?
Do you need XLR?
Microphone inputs?

And finally, are any of your ports spoken from? I ask because I see it has Firewire (how many of those ports?) and an Expresscard slot, giving you quite a few options.

Oh, and budget would be nice. Otherwise the sky is the limit.

[dellstudio15]

Exactly, but I'll just add a few more questions:
Headphones (stereo)?
Stereo line-out?

If audio recording,
How many inputs?
Do you need XLR?
Microphone inputs?

And finally, are any of your ports spoken from? I ask because I see it has Firewire (how many of those ports?) and an Expresscard slot, giving you quite a few options.

Oh, and budget would be nice. Otherwise the sky is the limit.

ok so this is mainly for music. i am also looking for no more than 5.1 surround sound. which ever gives the best sound quality (firewire or expresscard slot).

butdget is about $100-$150

[ImakE]

Does your receiver take HDMI? You can also get USB toslink connectors as well.

Are you hooking this up to an integrated amp (where you would need quality analog output).

[Persnickety]

ok so this is mainly for music. i am also looking for no more than 5.1 surround sound. which ever gives the best sound quality (firewire or expresscard slot).

butdget is about $100-$150

Actually, I think we can save you almost entirely that amount if we're lucky.

Turns out, from my limited web search, that the XPS 16 comes with 5.1 out-of-the-box.
This is most likely an optical out, and most likely it's the minijack that does double-duty as an optical out. So do you already have a surround speaker set-up that takes digital (SP/DIF or optical)?

It could also be another port, though, but I can't seem to find it. All I know is that it comes with 5.1, so you need some sort of cable to connect your speakers to your computer, and not a sound card, even though, we could propably find a nice Exprescard that support 5.1 (my first thought is the X-FI)
It might actually be the HDMI-port.

Someone more knowing about the Studio XPS 16 would surely help right about now ...

[AEDan1977]

The 5.1 digital sound comes out of the HDMI port, there are no other hookups so unless you have a HDMI to Optical or Digital Coax then you will still need an external sound card if you want digital. I would recommend anything from Creative Labs they make good consumer sound cards at reasonable prices.