Hardware Recommend a Good Sound Card

[Jiehfeng]

I got a good new decent pair of headphones and from that I realized my onboard sound is shit, 'nuff said.
Are there any decent sound cards I could get for under or near $100 which could go better than the onboard realtek card? Even USB DACs would be fine I guess.

EDIT: Just realized I made a thread similar to this 2 years back. xD
Found one in it, how's the Xonar DGX?

 

[FAST6191]

The sound quality or the volume/driving capability? The latter, which would be made apparent by some nice low impedance headphones, can be sorted by an external amp, which many people already have available to them or available far more cheaply than a decent sound card.

If you do need a sound card though do you need any extra inputs or anything? That is usually what most people get an external card for these days so you have some options there.

 

[Jiehfeng]

The sound quality or the volume/driving capability? The latter, which would be made apparent by some nice low impedance headphones, can be sorted by an external amp, which many people already have available to them or available far more cheaply than a decent sound card.

If you do need a sound card though do you need any extra inputs or anything? That is usually what most people get an external card for these days so you have some options there.

Volume would be a nice touch, but it's not what I'm mainly looking for.
After some googling around I've seen many people mention there would be a good difference between a decent souncard and the onboard mobo sound card. Cause from listening to my iPod and PC, there is a huge difference in quality, and I'm plugged into the back of my mobo, so no noise problems or anything, but the quality still lacks. And no, more inputs aren't what I want, but it would be nice.

 

[magypsy3]

Hifiman hm-101 is a little USB souncard that boosted the audio quality from my PC a lot!!