M-AUDIO Audiophile 2496 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface 4-In-4-Out Professional Audio Card with MIDI

Pros: This a very high quality 2 channel soundcard. If your looking for a very clean, high quality, 2 channel digital/analong output or input with midi connectors, this card is very well priced. The 2 discrete RCA stereo outputs sound much better than any of the Creative card's 1/8 inch summed stereo outputs. So if your not looking for surround, this is a much better option sounding option. I've also done many stereo recordings with this card, and the sound is very clean and transparent, and the card provides a decent amount of digital patchbay/routing options.

Cons: No surround support but this card is more for people looking to do stereo recordings and the sound quality is much higher than most consumer surround cards.

Pros: Awesome sound quality. Blows away the SB Live! it replaced. Works great in Linux - drivers were included with Ubuntu Gutsy so I just plugged it in and turned on the computer and it was done.

Cons: Doesn't have onboard midi. No big deal, I use QSynth, but this caught me off-guard. Also, has RCA jacks, no 1/8" stereo jack, so you have to find an adapter (or get studio monitors - but this card is so awesome that my Altec Lansings sound great with the $3 adapter)

Overall Review: Card has a LOT of settings, can be difficult to select proper main mixer, recording line, etc. But just fiddle around a bit and you can figure it out no problem.

Pros: Clear sound

Cons: No direct Linux support.

Overall Review: I purchased this card to improve the sound my "music" computer sends to a pretty good stereo system. The built in sound carried a fair bit of hiss with it. The new card drops the hiss level way down. As a result, the high frequencies sound quite clear. I run KDE and Kmix is quite frustrating to work with. It guessed the wrong channels to display. There is no master volume control for both channels. You adjust each channel separtely, something that hard to do with a mouse. Alsamixer, with its keyboard interface is much easier to work with. Mercifully, the individual multimedia programs (like Kaffeine) have their own volume controls. You do a base setting with Alsamixer, and then do all further controls with your multimedia apps. I gave the card a 5 based on that fact that the Linux support is workable, and that the sound output is excellent. This card transforms your computer into a true hi-fi device.

Pros: It sounds great. I replaced a SB Audigy 2 ZS with this, and it really does sound significantly better. I can levels more clearly, and it allows me to make better mixes.

Cons: The only reason I don't give this 5 stars is because there seems to be some issues that A LOT of people (including myself)are having with the drivers that cause the audio to start crackling, which gets really annoying. So far M-Audio hasn't really been helpful with resolving the issue. What few people that have fixed the issue haven't all done it the same way. After doing some research, I decided I had to take out my wireless pci card since the audiophile and the wifi card were sharing the same pci bus. I'm not sure if that did the trick yet, because the crackling doesn't always occur. So far it hasn't started up.

Pros: Great sound qaulity to the point where it hurts. crispy clear sound from 2 channel audio. a must get if you like working on music or cranking loud music

Cons: i having a problem using coaxial while playing cs.. it dont detect it after i load up cs. but while playing f.e.a.r. it works just fine with my receiver.

Overall Review: some reason the software for it is weird to install. have to go through control panel.

Pros: ASIO, noiseless, superior sound quality, and tough as a tank! 7 years ago was the happiest day of my life, when I was given this sound card. It made it much easier to mix down and EQ my tracks. Anyone who says it crackles or pops are not doing something right, 7 year owner and this card worked in all 6 different computers I have used. It has worked for me on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. If your computer is fast enough you can change the ASIO buffer size to 64 samples (2ms). I even use my MIDI Keyboard and have never had a single issue with this card.

Cons: On my older AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ it was a CPU hog. Phenom II x4 820 does much better though.

Overall Review: Fast Track Ultra 8R, in my dreams.

Pros: My Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) needs are to write classical music in various genre including chamber music, Classical and Romantic orchestral music, concertos, choral, etc. ... note, it is NOT to score films per se. (The main difference is that many more kinds of sounds are required, especially of the strings.) And all this has had to be on a budget! So, I tweak like hell and use high quality samples; of course, this taxes the MIDI output of my sound card like crazy. But with the newer system that I list below, I don't have pops, clicks, hiccups, etc. AT ALL despite recreating with listenable fidelity an entire modern symphony orchestra. Finally, hardware and operating systems have caught up to the capabilities that this sound card introduced a decade ago! I'm convinced that from 2001, it was this card and NOT those PCs with their terrible operating systems that enabled me to carry on any composition at all.

Cons: No PCI Express version No analog in As for most of the problems cited in the feedback, check out the FAQ and knowledge base for the 2496: http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support&tab=faqs&serie_ID=1&PID=adf95efc30b88aba043fa8b83343bfb8#tabs

Overall Review: System (yeah, most of it is from Newegg): ***Sibelius 6.2, Komplete 7, Logic 9 (sound sets: http://soundsets.jonathanloving.com/) ***OSx86 10.5.7, Windows 7 64bit ***SUPERMICRO MBD-X7DWA-N Intel 5400 Dual Xeon Server MB (requires I/O Shield, MCP-260-74301-ON, obtained from Supermicro directly) ***SUPERMICRO CSE-743TQ-865B-SQ Server Case (important to use this case so that the MB will fit) ***2 x Intel Xeon E5410 Harpertown 2.33GHz ***Kingston 16GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR2 FB-DIMM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) ECC, KVR800D2D4F5K2/8G ***MSI N8400GS-D512H GeForce 8400 GS 512MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Video Card (cheap??? it does Logic 9/OSx86 very well, thank you) ***Bose® Companion® 2 Multimedia Speaker System

Pros: - Sounds great - Performs excellently in most modern DAW software - Cheap

Cons: - Could have used a few more connection input/output options

Overall Review: I'm an electronic music producer, and I use this card personally in the custom system I built specifically for music production. I've also used it in custom build systems of a similar nature for friends with great results. == To those experiencing sound crackling and popping == On several custom build systems, I've noticed that certain motherboards tend to cause this card to have crackling and popping audio. There several reasons this can happen - another PCI card or perhaps even a video card are sharing the same IRQ - CPU C enabled in the BIOS - Intel SpeedStep feature enabled in the BIOS If you are having trouble with crackling and popping, I highly recommend disabling the CPU C feature AND the Intel Speedstep feature in your BIOS if they are enabled. They are usually found under the 'Power' section. Although I have had trouble with these cards initially in several installations, I have always got them to work perfectly after a little BIOS or system tweaking (like descr