Price Paid:  $50.00 from Circuit City

Summary:
This product is the absolute cheapest way to approach true hifi quality sound. I bought this card to go with my laptop (no option of internal cards) which had begun to lose signal in its headphone jack, and had significant amounts of ambient background noise. I chose this card, because although it is extremely cheap, it also delivers extreme quality. While I haven't even took advantage of its 96khz sound quality options, because I don't have any SACD's or audio DVD's, this product was a significant step up for me because of the extremely low total harmonic distortion and amazing signal to noise ratio. The latter continues to impress me, this card can certainly put out a powerful signal, and I have never even heard a tinge of static in the background. I haven't even used this card for its surround sound abilities, but can't imagine they would be disappointing, since the stereo is so good. Paired with a good set of headphones (I got sennheisers) this card won't disappoint. It reproduces sound very accurately, and brings out nuances you didn't even know existed.

Strengths:
Cheap price
extreme sound quality
up to 96khz sampling
24 bit processing
100db signal to noise ratio
.05% total harmonic distortion
5.1 channel surround sound capabilities
capable of recording sound in a format as high in quality as it produces it

Weaknesses:
Usb 1.1, this card actually can't run all its features at the same time, cause there isn't enough bandwidth. Really a shame

no remote is included, though it has an ir port, so you can supposedly get one