Actually, I the three soundcards that I have used that I liked most for having a decent S/N and low noise were (in order of preference)
1. Guillemot Maxisound HSP 64 Pro
2. Soundblaster Audigy
3. Diamond MX300
The worst thing I have used for background noise was a soundblaster 16 and AWE32. God the noise was terrible.
Anyway I want to rip a CD track to MP3 @ 320Kbit then burn it back to CD as a wav file then take that to a high end shop and play it back on expensive equipment to see now noticable the encoded song is vs the original.
