🚀 go-pugleaf

      As for TB, I'm certainly not defending their current products, but for
      the record, that company in its original form was known for high-end recording
      quality audio (much better than Creative Labs)




So what wasn't better than Creative Labs???

Okay, you might find a couple of manufacturers, but this would be dire old AC97 stuff. I realise that TB made better cards years ago, but this certainly hasn't been the case for a while now, and they were never of the absolutely highest quality, even back then. If they had been, they would probably still be making them...

I know of at least one old-style TB user who bought an E-Mu 0404 and was somewhat blown away by the relative improvement in quality, just on a straight record-play process from vinyl - you don't need to take an entire chain into account to hear the difference at all. He ended up going back and redoing some of his restoration on the basis of what he could hear with the 0404. What generally happens is that the sorts of things you can hear more clearly, you can also hear on the older cards - but in a much more 'veiled' way. It's that ability to hear further into a recording (whatever it was made on) that is valuable, regardless of any other considerations.