Hi Esh,
just out of interest, have you tried your card with "soundfonts". I was originally going to get one of these but I read somewhere that fonts might be a problem, so I got the usb one instead.

Be a bit disapointing if I bought the external one , and this one would have done the job just as well..

best wishes
Rikki

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Esh:
[B]

My new laptop had really bad sound (hissy and low volume) so the first thing I did was get the Creative Labs Audigy 2 Z5 Sound Card for Laptops (PCMCIA) for it, which is fairly cheap: about $75. It's excellent (great SNR: 104db) and it comes with some great software.