Cheap sound card with low noise

About a month ago, I bought a pair of Etymotic ER-6 headphones, mostly to use at work because I don't like having to listen to several conversations going on around me when I'm working. The headphones do a good job of that, but when I plug them into the front audio port on my Dell OpitPlex desktop, there is a fairly significant amount of noise. If I'm not listening to something, I can even hear the sound change when I scroll on a web browser or things like that. It bothers me.
I've used the headphones with my Creative Zen Touch Micro and my Audigy 2 ZS at home and there's no detectable noise when it is set to a reasonable volume.
I'm not going to spend the money to get an Audigy 2 ZS for my work PC. Can anyone recommend a cheap sound card that has a good signal to noise ratio? I'm only going to be using the sound card for headphones.

Chaintech AV-710 it the traditional bang/buck headphone soundcard. Although I'm not sure about how it will drive those phones. Any comments?

I have the AV-710, Sennheiser hd580 and ety er6. the etys go beyond my loudness threshold, and the hd580s are driven to a bit more than satisfactory volumes.

edit: I dont hear any sounds related to what is happening on the computer. When using the crossover plugin on foobar there seems to be some leaking across channels on at very high volumes(using the multi-channel modes), but when I use the hi-sampling mode only one channel should be active.. It might be the software though. I'd say go for the chaintech. Santa Cruz is also a good option for snr, it also has onboard processors so its a good card for gaming (no eax3 though)

Chaintech AV-710 it the traditional bang/buck headphone soundcard.

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Agreed.

When using the crossover plugin on foobar there seems to be some leaking across channels on at very high volumes(using the multi-channel modes),

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Do you mean Crossfeed?
I ask because that is exactly what crossfeed does
(feeds a part of the signal from one side to the other to simulate the effect you get when listening to speakers).

Mister X said:

Agreed.



Do you mean Crossfeed?
I ask because that is exactly what crossfeed does
(feeds a part of the signal from one side to the other to simulate the effect you get when listening to speakers).

Click to expand...

no, I'm talking about crossover plugin. Its a 3rd party plugin that acts like a crossover. I used it so I could make a 80hz highpass filter to the klipsch promedia sub with the rocket elt lrs. It was a makeshift setup, better than simply letting the sub drive the rockets (that would mean a lowpass filter on the rockets and the sub would output sounds up to 160hz. Dont need it anymore as I have a dayton coming in.

See what I get for guessing?

You may also want to go with a USB soundcard. Wal-mart has a Creative Labs USB sound card for $49.99, they also have the SB Live! PCI for $30 but the LIve! would not have a built in amp.

I thought the Live! had the option, either control panel or jumper?

Thanks for the advice. I hadn't thought about getting a USB sound card. The Chaintech A-710 may be cheaper though.

The Chaintech card is assuredly cheaper, but it doesn't have much amplification behind it, so it might not have the oomph to properly drive your headphones. I'd say buy one, see how it works, and return it if you aren't happy with the output it gives you.

Don't go with USB. They may be outside the case and therefore be less susceptible to noise, but they have cheaper DACs to offset the price of the USB stuff. Go with like a cheap Audigy 1. It should be more than enough for your needs.