I hear Martin Taylor on the Parlocha show and make airchecks.
These airchecks from over the air radio turn out pretty good.
Something like MT I can run in mono to eliminate any line
problems from noise. His version of "They Can't Take That
Away From Me" was like the first thing I heard on my first
set of full range speaks: Fostex FE127e. It's a spectacular
recording for hearing string decay, finger glides on chord changes.
I guess it's what's called "being fast" as aspeaker setup.
This new board has AC'97 whatever that means. If I could get rid
of the "stuttering problem" that I've noticed on some audio
streams for news like Democracy Now, the on board sound would
prob'ly be fine through my Yamaha RP U100 or the Sonic Impact,
if I ever get one for myself.
For soundcards there;s a lot of high end product for musicians
beginning with the M-Audio line and going up into the more
expensive flavors.
I use the site at the link below to select my second audio\card which was a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. First one was a cheapie from
Philips. A good place to get tips on digital audio is from the
Alsa listserv. Alsa is a standard for Linux and musicians are
on there talking about the techical aspect of audio. There you can get the lowdown on sound card hardware.
Alsa mail list: [http://www.alsa-project.org/mailing-lists.php]