PCI soundcards have enhanced audio fidelity in the general Windows environment due to the cleaner nature of the bus (as compared to the relatively poor-sounding ISA cards). Yet, the sound produced by a PC is still not nearly clean enough to please even the most casual of audio enthusiasts. A great number of factors cause the "noise" that is still present in sound cards, some of them being board layout, DAC quality, and surrounding components. Creative's Sound Blaster Live! remains our preferred card for clarity, yet the DAC used is the same as you may find in your car stereo. So much for audiophile quality!

Unless you've got a speaker system with a coaxial or optical digital input, the sound that you'll hear will never get any better than the signal supplied by your card's analog "line out." The MX400 suffered slightly in this regard with sound quality abnormally brighter than either the Live! or the SQ2500. Its saving grace is an RCA digital output, giving prospective speaker shoppers' more than one option.

With more than your typical soundcard application package, Diamond's "Monster Bundle" comes complete with demos, Zoran's SoftDVD Player, several audio entertainment titles and Yamaha's Soft Synthesizer S-YXG50. We all have our favorites, and unfortunately SoftDVD isn't on the list for DVD decoding. However, Zoran's solution does offer AC-3 down mixing to 4-speaker setups and pass-through for the coax output.