Audigy all the way in my opinion, I have a Xonar DG and I've had lots of compat problems with it. I don't remember what OS I was running it with but I can recall there were games with broken audio, for example: The Simpsons Hit & Run.

I don't remember how many issues besides that I had but I know that was the last straw and I replaced it with an Audigy board after that.

+1 for Audigy (or X-fi).

Though I don't like mixing daily driver functions with retro gaming rigs and in general I don't see any value in having Windows 10 on a nostalgia/retro rig. By the time W10 released games became much more of a service than a product and aside of GoG and some Steam games, you don't really have any control over them. For this reason I doubt anything released after online DRM became the norm will ever become retro. Once clients drop support for an OS your only way of gaming for most games on period correct hardware will be piracy.

Btw. I have a Xonar DGX in my daily driver SB0460 in my main XP rig and Audigy 2 ZS in my secondary. I'm satisfied with the Xonar for modern tasks and audio quality, but wouldn't attempt using it for retro.

I thought Xonar released in the XP era?

Are any of the PCIE XFis any good?

Xonar is a product line, not a specific product. My DGX is from 2013 which is after XP era (mainstream support ended in 2009, though because of its popularity it had better extended support). Like Sound Blaster for Creative.

As for PCI-e X-fi, SB0880.

Thank you RandomStranger!

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-04-15, 20:42:

Are any of the PCIE XFis any good?

I recently upgraded my XP machine's sound card from an Audigy 2ZS to an X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro PCIe.

It's worthwhile upgrade. The X-Fi delivers clean audio (I was having issues with my Audigy that needs repair). Plus there are games like Battlefield 2 that have audio capabilities specific to the X-Fi series.

That's great to know. Any model of SB0880 will be good to go?

ptr1ck wrote on 2022-04-16, 15:35:

That's great to know. Any model of SB0880 will be good to go?

You'll want one with the EMU20K2 chipset (e.g. the Titanium Fatal1ty Champion or Titanium Fatal1ty Professional cards).

You'll want to avoid the Titanium HD as apparently it lacks support for Windows XP.

Looks hard to distinguish between the variants on ebay.