From the fancier cards I personally use ESI Juli@ in addition to some other sound cards and there's no problems. Main issue is just getting sounds all mixed together, one option is daisy chaining line outs to line ins.

Tiido wrote:

From the fancier cards I personally use ESI Juli@ in addition to some other sound cards and there's no problems. Main issue is just getting sounds all mixed together, one option is daisy chaining line outs to line ins.

That is one fancy card you have and white... very white...

The 2496 is not a gaming card, but I can tell you that the output is far better than the Creative card. I have owned Creative cards since the SB16, all the way up to X-Fi, and everything in-between and I use a Delta 410, which has the same 36-bit hardware as the 2496, and it's sound is far superior to any of the Creative cards, but it's also a professional music creation card so that isn't a surprise.

Matthew

No professional card is equipped with RCA connectors but rather the digital lines or symmetrical I/O! So that m-audio audiophile is not a professional card 😉 None of those m-audio cards are professional cards 2496/delta1010/delta1010LT has no symmetrical I/O after I checked all of those.
well, compared to Apogee cards that m-audio is not as good as those pricey studio equipment cards, but it is somewhat good enough or "better than soundblaster" in a way.
despite some of its flaws (the internal mixer phase delay, break out connector cable is non-symmetric).

gryffinwings wrote:

I was thinking about getting an additional sound card for my retro rig in addition to the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. Thoughts on the M-Audio Audiophile 24/96? Or maybe something else. Just curious to know if anyone has done this.

For which applications,
and on which platform,
and which hardware?

for retro that audigy cards arent so much useful as they lack drivers for more retro platforms and have not working emulations.
1. my retro machine: pentium IV with 1GB RAM and win98se / dos programs.

for studio recording with madtracker 2.6.1 (machine is pentium IV) there is a M-audio delta1010LT and Soundblaster live 1024.
Soundblaster live with its SB16 emulation is half-useful (the MIDI MPU does not work under DOS).

M-audio 24/96 worked together with SB live 1024 together too. HOwever having the all 3 cards (M-audio audiophile 2496, delta1010LT, soundblaster 1024) did not worked well - the audio crackling began.

I choosed the m-audio in the past becouse for the same features it had the drivers for older platforms too, drivers were working ones with these programs (win98, while the other similar ASIO cards required the atleast latest M$ platform).
Now it was also possible to modify for a upgrade to take signals out for external converters from these cards.

THe other machines with the experiments with several cards in one machines with ISA bus:

2. machine: 486 DX-4 100Mhz had 3 soundcards on some days and worked fine:
ESS Audiodrive
Gravis Ultrasound ACE
Roland RAP10

3. the another combination was with AMD K6 300MHz
Gravis Ultrasound MAX
Roland RAP10

Soundblaster awe64 worked together with Roland RAP-10, but did not fit together with Gravis Ultrasound Interwave or MAX, but fitted with Gravis Ultrasound ACE

Also I have also soon the another ISA card experiment ready and then some recording systems will move back from Pentium to 486 machine or so 😀 I hope all the features for some serious recording studio will be working (24bit/96kHz, wordclock, SPDIF/AES/EBU, timecode). Also it will be switchable for SB16 compatibility and in hardware mp3/ogg player. The other ones who want can develop the OPL board for it right now.

In my opinion they are the low end of professional use in as much as they are specifically purposed for recording and playback--they are certainly, not gaming cards. Maybe they don't have the features you look for in a high-end production card, such as an ESI Juli@ or something from Lynx, etc. but the proof is in the pudding as far as their quality is concerned--we just have different definitions of what pro represents. 😉 I have no interest in production, only listening. Most people on this forum agree that creative cards suck. We love them because they are some of the best choices for retro gaming due to compatability, but their sound quality is relatively bad. They can be made to sound good through modifications; I know from first-hand experience. But out of the box, the Delta 410 and Audiophile 24/96 are gods compared to even many current creative cards. If one can't hear the difference, I would suspect the rest of their hardware combination does not allow them to or their hearing does not. I certainly, do not have golden ears as I've worked around loud tools and machines for too long. But one can do themselves a favor and reinforce the rest of their hardware from a component standpoint, otherwise results are going to be inferior, especially on such well-aged hardware.

But yeah, you don't want an M-Audio card if you're interested in something other than high-fidelity stereo listening. However, I have used said card in games such as Counter-Strike, and the higher quality sound did allow me to better discern where other players were (think footsteps and reloads), where they were firing from, etc., no sneaking around a corner and surprising me.