Sound Card Suggestion?

[TitanAura]

I'm unsure of how to select an audio card and deciding whether it's compatible or not but while my on-board audio is technically supposed to be rather advanced.... recently I've been running into audio cutting out during videos (specifically flash player), games (Bioshock), and even VLC player (WTF)! I've *never* had VLC stop playing stuff!

Anyways, here's my specs:

Motherboard: MSI P55-GD80
Processor: Intel Core i7 CPU @ 2.8 GHz
OS: Windows 7 64-bit

I've already tried the most recent drivers but the problem persists. This computer is only a month old but not having an audio card is starting to nip me in the butt. HELP!

PS
I listen to my stuff through a pair of headphones so all of that fancy shmancy surround sound doesn't mean much to me. If it has a high sample rate, that's good enough for me.

[RickyTick]

I've heard good things about the Asus Xonar DX.
Here's a nice review of it.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14500

Although I have to say, this may not solve your problem. The onboard sound should work just fine. I don't even have speakers on my pc, I use headphones all the time, and I played Bioshock with no problems.

What are the rest of your system specs?

[TitanAura]

Although I have to say, this may not solve your problem. The onboard sound should work just fine. I don't even have speakers on my pc, I use headphones all the time, and I played Bioshock with no problems.

What are the rest of your system specs?

I don't really think it has anything to do with my specs. I own many games through Steam and since running games through Steam is kinda like running ROMs through an emulator, sometimes it just doesn't work right. Bioshock didn't work at all the first time I installed it through Steam and then on my 2nd and 3rd tries the sound didn't work until I turned on "Stereo Mix" through Control Panel, as I was told via 2K's website tutorial.

http://support.take2games.com/help/take2/take2_games/q632

Even still, sometimes when I play, it won't have audio and I'll have to reload the game again and the same goes for the other media players. One thing I noticed yesterday though is if I reboot and DON'T play Bioshock, I don't have any problems (because I finally beat it *woot*). Perhaps something is inherently wrong with Steam and Bioshock in particular that somehow screws up my audio. I started Bioshock 2 yesterday, not through Steam but with the actual disk itself, and it works FLAWLESSLY EVERY TIME which seems to incriminate Bioshock even further. Still, I'll keep my eyes on audio cards since I've been wanting to hook up my keyboard properly for ages but my laptop never had the functionality.

[The Wise Monkey]

Yeah, I think it is a problem with the Steam + Bioshock combination rather than anything else.