Just curious about what people around here use for their audio delight. It may inspire others or me in their future decisions.
Sound Card(PCI): I currently have an Asus Xonar DS(7.1).
I haven't given the money on this card just because its "high quality", I was forced to buy an sound card because the one integrated on the motherboard was broken. Cheaper sound cards seemed to be lower quality than the integrated Realtek solution, so naturally I looked for some higher specs ones. The cool thing about this one is that it has analog relays for switching between the front and rear panel.
Headset: Plantronics Gamecom 367
These ones are approaching 2 years since I bought them. Before them I had a pair of cheap RPC ones, that worked almost as fine in audio quality, but they were less comfortable on prolonged sessions. Nowadays I guess the equivalent for them(the plantronics) would be GAMECOM 380. They're simple, the controls are easy to manipulate, and the audio quality seems good. I think there's room for improvement though. The fact is that I have to change them anyway, since a couple of weeks ago the head support cracked. Superglue didn't work, so it's now "fixed" using electrical tape...
Suggestions for a future acquisition are well accepted.
Audio System: Genius 5005 5.1
I've changed my feelings about this one 2 times. When I bought it, I was quite excited to finally have some powerful output for playing music. It was also cheap: at the time I bought it in 2008, it was on Christmas sale and I think I paid around 70$ for this. Then I quickly found out the negative opinions of people on the internet. Also found out how prone to failure is this model. Indeed, after about a year, a big, visible electrical explosion occurred. Scared the shit out of me, and I thought it was dead for good. Turns out it was just the fuse! It works fine even today.
Nowadays I think it was a good deal. It may not produce the finest quality, but it's sure doing its job. No distortions either. The truth is that I never exposed it to maximum volume for too long. I usually set it to half, then play with the volume from my computer.
