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Long story short, I had the muting transistors removed on my X-Fi sound card. These buggers mute the sound for various reasons. Since having them muted, my sound card emits "pops" when starting/stopping an audio stream (really bad with movie playback) so bad it's to the point that I'm afraid it might damage my speakers or headphones. So, I'm selling it and need a replacement.

Realizing that EAX and hardware rendering is pretty much pointless these days since newer games use more software-based audio rendering in engines, I figure a more professional unit would be a better way to go. For the last few days, I've been looking at USB sound cards, these are called transports to people that are serious about audio. They only output a digital signal that you have to use with an external DAC and amp. Of course, just like any other product, there's more expensive units with better specs and features. The way I see it, I've got a few choices:

 - M2Tech HiFace - $150
 - Teradak Teralink X2 - $78ish
 - Another X-Fi. This time the Titanium which uses PCI-E (futureproof for when PCI is gone) but this card uses optical which typically has high jitter. Money is wasted on embedded amp and hardware acceleration features. This unit would cost $66.
 - or an unknown mystery product called USBFace which may or may not be coming out and is a competitor to the HiFace. I'm leary about this unit because if it's meant to be better than the HiFace, it has to use better parts and thus will cost more and $150 is already pushing it.

The HiFace and Teralink X2 do what I want. I've researched and come up with a pro/con list:
Hiface
Pro                             |Con
192kHz                           USB powered
Small                            Not compatible with USB Isolator
Better Quality?                  $150 starting price
2 clocks for better jitter       Proprietary drivers
                                 Random recent BSOD's with W7 X64


Teralink
Pro                             |Con
Works with USB Isolator          Optical SPDIF reported to be flaky at high rates
Can be powered externally        1 12mHz clock, not native to 44.1khz (Uses PLL to generate clock that adds jitter)
$80 starting
Flexible, open drivers
8% back on eBay purchase
I'll explain a few things in the list. The USB Isolator isolates the connected device so it doesn't have any connection with the power of the computer. Computer power is terrible for audio and in a lot of cases (like mine) can introduce noise through the USB signal. Powering the unit externally yields better performance (think laptop vs desktop in basic terms). Jitter is basically packet loss in USB which is obviously bad.

I'm so leaning towards the Teralink X2 but I really don't want to regret it. Right now, I can afford the Teralink X2 but not the HiFace. Part of me says, the people that notice a difference between the two devices have setups 2-3x more expensive than mine and that even a crappy model would be an upgrade from a X-Fi. Am I beating myself up for nothing or is there a legitimate reason to go with something higher.

Thanks for the reply Blue. The Teralink only has issues with 96khz on it's optical output (but worked fine with ASIO or another driver). On coaxial, it's fine which is probably what I would use but it's nice having the flexibility. The Teralink may have more jitter but I can resample 44.1khz to 48khz via software in order to bypass the PLL clocking in the Teralink, doing this doesn't change quality since it's just padded with 0's to get it to 48khz from what I understand.

It doesn't matter if you just send 48khz or 96khz. But for 44.1, a clock is generated through a PLL which, I don't know enough to be sure about this, may or may not add in noticeable amounts of jitter. I believe it shows up as a SPDIF interface device which I should be able to disallow 44.1khz and just "ok" 48khz and 96khz in Windows. It seems like everybody speculated about the jitter on 44.1khz but as I recall, nobody really said they heard a difference.

Anyway, I'm working a deal with the seller. After BCB, this unit may only cost $69 which looks REALLY good There's also an upgraded one with better parts but if it's outside my price-range, I'll pass. I think I'm set on the Teralink and I'll post impressions and pictures when I get it. This is a unit that is great for starting out. IMO, it's best to have a transport, DAC and amp all separate so you can upgrade each one individually

I got my Teralink X2 today It hasn't blown me away but I wasn't expecting it to. It's better than my X-Fi and doesn't have any annoying features. I'll probably enjoy it more as the caps burn-in and whatnot. Off to pull the ol' X-Fi from my computer