I'm looking for a soundcard that comes with it's own dedicated headphone connection point, either internal or external, it doesn't
matter.
Note: I know I can plug headphones into a cards sound output but that's not what I want. What I need is a soundcard that will
provide headphone audio independent of any windows settings or speaker output.
Thanks for any pointers.
What kind of cans are you trying to drive?
What other criteria does the sound card have to meet?
It's not going to provide headphone out independent of any
windows settings, I mean nothing will. At most it will
provide headphone out merely independant of the line-out
jack, that you can have both outputs plugged in and using
headphones didn't mute the speakers but I'd have to wonder
why you'd want to do that.
The typical concept behind separate headphone out is that it
doesn't just have an opamp voltage gain stage after the DAC
but also a current gain (buffer). For example a Diamond
MX300 which is unique in having a TO92 discrete (diamond?)
buffer stage, BUT (big "but") it's an old Vortex (2?) card,
not suitable for modern gaming or some other uses (but
should be fine at 2 channel (maybe 4?) if you get the
drivers sorted out (since Aureal is out of business, it can
take some hunting and tweaking to get a Vortex card running
on NT5.x).
