Humm,
Dak I finally brought up the link you provided. I had to type it into my Browser.

I looked and read the specs for the poorest sound card, the Montigo Turtle or something like that. Believe it or not the specs for that sound card are about twice as good as the average tape recorder from about 1948-50 of which they were recording audio that is still considered superb even today and are still avaliable today. The resulting records/Cd's.

Now, let's talk about the average circut/board in a piece of audio gear today. First lets dicuss the circut board itself. It is probably made by a factory that specalises in circut boards. Now let's look at the input and maybe the output connections/jacks. Most likely made by a different manufacturer. But now let's look at all those doodads on the circut board! There are capacators, resistors, micro chips on some, transistors, and maybe coils. Believe it or not all those doodads/components were made by a seperate manufacturer. All different. Probably none by the final Computer Brand.

Now let's talk one more time about audio circuts. Any audio circut that appreciably changes the sound would not be acceptable in today's equipment or yesterday's. Any good audio circut is expected to be like a straight wire, with gain. And the Specs on all the Sound Cards in the link you provided does that easily.

The circut designs, used today, in most circuts, were developed and perfected decades ago. Some Micro Processors in newer Computers are later developments.

No, there is no magic formula for a super secret sound card provides specs twice as good as all the others. But, you can spend more money, if you wish!

Ray E. Strode