I'm assembling a new computer, and as the title hints it's gonna be used primarily for listening and producing music:)
I'm pretty hooked on the Asus Xonar Essencehttp://www.asus.dk/product.aspx?P_ID=k8OChreLuh8zgFmQ&templete=2
but is it any good at producing music?
Or can anyone recommend an alternative at around 1200DKK/160€ ? 
So you're saying that an average should be good enough for production in say, FL Studio?
That depends on your needs in production. I think you forget what a soundcard does.
All a sound card does is play or record sound, nothing else.
So if you have special needs in playing or recording sound while producing, then a premium sound card might be for you, but as I said it's a waste of money if you can't take advantage of it.
On the other hand if you don't have any special needs in playback or recording of sound, the built in sound card will be enough.
All a sound card does is play or record sound, nothing else.
So if you have special needs in playing or recording sound while producing, then a premium sound card might be for you, but as I said it's a waste of money if you can't take advantage of it.
On the other hand if you don't have any special needs in playback or recording of sound, the built in sound card will be enough.
Then I've been misguided:p
I might still buy a premium card however, I've got a set of Harman Kardon Soundsticks 2. Would these benefit from a premium card?
No lol. It's definitely a waste of money with such a set of plastic computer speakers. You need a serious set of Hi-Fi speakers hooked up to a good amplifier to take advantage of it. http://www.whathifi.com/Reviews/Hi-Fi-Reviews/Hi-fi-speakers-Reviews/ is a good place to start 
To get more opinions on speakers you can check out the forums of http://www.hifi4all.dk/
Now Chris is right about youre build in soundcard is okay if you are on some computer speakers. But he is not right about the soundcard just play or record.. Youre build soundcard will have a bad latency and no ASIO support and there by, when you producing in FL Studio in this case, the program will begin stutter and that really sucks, it basically means the soudcard respond really slow to the work you are doing in FL. So to prevent that you have to have a big Buffer length like 50ms. And when the Buffer length is at 50 ms youre playback sound will be delayed when what you see on the screen will first come out youre speaker 50 ms til 1 sec later. I could keep going but i have to go
That's exactly my problem with my old computer! (very cheap and only build-in sound)
Even with a buffer length of 50ms, it stuttered:p
Could you then recommend the Xonar Essence I talked about?
Sound cards do only play or record - but of course there are many ways to do this!
As I said before you should only buy a premium sound card if you have special needs. ASIO support and low latency are special needs and if that's important then of course you need a premium sound card...
As I said before the ASUS card is intended for gaming and movies, so don't go for this if you are using it for music production.
The best sound cards for music production is probably from M-Audio:
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.family&ID=recording
But before going nuts please keep in mind what I said about special needs, you could easily waste a lot of money - and with a cheap pair of speakers like the Harman Kardons it's not better sound quality you are getting with such a card, because the quality will be limited to the quality of the speakers.
Also if you plan to use instruments like a guitar or microphone you might want to make sure your audio interface has preamp to power these babies.
I have a E-MU Tracker Pre and I'm pretty happy with it. And it doesn't cost a fortune.
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Buy now.. thats the one i have..
Basically you wont be able to hear any difference unless you have a pair of really expensive speakers or headphones. Most users will be satisfied with the built in sound card in the computer motherboard.
So first of all you should consider if it really is worth spending that much on slightly better sound quality only noticeable with good speakers.
Second of all if you just want to listen music, most motherboards today have a digital S/PDIF output. If you use this output you will get a noiseless connection to your speakers and won't need to purchase an expensive sound card.
The main reason to buy an expensive sound card would be good DA conversion and high quality recording capabilities or full featured surround sound.
If you still think you need a premium sound card go here and read up a little:
http://www.pcmus.com/choosecard.htm
and here:
http://www.pcmus.com/Best-Audio-Recording-Card.htm
The Asus sound card is a gaming/surround sound card.
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