Good overall sound advice

I am building a decent home system (no gaming) for around $500 and wanted some recomendations on a decent sound card and speaker system for playing basic music. I do alot of music on the computer and just want a good sound quality system that can fill the room. Thanks,

how many speakers? sub?

the sound cards out right now that would suit your purpose if you want surround is the CMI 8768+ chipset, the cards sporting it are the turtlebeach montego and hda/bluegears x-mystique

for 2 channel, the chaintech av-710 does bit-perfect through to the receiver, it's good quality and the price tag is only about $25 shipped

onkyo, yamaha, and denon receivers are nice

Yes deffinately a sub, right now I have some altec lansing two speaker/sub combination, so i could keep that or upgrade to something similar, right now my system prices out around $600 with just the sound left, looking at the chantech vnf4 motherboard 939, so i can really only justfy around $50 on the sound card itself plus the speakers if any, given the system i have. I just would like a little bit above integrated so that the mp3's sound a little better.

oh i thought you meant a $500 on a sound system like sound card > receiver > speakers

for just music then definitely get the Chaintech AV-710, $25 card that sounds as good as $100 cards in 2 channel, ideally i would recommend a 2.1 set of high end altec lansings or the klipsch promedia 2.1, you can always keep your current speakers and upgrade later

the AV is a very good card for the price, I've heard nothing but good things about it. just stay away from creative and you'll be fine. if you want music, you HAVE to go with 2.1! The reason is that at above 2.1 music will distort. Play music on a 2.1 and then on a 5.1 and you can hear it. This is because music is recorded in sterio, only 2 channels, and playing it over more will cause this distortion. Get to big audio speakers, a decent sterio amp, and use the auxiliery input on the amp to connect the computer soundcard out in there, should have a nice result.

you can use 2.1 channels on a 5.1 system so it doesn't distort

very true. some 2.1 systems like the emu are made for music, others like the revo are just good for sterio and sruound alike, some just suck everything.