audio card advice - juli@ or Prodigy hd2

[Ken Gunderson]

Hello:

I'm looking for well supported audio card for my fbsd box (7.0-RELEASE).
Target is good quality 2 channel audio for varied musical tastes - no
gaming. Speakers are Event Alp5s, w/both balanced and unbalanced inputs.
Cable run is only 10' but do still get some low level hum on unbalanced
inputs from using the onboard sound (hey, just finished building this
box..). Cans are currently some Senns, but I might like to get some
AKG701's.

I note that the snd_envy24ht drivers is now in stable so that opens up
the door for some pretty sweet cards (big thanks to you driver dev
heads). The juli@ and Prodigy HD2 are on my short list. The HD2's offer
built in headphone amp, wh/might be pretty nice for the AKG's, while
the Juli@ sports balanced outputs, wh/might be pretty nice to take
advantage of the balanced speaker inputs.  So feature wise 6 of one and
half dozen of the other and ultimately it's the sound that matters most
anyways.  It's probably a bit of a crap shoot which which might be best
sounding because as I'm guessing the differences in DAC's in this
instance likely take a back seat to how well the snd_envy24ht driver
works with each of these puppies. The DACs on the HD2 are a bit
"superior" but I've read some reviews indicating the Juli@ card is
cleaner electronically and sounds better. At least on Winblows. So I'm
curious if anybody running either of these cards running under FreeBSD
can offer any feedback.

TIA--

-- 
Ken Gunderson <kgunders at teamcool.net>