Thread: I need a new gaming soundcard.

I suppose cards with a good SNR (signal to noise ratio) will allow you to hear softer sounds more clearly, but you'd also need a pair of good cans (e.g. Sennheiser, Klipsch), to appreciate it. I'd recommend any sound card with hardware mixing capabilities and a good SNR. Anything based on the EMU10k1 chipset fits the bill, for example any Audigy 2 or Audigy 4 card. See here: Matrix:Tag-HWMIX - AlsaProject

On the other hand, you must understand that in many game engines, the engine simply stops playing the sound effect at all after a certain distance. So the sound card doesn't necessarily let you hear enemies far away, that's probably just a hack. In that case, the best sound card in the world won't make any difference.