We are looking for a high-end audio card for one of our computers; we looked at the Creative X-FI Elite Pro. But what I understand is that there is little Windows Vista support, as this is currently not that important as we run Windows XP on that specific machine.

But what I understand from other boards is that Creative has problems with Vista drivers, there was a person who made modified drivers available (but Creative shut him down).

My question is does somebody know of a professional audio card, with 100 to 120B SNR quality. Preferable able to work with Windows XP, Vista and Linux (if the card also works with Apple OSX would be super great)

Back in XP days I was involved in a project to do real time room correction filters with M-Audio cards.. To be honest I swore I would never support them again due to their vista drivers and lack of customer consideration. But thier hardware is good and the firewire external cards get the hardware out of the hard RF environment that a PC chassis can be.

Also look into the Lynx range (the Lynx2 was used by a friend who raved about it)..

I will say that I dont have those kind of golden ears.. I like a good system, clear speakers with a full range, but I cant get into the silver speaker wire tube amps on bags of sand, etc etc level of passion.

M-Audio cards are used in major studios .... very often in tandem with DigiTools ...

I like M-Audio gear as well, but I had some bluescreen o' death driver issues with an older USB unit. I think the drivers have improved a bit since Digidesign got involved.

I brought an RME card back for a friend and he loves it. Very high quality german equipment, but likely more than what you need.

btw, what is the card going to be mainly used for?