Best USB Portable Sound Card?

I have a Sager NP9150 (Clevo P150EM) and the built in audio is just terrible. I want to get a portable USB sound card so that I can have good quality audio to drive my Sennheiser PC 350 headset for when I listen to music and play games. So far I only know of the following listed below. Which do you recommend? And other recommendations?

Turtle Beach Amigo II
Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Go
Asus Xonar U3

 

I don't really have a recommendation, but telling us your budget might be a good idea.

 

Inexpensive. The prices on Amazon for those range from $25-$40 and I find $40 to be on the high priced end of things.

 

I was also looking at getting a USB Sound Card. I've narrowed my selection down to:
Creative Blaster Recon3D External Enhancer
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro USB Audio System with THX SB1095

Can't decide which one would be better. I'm also looking to hook this up to some wireless headphones.

Any recommendations/suggestions, anyone?

 

For under 50USD, the Hifimediy Sabre USB DAC would probably be your best bang for buck deal: LINK

It doesn't look like much but it packs a nice DAC chip (the Sabre's are pretty well regarded and the better IC's are used in high end audiophile DAC's) in a very compact package. Note that this doesn't have a mic jack so you will need to plug that directly into your laptop (which shouldn't really matter much anyway).

I use the Recon3D on occasion with my xbox and I used to use it with my laptop as well. Not a bad device at all, very low noise floor and the surround headphone feature is interesting.Do not get the X-Fi 5.1, I owned that a while ago and to put it simply it is garbage. 60 dollars down the drain.

For similar money I would suggest looking into the FiiO line (search Amazon), in particular the E7k and E17 which have built in amps along with the DAC section. A common introduction to the world of wallet breaking sound equipment.

 

Guess it depends on whether you want gaming features like virtual surround. The Turtle Beach is the first step up from 'horrible onboard' and is fine for all-purpose use. But the Creative and Asus have some additional gaming features you may like as well as higher sound quality. Given the choice of the two I lean towards the Creative, despite their driver rep, as I think the various digital fx modes work better. At this level though the modes are accomplished in software for both cards, which means a slight - and I mean slight - CPU hit.

Fiio - yeah, but really only if you consider music more important than gaming. A decent slightly higher-up balance of the two with a slight lean towards music might be the X-Fi HD USB (~$100) which is a compact bus-powered box (with DSP inside, unlike the U3/Go) with good connectivity which can be tossed in a bag alongside a laptop, especially if you buy a short mini-USB cable. It does a few odd things, but not as odd as some of the frankly hilariously misguided measurements out there on the intardwebs are pointing out. The [H] review is a good place to start and is largely on the money.