Q:  I am very interested in your sound cards. One thing that isn't clear to
    me, do all of your sound cards require amplified speakers?  I am looking 
    for a great sound card that doesn't need to be amplified.      Thanks

A:  Sorry but this is a little far fetched. There is no such thing as a great 
    Sound Card that does not also require Powered Speakers. When Sound Cards
    were first introduced in the early 90s, they had a Power Amp on board 
    (2 X 5) that would make it possible to connect to non-Powered Speakers.

    Of course they sounded terrible, with lots of distortion, etc. Nowadays 
    there is no decent Sound Card Manufacturer that will include Amplification
    on a Sound board at the expense of quality.  You might be able to find 
    some of those 'dinosaurs' used on eBay but good luck with Drivers.

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Q:  Could you tell me whether this will work properly with a 2.1 speaker 
    setup? Reason I ask is I have an Audigy 2 NX USB card and the only options 

    its software gives are for 2 speakers, 4 speakers, 5.1, 6.1, etc. thus 
    I am able to get sound out of only one satellite and the subwoofer, so I 
    was wondering if yours might work better?


A:  In short, feed the standard stereo output from the SRM and it should feed 
    your 2.1 setup just fine. 

    Most 2.1 speaker setups are actually stereo (2-speaker) setups with the 
    bass channel derived from the stereo audio. Your stereo signal is fed to 
    an input jack on the subwoofer, which then goes to an internal crossover,
    which separates the bass frequencies from the mid-high frequencies. The 
    combined bass frequencies are fed to the subwoofer (the ".1" part of the 
    "2.1") and the Left/Right mid-high frequencies are fed to the Left/Right
    "satellite" speakers (the "2." part of "2.1"). So you get left and right
    sounds from the small satellite speakers, but all the bass from the 
    subwoofer, which gives you the 2.1 configuration (stereo-plus-subwoofer). 

    However, things would be different if your particular 2.1 setup *requires*
    a separate subwoofer output from the *soundcard*, which would be a 
    non-standard setup. 
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