I record vocals in PowerTracks. I was on a Dell Dim 3000 with the Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit card installed and everything worked great. I just upgraded to an HP Pavilion Slimline. It has the Realtek sound card. The Realtek is horrible for recording the voice - lots of hissing and the de-hissing option makes the voice sound like you're on the telephone.

I guess I need to put a Sound Blaster card in the HP.

Question - does a USB card work just as well as a PCI card? I'm nervous about getting under the skin of the computer.

And since I'm spending money anyway, is there an even better sound card for vocal recording that anyone has used?