I plan on listening to many 24bit flac releases in the future. I want to keep this card for a long time, so I'm looking for the best bang/buck ratio.

I currently use Sennheiser HD280's(these will be upgraded eventually).

Does using a mono jack converter mess up the quality?

Allright, with the 280's, don't bother.
But if you want to upgrade, you might aswell go for a good soundcard while you're at it.
Bang/buck, I'd still go for the ESI Juli@.
I had to thoroughly modify my Yamaha CDX-880 CD player to get anywhere close to the Juli@. It is above your budget, but it's really, REALLY good.

About the jack converter: The signal that comes out of the soundcard just isn't meant for headphones. It probably just won't play loud enough.
Tough, eh?

A friend of mine has a very nice external Tascam soundcard that was what... 80 euro's or so? It has all the out/inputs you'll ever need. I listened to it via a pair of headphones and the headphone preamp is just brilliant.
I'll look up what it is tomorrow :)

24 bit is fine. There's absolutely no reason to buy a 16 bit audio card for what you want to do. I doubt you'll find many that aren't built in to a mobo as it is, and you certainly won't pay ridiculous amounts of money for what's a standard for most add-on audio cards.
You don't even need to debate the facts... 24bit would be better even if only for the fact that it's a larger number. Nevermind the headroom and dynamic improvements. It's not like you're going to pay ridiculous prices for 24bit anyway. Although it may seem that way if you're stuck in the mid 90's. I assume you're not.

Also, there's absolutely no earthly reason why you'd pay the ridiculous amounts of money for an Apogee (or similarly useless audio card in context with your application) audio card simply for listening to music and playing games. Buy a reasonable device and if it meets your expectations, then you win. A bazillion-dollar audio card is not going to make any noticeable difference to most folks, compared to a standard 24bit gaming sound card being used in the context you'll be using it. And any difference you DO notice will NOT be worth the price tag unless you're one of those mentally OCD audiophile types who has nightmares about bit truncation and only converts files in a sterile laboratory.

Regarding using a mono jack converter... do you mean an adapter that goes from mono to stereo or vice versa?

Yes.

Well that is just going to have an effect on your stereo field. If you're going from a mono source to a stereo output, it's not really going to be stereo apart from the same thing being duplicated in the left and right channels, which is not stereo. And if you're going from a stereo source to a mono output, you're just going to have a mono output, with all left/right details summed straight up the middle.

If the source is stereo, then you should be using a stereo cable with a stereo adapter. This will ensure that your left and right channels remain separate.

I think he means two mono jacks or two RCA's to one stereo jack :).
This works fine, but as I said; The output volume and impedance of a line-output are entirely different from a headphone. It may work, but there is a chance it won't.

I'm not seeing enough details to make any assumptions. Perhaps if he were more clear?

Allright, one way or another, you may want to have a card with an actual headphone out.
The tascam would be a good idea then.
I just did a little check up and it's this one:
http://www.bax-shop.nl/components/co...144_mkii_1.jpg
It is a bit more expensive than I thought but it's a bit overkill for what you want to do, too. You might want to go for a cheaper model in the range :)

Hoping that this is the right place to post this...
 

I am really looking for some feedback here... and I was looking at all of the different threads and didn't see anyuthing that this really falls under, so if I am out of place, I am hoping that the mods can move me, but I need some insight.

I have all of my music on my laptop, as well as all of my personal info for itunes, cc info, etc... and I am afraid of losing it, or it getting jacked. I want some kind of hard drive encryption so that if that does happen to jack it, they can’t get my data. If not prevent them, at least make it so difficult that they will hopefully just reformat the drives – which would delete the data.

I found this review in PC Mag (Google datalock pcmag) about Zonealarm’s Datalock data encryption program and it says that Datalocks support is the main feature, that just call them and they can help you out.

Do other data encryption programs offer this level of support?

It seems that Datalock is easy to use, are other programs harder to use?

Can you get locked out of Windows 7 encyrption?

Why not put everything on an external hard drive and not take it with you to wherever you go?