Upgrading/Replacing Titanium HD soundcard

[Phal]

I've had this card for a while and the crap drivers annoy me.

Is there anything as good worth changing to? I'd like something with decent sound since I've got some semi decent Dali speakers and Beyerdynamic T1 headphones with A1 amp to run from this card. I'd also like to have good in-game sound but I'm not 100% sure soundcards are still required for that or if any old external DAC will do the job?

I've seen the SoundBlaster AE-5 mentioned in a few posts I've scanned through but I'd prefer not to give my money to Creative unless there's nothing better?

Budget wise I'd prefer not to go over £200 right now but if there's something worth more then I can always wait a little while.

 

[Phal]

It's exactly headphone gaming where sound card has advantage over integrated with binaural simulation.
And AE-5 would likely drive those fine by itself with Tesla drivers needing less power per dB than old DT770-990 drivers.

I'm not too worried about driving them since I already have the headphone amp that's paired with the headphones. Over the time I've had my Titanium HD soundcard, I've learnt that Creative suck at keeping their drivers up to date and this makes me wary of buying anything else from them.

If you still need a soundcard for decent positional sound then I guess there aren't many options lol