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The headphone jacks on my laptop are becoming a bit loose; can I get suggestions for aftermarket audio cards?

It is an older laptop, it supports the following expansion cards, as well as USB of course: "PC Card slot supports one Type II PC Cards; supports CardBus."

How fancy did you want?
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/pr ... 69&listby=

Theres quite a few USB DAC + Headphone Amp combos out there with varying levels of portability. I'd suggest swinging by Head-Fi's Computer Audio forum for suggestions. Just be sure to set your budget right from the beginning. They can get pretty ridiculous with the high-priced gear if you don't.

most any usb audio stick will be a ton better than the stock motherboard audio provided, something like this startech usb audio
if your not really lookin to spend a ton on a audio card for the thing and only just want it to work.

that usb thing is interesting, I didnt know they made those
I was recently thinking my onboard audio on my 5year old laptop was crappy
maybe I will buy one to play around with

JustAnEngineer wrote:

How fancy did you want?
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/pr ... 69&listby=

I have one of those, probably about 3-4yo since I bought it in the Bargain Basement a while back. Unless Creative has improved the power efficiency of the unit since then, that thing is a furnace. The palmrest over the card and the card itself get hot enough to be uncomfortable and I haven't used it much for that reason.

On the upshot, if you need digital audio out from an older notebook, it does have that in both coax and optical (adapter required for optical use).

If you want a USB transport/DAC/headphone amp/preamp the 'flavor of the month,' although not undeservedly since almost everyone says it's great, is the Nuforce uDac.

http://www.nuforce.com/hp/products/iconudac/index.php