Currently i have a m-audio 24/96 pci card. Would a more modern usb audio interface be benificial performance wise? I dont need portability as is in a studio pc. I thought about a pcie card but they seem a bit expensive for my budget right now

 

Maybe. If it' the 2496 i'm thinking of, it's a fairly weird interface (no ballanced analog i/o?). What do you use it for? Is it wired to something else?

 

check out the Motu m2, the UAD Volt, Audient, and a few others in the price range. The entry level USB interfaces now are really good for the prices. If it's an older card, the difference will surprise you how good the new interfaces have gotten for the money. Getting the convertors away from your case noises will even help (usually)

 

i ran M-Audio Audiophile 192 for over a decade...PCI days are gone now unfortunately
the 24/96 stuff is pretty darn old at this point
strangely enough, i bought a used Xonar Essence STX pci express card for 50 bucks and have had excellent results for both music listening and low-latency audio recording with ASIO4ALL
maybe im picky but i dont find the latency all that great with the USB interfaces ive tried...critical for me especially for piano

notes:
1) if you try it, dont use Asus ASIO at all lol
2) ive heard theres no input buffering on these cards, so if you do instrument recording, make sure the volume is not too high

cheers!

 

I would keep it and use it as long as it runs.

A USB audio interface always has longer latencies - because outside and with cable. From the latencies you deteriorate.

If you really need something new I can recommend this: Audient iD4 MKII for 139 €

 

Did you ever have a problem with that card where one side is louder than the other? Had that in my old PC and from googling it looks like it's a somewhat frequently occuring, even though uncommon, problem

 

I mainly use it with my machine studio and bitwig, to be honest its pretty good on latency not that i record any thing externally, I guess what i really mean is, would my pc perform better with for example a newer pcie card, is my old card being pci bottle necking my pc's performance? I still dont think i get the kind of performance i should with an 8 core 4.5ghz cpu.