+1 
(and I’m lucky to live in a country with very good wine at very affordable prices 
)
Regarding the initial question about dedicated sound cards… You can read some reviews here on this thread: Sound Card Reviews
For internal dedicated soundcards my personal experience with an Asus Xonar Essence STX is very good (you can read my review about it in the above mentioned thread).
Based on my personal experience with an ART Preamp, I’d say their stuff is pretty good too.