Hi,

> Sound works great on my NetBSD/i386-based desktop, but I don't
> know anything about high-end sound cards. What are some
> examples of "high-end" sound cards?

SBLive Platinum is used a lot as it's cheap and has lots of
holes to plug things into.  The other cards are mainly
XG based yamaha ones with a few XG chips on a rather large
card, digital IO and MIDI ports via a breakout box.  There
are hundreds of variants of these floating around.

Most people still use Atari ST's and external hardware as
it still sounds a whole load better than most sound cards
and works perfectly well.

It is unlikely that Pro's would use a UNIX variant, as the
software is comparatively bad compared to Rebirth and
Cubase on Win/CacOS etc.  The BSD hardware support is
quite good though, but *nothing* will beat an ST with a
Korg M1 and some other nice, dedicated hardware ;)

Remember though, these kinds of people want to make music,
not play OS wars.  At the moment, Windows 9x is best for
the job, so he should be using that I hate to say.

- Chris.