FWIW, tried one of these cards after reading all this great stuff about how quiet they were, and yanked it out after 3 hours.

Uses a VIA chip that IMO & from what I've read is one of those recycled from duty as an on-board sound chip. Takes a lot of cpu horsepower for one thing, which can/does cause prob.

Also had prob. getting the card to work properly with video hardware and software; tech support said they're working on it, getting the card to behave with video stuff. Cards using this VIA chip are not like the graphics cards say based on a gforce design where one driver fits almost all - the companies making the cards like m-audio & terratec use different crystals etc., have different drivers, and surprisingly different performance characteristics when bench tested.

M-Audio is a good company, but somewhat MAC based in history, and IMO this is a great budget card for pure audio applications - just not anything video based until new drivers come out.

Also FWIW, you do need 5.1 to preview your audio, &/or listen to the finished product on your PC. But to my knowledge it isn't necessary otherwise - you can produce 5.1 and listen to the final product on your DVD player for example. If you're faking it, basing your 5.1 on an existing stereo mix, should be able to watch the volume levels in the mixer on playback and judge the levels pretty accurately. With other 5.1+ cards, SOFO has come up with some remarkable software this time round, so it seems you don't need ASIO to monitor your 5.1 either. Depending on your other requirements, might pick up a Creative Live! or Santa Cruz for less then $40 if on a budget - both seem to work well enough.