Ahh - as I was looking for info about Vegas I didn;t think to search SOund Forge...I only searched Vegas - audio and Vegas - video. Thanks. :)

BStanding I did search in the 'sound forge family' - don't know how you got results for what I was asking because I sure didn't.

Could not find any help/feedback on Media X-Tender, Sonica Theatre or the NXSB0300. Searching for 5.1 mix returned nothing. Searching for 5.1 returned hits but the only one that came close to asking if Vegas worked with surround was a thread that said
"Sound Forge doesn't work with surround setups per se." in answer to why Sound Forge didn't see a surround set up. But Vegas isn't Sound Forge.

For the heck of it I searched "all forums" for Sonica Theatre, Media X-Tender and NXSB0300 and the only hits were this thread - my post. USB audio 7.1 returned 4 results, 2 of them mine. USB Audio 5.1 returns 27 hits, including 2 of my posts. These are bit more helpful except it isn't specific to my question - one asks about Vegas and mixing 5.1 audio via USB - very close to my question - but as there was never any resolution posted or any specifics all I know is that the poster could not get 5.1 audio out of Vegas as "5.1 digital". Another post from a year ago says "There are some USB surround sound audio interfaces, but they don't offer you six actual audio ports." and that is not true anymore - the Media X-Tender has individual 6 RCA outputs.

So I will stick with the thread in hopes someone might answer. :)

For USB, there is the Sonica Theatre, but it's not all that. It's just a creative chip. This is a decent card, but know it's not the Cirrus chips that M-Audio usually uses. Why not consider a Firewire card? Less latency, more options, and higher quality tools available?

Sorry filmy,

I thought you were looking for info on USB sound cards in general, not specifically 5.1 or 7.1 USB audio cards.

Sorry for the confusion.

>>>Why not consider a Firewire card? Less latency, more options, and higher quality tools available?<<<

No reason - I just had not looked into it. The whole M-Audio topic got me thinking and looking for options. I'll look into firewire - any suggestions?

The M-410 is a smoker! I've used this for about 2 months now for both recording and training. Sounds great, easy to use, fast, physical volume control as well as great controller software, 2 mic in/pre's that sound pretty amazing for the price, 'decent' LED's but only 4 LEDs with soft clip indication on input.
Echo just showed some new units too, but their not shipping yet. On the high end, PreSonus has a really nice FireStation, but it's a little rich, with too few outputs.
Because firewire has it's own bus, it won't use resources like USB will.
Plus, you can always plug your cam or hard drive into the external box.

I'll second what SPOT has to say, the 410 is a pretty fine box.
It's even sensibly heavy, you really want a bit of weight in something that's going to have XLR mic leads plugged into it.

Bought mine from Sweetwater for $399 US, nice bunch of guys,and they managed to use DHL to ship it here saving me $US 60.00