Spot,
A trusted friend who sells these cards says both Echo and M-Audio are great and he would not hesitate to recommend either, however he personally uses and prefers one made by Tascam. Any experience with that one?

"However, Vegas won't benefit from WDM drivers." Why is that?

I don't think the Mia nor the 2496 support 5.1 monitoring.

M

Ok. Thanks for the replys. However, I am still at a loss as to which sound card I should purchase. 5.1 monitoring is a must. I do not understand why M-Audio's less expensive "Revolution" card supports this while there higher priced card does not. I think the Terratac card does support 5.1 but now I am concerned about the stability. Perhaps $200 is not enough. Lets say I would be willing to spend up to $300 for a sound card. Can any one recomend a sound card that would fit my requirements?

I could be wrong here but I don't think Vegas will output 5.1 from the TL anyways. It ouputs 6 discreet channels, so for mixing 5.1 the decoder is of no real benefit. You do need it play back the burnt DVD though but you can do that in a STB anyway.

Might be wrong of course as I don't mix 5.1 but if I am I'd hate for you to fret over something that doesn't matter all that much.

I could be wrong but it was my understanding the monitoring issue is what comes into play - thusly the ASIO ability. You set this all up in the audio set up in Vegas. Farss is correct s far as the decoder goes - the decoder would decode an already encoded signal, and as you are mixing/monitoring off the time line it has not been encoded yet.
http://www.digidesign.com/download/asio/
has drivers that work with Vegas for download, but I think you need the supported hardware - I am not clear if these drivers would work with any ASIO sound card or only with the hardware they list, such as Mbox or Digi 002. However either one is more than you want to spend I think.

A clear answer as to what kind of sound card is needed would be a welcome addition to the Vegas Knowledge Base, don't you think?

I was under the impression that you need a card that can output 5.1 in order to monitor each channel. How can one properly monitor 5.1 if the sound card only has 2 ouputs? I haven't mixed 5.1 but it's something I'd like to get into in the future. My understanding is that you route each separate track to a different output via busses. If your soundcard only has left/right channels, how would you monitor 6 channels? If it's possible, please let me know so I can start monitoring 5.1 with my Mia. The Mia advertises 8 virtual outputs, but they aren't meant to be used to monitor 5.1. It just means that if you're recording, you can send the signal to 4 different apps(if I'm understanding it correctly).
From a previous thread, the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 works well. If you want to go upscale a bit, you'll find the M-Audio 410. Echo has the Gina. There are others, but you'll find M-Audio and Echo are always mentioned first when it comes to the most bang for your buck (meaning initial price, stability, driver quality, and support).

M

Cappi is looking for 2 distinctly different functions, Myst.
1. To be able to monitor 5.1 audio from the Vegas timeline. All these cards provide that sort of output capability. All multichannel cards have this ability.
2. To be able to decode a 5.1 AC3 stream, which Vegas CAN'T output from the timeline, but Windows Media Player, Intervideo, etc all can output.
One is a consumer monitoring format, the other a professional authoring format.
BTW, avoid ANYTHING digidesign and PC. Same with MOTU, excepting that they've recently released new drivers. These guys are both kings in the Mac world, and highly stable in the Mac world. But not in the PC world.

Well how does soundblaster's audigy stack up to the m-audio revolution? Anybody know? I am so not an audiophile.

-zemote

SPOT - just a question - if all sound cards can monitor 5:1 than what is the ASIO for? I mean I know it is in/out but I thought there was some need for it in Vegas if you wanted to do 5:1...like I said in my post above, plese correct me if I am wrong.

I would go myself for an external usb device.