Brian,

My suggestion is to use the mother board sound card to get started. It
will certainly be "good enough" to get your feet wet, but not much
more than that. However, having a second, dedicated card has both
technical and practical advantages. For instance, if you have any
sound schemes selected in Windows, those sounds can get transmitted by
accident, which is annoying, and technically illegal due to band usage
allocations. If the board you use for ham work is not the default
sound card, this doesn't happen.

You also need to change settings of the mixer board depending on what
you are doing. The old line out is still there, but it usually is
handled in software as a rear speaker output. So I use my mixer
configured for 2 speakers normally, and for 4 when I am operating
PSK31. I slide the F/B balance all the way to the back, in this case,
or a little forward if I want to monitor the TX signal.

One of the better Creative boards will be fine, and I also use the
Santa Cruz board someone else recommended. N4HY, who does DSP signal
analysis professionally somewhere beyond the bleeding edge, did some
tests, and found it was the best of the consumer boards for ham
applications. At one point, there was a detailed comparison
available, but it seems to have vanished.

http://lists.contesting.com/_rtty/2004-03/msg00348.html

They are out of production, but they turn up on eBay and other sites.
If you get one, make certain you get the WIN2K drivers off the web
site, as they were not on my setup CD.


--
Alan
WA4SCA