Jally,
Before you go out spending a whole lot of money, unless there is something substantially wrong with your Audigy 2 card, then I would say that you have everything you need already.

Let's go back and look at a couple of things.

First, if you want to use two mics and record them at the same time, you can pan one channel hard left, and the other channel hard right, then record that track as two separate mono tracks, instead of a stereo track. That will give you one mic in a mono track which will allow you to edit individually. The Alto mixer, which I've not seen before, but looks very much like a Behringer (at least the one I looked at) should give you good sounds. However, a lot depends on how you hook it up to your Audigy 2 card.

Secondly, is your Audigy 2 a real card, or a chipset on the motherboard? A real card is preferable. Make sure that you send the Tape Out from the Alto to the Line In on the card, and unless you overdrive the input of the card, you should get relatively good sound. The card really isn't that bad.

Your PowerTracks or Real Band can send midi to the Audigy 2 card, which can be loaded with SoundFonts, some quite good, which will allow you to have a better sounding MIDI sound than using Windows built in synth. Of course, having a high quality synth module like the Ketron SD2 would be better yet, and that could also be plugged into the mixer.

You can use that set up to record multiple tracks, one right after the other.

What you can not do with this set up, or even most USB/Firewire set ups, is to have multiple Audio interfaces. Whereas a PCI card like the M-Audio 1010lt would allow you five stereo ins and five stereo outs, each one is assignable to a different track, giving you up to five stereo tracks to record from at the same time the Audigy won't. Record a stereo or two mono tracks is the best you're going to get from the Audigy or most USB interfaces.

Finally, you need to find out why the recording IS good sometimes with your Audigy, and sometimes it isn't. If you've changed something, then you need to find the 'sweet spot' and leave everything there. That's why Rys suggested the recording books, they WILL help a lot in laying down the basic understanding.

HTH,

Gary

Last edited by Gary Curran; 01/20/10 01:49 PM.
I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!