you can go to m audios website: http://www.m-audio.com/

There are any number of retailers that would be happy to sell you one, so I would shop around and see if you could get a deal.

Echo, the company that Steve House mentioned makes a similar card (Mia midi) that offers the same basic capabilities. A little bit more expensive, but offers 1/4" jacks instead of rca.

On second thought, check out their website too: echoaudio.com

That said, you could buy any number of speaker/interface combinations, but beware of professional interfaces. Do your research before you buy. Many NLEs won't support ASIO drivers that some pro interfaces require. I am recomending the m-audio because it has been around for a while, is an inexpensive solution, provides good results and should work with any program that you use it with. For reference, the M-audio card sounds much better than the Soundblaster audigy cards that cost more money.

As for speakers, your best off going to a large retailer and listening to as many speakers as they will let you, then you could pick the best speakers in your price range. As for my recomendations, I would look toward the Yamaha msp3 or 5 and the events seem to be pretty well rated for the low end.

Good recommendations. Echo's MIA MIDI is the rough equivalent of the M-Audio Audiophile 192. Both have 1/4" TRS balanced connectors, which put them a step above the RCA jack class.

My Echo Audiofire 8 has two decent pre's, 8 in's, SP/dif in and out, word clock in and out, and Vegas sees 'em all just fine over firewire. The extra in's give extra flexibility (like different preamps/mics without repatching, and efx send/return using a dedicated fx box), the 8 outputs let me run 5.1 surround AND stereo simultaneously if software allows, the word clock in lets me clock it from MOTU MTP-AV which is in turn locked to black burst, so zero chance of audio drift. The combination also lets me have 9 midi in's and outs (I compose original music for all my training/safety vid's) so this setup works REALLY well for me... Steve

Wow, you have quite the set-up. It's funny that this thread started with steven asking about a $50 pair of prosumer computer speakers and has evolved into your post Steve. This set-up sounds like overkill for most video preditors, most videos hardly get mixed for stereo, let alone for surround sound. What type of work do you do steve? Any other software you use? (your set-up sounds more in line with a high end nuendo set-up, not a vegas suite) Why would you need to run stereo and surround at the same time? I am kind of baffeled by this statement. Do you sync decks with software ever? The midi time piece you mentioned is supposedly a tremendous piece of kit, great for an all around sync box. One more: What's your speaker set-up and what kind of machine are you running? Oops, guess that was two.

I think most of us would be better off buying interfaces without the built-in pres and putting the money we saved on better pres. Or we could use the mixer we use for monitoring our various sources. Just my opinion though.

Hehe yeah Greg, Initially I was wondering about usb speakers, just from a technical perspective. I am looking at a variety of combinations speaker/soundcard.

So this is good stuff. I just want to be able to hear the mix/subtle noises etc.

Steven, sorry if I hijacked your thread - I'll try to keep it short.

Greg, I'm coming to DV from an audio recording background, had about $100k in gear before I started getting back into video. Used to do both in the SF Bay area in the 70's, then in Hawaii, worn a bunch of hats over the years. Started shifting priorities into sound for film/video, then discovered that about a dozen of the previous "hats" fit well with industrial video, and it actually PAYS.

Anyway, just setting up some KRK speakers in 5.1 or stereo for audio side, I use Samplitude/Sonar/Sound Forge/Vegas mainly these days (analog tape is too expensive for most things) - currently editing on a 3.6 gig P4 with 2 gigs ram, 4 drives (one is 10k rpm), dual 19" LCD's and Canopus TwinPact 100 into Sony broadcast trinitron, the echo firewire audio with an Art tube pre, TC multi-fx box, and getting ready to break ground on a new studio this spring so I can incorporate more of my "goodies" into the workflow.

Steven, again sorry if I went over the top on your question; I'm probably NOT the guy to ask about cheap ways of doing things - but if you wanna improve your room so it sounds as good as whatever speakers you get, just ask - been studying acoustics/sound proofing off and on for the last 25 years, think I'm finally getting the hang of it... Steve

No problem, not my thread. But do feel free to come over, we'll go shopping.

Thanks for the reply Steve. No need to apologize.

Shopping??!? Whatcha think got me into this in the first place? :=)

Just checked out your site BTW, nice presentation. Handel, no less - cool. You're definitely ahead of me in the video end, fortunately (for me) the kind of industrial stuff I shoot needs mainly wide angle stuff (can you say "LARGE"?) with tight detail shots sprinkled where necessary for understanding.

I did notice a couple of typos however (I also edit a lot, can't read ANYTHING without going into that mode) - if you want, I can suggest a couple of wording changes so the copy keeps up with the rest of your site - they're minor but if I noticed them, others might.

also, if you have a sketch or pic of your editing room I can make suggestions to improve acoustics, from simple furniture arranging to complete buildings and anything in between.

Not pushing, just trying to give back some of what I've learned on this site; your choice... Steve