I don't know what to do here guys. I thought I had it all figured out, and then something went horribly wrong.
So now I'm back to square one just about and I'm hoping someone might have a good idea for me.
 
What I'm trying to accomplish seems pretty simple:
Take microphone, foobar, and occasionally one more audio input, combine and then send out to ustream or similar.
I'm using Flash Media Encoder, and the video aspect of all this is working fine.
 
I'm having trouble with the audio part, and I have not been able to identify the cause of the problem yet.
 
So here is what I tried to do:
 
OS: Windows 7 64bit
Sound card: Audigy 2 Value
Mixer: Behringer Xenyx 802
 
I tried running my sound card output into the mixer's Line In,
then back to my sound card's input from the mixer's Main Out.
In Flash Media Encoder I selected the Line In/Aux setting and figured I was good to go.
 
This seemed to work and using the headphone out of the mixer it seemed fine...
 but the end result, when streaming, was either audio that sounded like it was skipping (think turntable pops repeatedly)
 Or, it was a real jumbled mess.
 
I googled this problem five ways from friday and haven't come to any clear idea what is going on.
To my ear it sounds like a bad capacitor somewhere.
 
In any event, I returned the mixer just in case that was the problem, my 30 day window didn't allow more testing.
I did notice the output area on the board seemed to be getting pretty hot.
 
The other possible problem seems like the sound card and perhaps a win7 incompatibility.
I have the latest driver from Creative, but the "Audio Console" is nothing like the WinXP software.
When I built this computer I figured the card would get my by a little longer but support for it isn't there.
 
I thought about replacing it but, I can't even find a sound card that looks compatible with Win7 64bit
Every one of them seems to have some kind of driver issue, except the latest most expensive $150+ cards from Creative and Asus.
 I'll just be honest here, that's about twice my budget for a sound card.
 
 
I'm now considering possibly eliminating the sound card from the equation entirely.
 This brings me to possibly making use of an external DAC I have.
 
I could get Toslink output off the motherboard and send that to my DAC/Amp.
 The DAC has RCA outputs, which I could connect to a mixer.
And from there I'm thinking back to the PC via USB.
So would a USB mixer be the best way to go? Or is there another interface device I should consider?
 
 
I have a tight budget here, what would you do if you were me?
Bear in mind that I need 48v to power my microphone.