Re: Sound Card.

I have the ZA2 (http://www.zefiro.com/) and it works great for transfering in digital through toslink. A also have a second cheap sound card (Hival $10). The ZA2 has digital I/O and analog out only, so if you want to bring in analog you need the second card. You also need the second card to play an internal CD unless you want to make up your own cable to route the CD digital out the the ZA1 digital in, I didn't go that far. The ZA2 is pricy though, but at the time I bought it, it was the least expensive I could find that had Toslink. If you don't go with th SB Live, it may still be your best bet. I bought mine at Santa Barbara Film & Audio (http://www.sbfilmaudio.com/), they had the best price at the time.

The processor on the ZA2 with the version of SW I have will do direct conversion from wave to MP2, there may be some upgrade to this that will do MP3. I don't know if it will do direct conversion on the input. Anyway, there's another option.