[sporty540]

Hi,
Hopefully someone has experience with this. I have a Dell E510 which has a built-in sound device on the mobo. It's listed as SigmaTel Audio.

I also have a USB Plantronics headset (DSP 500). When I plug it in, sometimes it works. Sometimes if I unplug it and plug it in again, it works. Sometimes I have to reboot to get it to work.

Either way, I cannot record 'what you hear' (what's coming through my speakers) with the built-in sound chip. I understand that's a limitation of the SigmaTel Audio chip and I'll need a separate sound card to be able to do this, and I've found a good deal on a Soundblaster Audigy 4, which I'm about to buy.

Question is, the Audigy has regular jacks on it, not USB. That's probably okay, as I've just been plugging headset into one of the front usb ports anyway. Do you know if my USB headset will work okay after I install this soundcard? Should the system recognize it and just force the headset to overrride the sound card? And if so, will I still be able to record what I'm hearing through the headset?

I"m not a big gamer or anything, I just want to record mostly audio clips (educational stuff), but the Audigy is about $40 shipped after rebate, so it's a good deal.

Any help is appreciated!