[moon]

Sound card mixer software is all about monitoring. Think of it as the front end to a hardware mixer which lives in the soundcard. It *only* affects what you send to the soundcard hardware outputs.

There are two things you can send to the hardware outputs:

(1) input streams: ie raw audio captured from one of the hardware inputs

(2) PCM streams: the computer's internal audio format. These are called audio outputs in your DAW software but it's important to remember that they're not the hardware outputs on your sound card. They're software outputs which the card makes available to the operating system. For example, I've got 8 software outs with my M-Audio 2496 even though the card only has two analogue outs and SPDIF. Audio apps use these channels to feed audio into the sound card, and then the sound card mixer software mixes them down to the hardware outs (along with input streams, if desired).

A simple monitoring setup would be stereo output from the DAW arriving at the sound card mixer software as two channels which you pan hard left and right to hardware outputs 1 & 2. Mute everything else - all the other outputs and all of the inputs.

For direct monitoring, turn up the appropriate input fader(s) in the sound card mixer software. Note that this only affects the monitoring mix, ie what is being sent to the hardware outputs. It does not affect the input signal level being sent to the DAW. You can mute all the inputs in the sound card mixer software and the DAW will still get a signal.

Another way to use the sound card mixer is for an FX send and return. The DAW sends (say) the L&R outputs of an insert in a stereo bus to a couple of unused PCM streams (software outs). The sound card mixer software can then send these channels to a pair of hardware outs connected to the external reverb unit or etc. The DAW insert then picks up the return signal from a couple of hardware inputs. Again, the input part of the pathway is not affected by the sound card mixer software.

To sum up: use the sound card mixer to hook up PCM streams (software outs) and input streams to the correct hardware outputs - nothing else. All the real mixing is done in the DAW.