To be honest, after your excellent response, all of which you described is low priority for me. I was doing fine with the bottom-of-the-barrel SoundBlaster, hi latency, no jacks, etc. because i have other tools that can compensate for it. I'm much too miserly with my hard-earned money to spend extra on problems that i can either work around or don't need to account for.
But i'm grateful for the responses from all of you. I will go ahead with the purchase and let you know how the transition goes. Even 50% better CPU and RAM will increase the production of my music a hundredfold...
Thanx guys!!:wink: