Thanks Steve!
Even though you don’t name a card specifically, that is still good help for me.
I also am going to try out my M-Audio 2496 for a bit longer without ASIO4ALL installed and see if that makes a difference before trying something else. I had read that some people have trouble with that. It has built in ASIO driver anyways, so I’ll see how that goes, then if it works out OK, i can put the money towards decent monitors instead. When this card works, its a beast. When it doesn’t, its frustrating. But hopefully going sans-ASIO4ALL will do it.
I particularly appreciated your advice re: not buying a USB interface. I do heavily use a lot of VSTis (my music really is entirely based on using VSTis, and rarely the odd wav someone else sampled). So latency from USB was a concern from me that you helped validate. So as a backup plan, if you or anyone know some good PCI(?) soundcards that would be good for Cubase + several VSTis, I’m all ears. Again I’ll stress that I have no need for live instruments… can’t see that ever being a need, but if it will be, I’ll address it then.
Thanks again for your advice and helping me understand the terminology!