The sound card is bad. It is consumer level and is not made for professional quality recording.
Here are the comments of one professional sound engineer I know on the Creative labs cards.
That asides you still don't have enough inputs band how are you going to interface with the XLR backs of the SM57s / SM58s ?
There are no XLR inputs on the cards ! Even i there were you could only use 2 (stereo L and R- Id forget about the RCA inputs) at one given time.
One solution may be to record to a desk and mix there in which there is no point in having posh mixing software.
AS far as software goes if you are willing to drop 600 bucks o it Id go for Sonar 3. However to take full advantage of this you will need to have the appropriate hardware, like enough Mic's.
You may also find that latency becomes a huge issue with this card if you are recording at a high bit rate / sampling frequency. I saw the specs in the Creative website and in order to get the latency down (at192/24) they had to drop a channel and record in mono. This is the opposite of what you want.
My advice is buy a Tascam portastudio with 4 SM57 / 58s.
You can then import the tracks from the portastudio into the computer later and mix, edit etc at a later date. You can also then export the tracks as MP3s etc
OR you will need a digital interface like the TASCAM
My instructors page and www.studiotrax.net for all things recording.
my toons Brought to you by Dr BadGAS
my toons Brought to you by Dr BadGAS