Just a few comments/ideas.

The Audigy is a very good card.

Investing in better outboard gear and the software you use will get you the most improvement "band for the buck".

I think Audition is Cool Edit which was purchased by Adobe and should give good quality results. I always thought Cool Edit downsampling, dithering, and general format conversion was some of the best sounding.

You might want to invest in an outboard preamp/mixer of sorts. A Prosonus Tubepre is good, and if you can afford the one with the spdif/digital out, that's even better.

The weakness of the Sound Blaster type cards is their AD conversion and noise levels. By doing the AD conversion externally, away from the computer, you minimize noise problems.

Next, if you can afford some studio quality monitor speakers, get them, as well as an amp with a spdif input, again to get away from the sound card based AD conversion, and eliminate noise problems.

My opinion for what its worth. I'm sure the lesson pages here dealing with recording will be quite helpful, although I have not read any of them recently. Alot of it you're just going to have to learn by doing and experimenting a bit.

Peace,
-Rick