Well, three cheers for Magix! 8-) I'm a Samplitude/Sequoia user, and have had little or no troubles getting Sequoia V8.03 to run under Vista. Actually, I'm enjoying the benefits of Vista on two computers, and have seen very little downside to it, despite all the naysayers and portents of doom.

That said, I'm surprised your other two software apps don't run. Vista is much better than some would have you believe when it comes to running "legacy" software. I can't think of any single piece of software I have that won't run under Vista, esp if it ran OK with XP or lower. (Have you contacted at least the websites of your other two apps to see if they offer any help or Vista tips/patches?)

As for buzzing in your sound card, the first thing I would do is to check and make sure you have the right input selected. It sure sounds like you're using the wrong input or something. (Here is where Vista DOES sometimes give you too many choices. You have to poke around under the hood here, see below....) I'm not sure how it works with Magix 2005, but in Samp/Sequoia, there's a drop-down menu that will let you choose playback and record devices. Somewhere in there should be boxes that will let you choose the proper I/O devices.

In Vista's new audio applette in the control panel area, you have more choices and more flexibility in naming and sorting your audio devices. Once the drivers are loaded, you may end up with more icons than you'd think. (For reasons I don't know, at least for my Mackie Onyx stuff, Vista seems to add extra copies of inputs and outputs that aren't really there, and gives them new names, usually in parenthesis afterwards, like: Soundblaster 1&2 (3&4), Soundblaster 1&2 (5&6) and so on. I've never been able to get any sound in or out of these selections, and I usually de-select them in Samp/Sequoia.

On the other hand, Vista now gives you these somewhat-useful VU meters (Bar graphs, really) on the right hand side of the audio driver window. If you run audio into your inputs one at a time, you can see - by the bar meter - which one is hot, and re-name it accordingly. This is VERY handy, and the names carry over into any other app you use. For me, this is a HUGE step up from XP (as much as I love XP).

What I do when setting up my audio drivers in Vista is to run signal from a CD or other constant-state sound source, one at a time, and name them accordingly. You'll want to keep the names somewhat short and descriptive, because chances are your audio/music application may not give you a very big window at the other end of things in which to read the name of the input/output you want to select.

Again, remember that those extra I/Os probably don't do anything at all - best to ignore them and use only the ones you've set up in the Vista Audio Driver Applette under the Control Panel.

Hope that helps you somewhat....