OK, I am a dumbass.

Help me understand near-field monitors. I am setting up a home studio (largely for recording our band.) I had planned on plugging my DAW into my harmon kardon amp and powering two JBL bookshelf speakers and two larger american acoustic speakers. My thought was that I would be able to a/b large and small speakers while mixing.

"Ordered the Asus P4B266-C w/aud and USB2.0 "
I don't think this is the board w/audio and USB2.0. You may want to check, from what I remember, the board you stated is USB 1.1, and has no on-board audio. I believe you need just the Asus P4B266(don't know about all the revisions out there).

I friend of mine tried upgrading from his trusty 9600's to G4's. But he runs massive pro tools sessions, and can only get 7 cards to work on the G4. This would be fine by many peoples standards, but we can't open session that we previously did with 20+ cards. Just be warned, if you want more than 7 cards to work on your system - stick with the 9600's.

E-cue
ICQ #5495501