at Robin Davies; Thanks for the very interesting extra info, I'll chime in some more about this last bit;
The simple solution, most probably, is to use ASIO drivers. Although chances are not good that a VIA chipset has ASIO drivers.
Fortunately there exists something called ASIO4ALL which does exactly what the name implies and which I heard nothing but good things about from people who had no "pro" level cards but still needed ASIO type performance. Considdering what that driver is meant to accomplish the chances of it working should actually increase the more mundane the hardware in case is. http://www.asio4all.com/ (didn't try this personally) I would expect ASIO4ALL to help people like James accompish surround-ChucKing or analogue/hardware mixing as soon as we would get ASIO into ChucK. I gather this would/should be easy to accomplish but is being held-back by a lack of Princeton ASIO workstations. Kas. (who likes analogue desks)