Probably the most flexible systems are the ProTools from Digidesign. These come in all levels of cost and performance from stereo up to 128 channels of 192/24 bit. You can essentially do anything you could possibly think of with these systems, and plug-ins for things like reverb and other processing are either included or can be bought. Every movie you will see these days has had it's dialog, music and sound effects created and edited with ProTools, and increasingly purely music recordings are being tracked and mixed completely within ProTools.

www.digidesign.com

As far as stricly consumer sound cards and software, well, I don't really deal with them in professional work, and the software I've tinkered around with has been very lame. You really get what you pay for, so don't expect ultimate performance from a "super magnum sound blaster supreme pro" card that costs $129.95.

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited June 09, 2004).]