I'm thinking aloud here, but if you have any thoughts please comment.

I've recently bought a new, fairly high spec PC running Windows XP SP2. I have three sound capture devices attached: a SoundMax internal card that came with the PC, a Soundblaster Audigy that I've just added and an M-Audio Firewire 410 audio interface, which I have to record my own music. Sounds complicated. Now I also have Virtual Audio Cables which I suppose falls into this list. (VAC keeps saying "Test" btw?)

I was having problems with the SoundMax, hence the addition of the Audigy. The Firewire interface I regard as a separate issue. Everything can work - I just don't know when it will and when it will fail. I was in at the beginning of the small group meeting last night on the Skypecast and had tested Skype with our friend the Skype Lady before the meet. Everything was OK. Previously I had been using the Java-based Elluminate environment to play back some conference sessions. During our meeting I had Web Huddle running.

At some point I lost the capacity to speak to everyone else. So I swapped soundcards. I'm not sure whether the problem was caused by my machine, Web Huddle affecting my machine, Elluminate leaving my machine exhausted or what. This keeps happening to me and this is putting me off from using Skype (I'm on beta 2.6) and doing the next class activity. It's also making me very cautious about thinking further ahead to hosting a show.

It seems one of the things each of us should have is confidence in the reliability of our setup.

I'm going to remove the Audigy card again and disconnect the Firewire for a while. I probably need to get confident in Skyping and then recording Skype calls. That will be my personal target for the next short while I think.