Hi: You're not going to find terribly much of quality that will do all you want for less than $200, that's for sure. You also won't find normal consumer cards that support asio. If you can help it, I'd suggest a firewire interface for serious asio use, I.E. both audio and midi via VSTI, DXI, lots of processing, etc, although you can get away with a USB interface if that's what you have.
Also, none but Creative cards support sound fonts natively, and you'll not want to try using a Creative card with asio... it's \a bad idea, both in principal and in practice. If you really need sound font support, I'd suggest trying something like SFZ. Of course, I have no idea how useful this will be under VSTHost, most likely not very. Effects? Now you're getting into territory that is simply best left to something other than a sound card, for anything serious! Seems to me that you want far too much for far too little, but this is simply my opinion on things. This having been said, have a look at the M-Audio Audiophile USB, M-Audio fastrack, Tascam US-122, or the M-Audio MobilePreUSB. Also, if you really want to go cheap, Phonic and Behringer make some external interfaces, but I have no idea what they're like. Have fun? Did you miss a message? Well, don't. http://www.mail-archive.com/talk2%40andrelouis.com/ has it for you. Never miss a Talk2 message again.
