Sorry if I have given the wrong info.I run M-Audio 2626 with Pro-Tools and what people told me is that the card itself does not use cpu power but as soon as u run something(like a plug-in\softsynth ect.)on it it does start to use cpu-power.
I never meant to give wrong info...What I do know is that the hardware Pro-Tools system is by FAR the "lightest" system for your computer...
I`ll dive a bit deeper into this because it conceirns me...
All the best;Eric............ 
Don't worry; from my quick little search I can assume that the M-audio is the card, and Pro-Tools is the software? or the other way around?
Either way, it's unlikely to be the "lightest" for the system; no relatively modern sound card consumes any processor time while playing WAVE, MIDI, or any number of other common formats, and cards like the Audigy and X-Fi can perform hardware processing of EAX effects for games. Most Professional Sound systems are in fact more likely to consume CPU power during things like EAX or other "consumer" oriented technologies: they are, after all, aimed at sound professionals; it's not the amount of CPU power they take but the quality of the output that concerns them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_ToolsAdditionally, only the most powerful setup you can get from them includes off-loading processing from the CPU; this is because, as I stated, professionals don't necessarily care about wether it takes CPU power, just that the results are the best they can be, so DSP processing on a separate chip is purely a luxury.
This applies for both Sound cards and video cards: a "professional" level card will NOT suite the needs of your average consumer. professional Level video cards are designed for CAD and other features; although, admittedly, you CAN literally run games like COD4 and quake 4 with them at speeds in excess of 255fps, it's hardly a good reason to spend thousands on a video card when you can get suitably adequate performance (90fps or so) with something like a 9800GT, which is a little over 100 dollars.
The situation with sound cards is even worse; the professional level tools only have professional level features; EAX, and other game-oriented technologies are omitted at the cost of high-precision DSP signal processors and DSP processing drivers (for host-based processing) the idea with professional audio is to have the ABSOLUTE lowest signal to noise ratio, at any cost, this includes the omission (I would imagine) of such luxuries as EAX or A-3d, and perhaps adding 3d-processing type features as part of the signal circuitry, which can only be accessed via their own APIs; this means that running a game with such a system will be no better then running that game with a basic 2-speaker cheap PCI audio card, since all processing of EAX and other 3d audio data has to be emulated; (game makers generally don't include support for esoteric professional APIs).
Returning to the original question, however; as I noted, any non- "value" or "SE" model of card is likely to have on-card . processing of Audio data; My X-Fi, for example, performs MIDI, EAX 5, and so forth on-chip. The X-Fi Xtreme Audio (or it might be the Xtreme Music... whichever is cheapest) is not in fact a Sound card; you essentially pay for the emulation driver which then pipes it's output through the sound card, which has very little to do on it's own, aside from allowing output. This is the case for other cards; the SB Live! Value and Audigy SE, while having an appealingly low price, will likely be no better then onboard audio.
The question here is why you are getting fuzzy audio. If your processor is to slow for host -based processing, you are likely to get choppy sound, but fuzzy would appear to be a symptom of something like an IRQ conflict. Either way, a Separate sound card will certainly help, assuming it provides off-loading of processing from the CPU. The X-Fi is a popular card, but there are similar offerings from Turtle Beach, for example. Also, M-Audio has a line of consumer-oriented sound cards that are far more likely to wor kfor what a consumer uses, since consumers generally don't master Music albums or MIDI soundtracks for professional-level productions.
