Kdog

Your best bet here is probably reaper. It has an infinite free trial that you can use until you decide that you like it.

For $200 without the mic I'd reccomend Audio-Technica's ATH-M40x' as they sound really great for the price with a Focusrite Scarlett Solo as an interface. Including a mic will be about another $75-$100 but when you do get one, the at2020 from Audio-Technica will do the trick. Headphones Interface Microphone

Oh yeah, I'm super impressed how well it works. I tried slowly mixing pink noise into my vocal track just to see the point it became overwhelmed and honestly it took a lot more abuse than I expected.

To be fair, you're using an unsupported graphics card by two full generations so I'd expect the performance of it to suffer quite a bit. I just tested it out with OBS and got essentially identical results to Pro Tools and Adobe Audition so I'm guessing that your issues are unfortunately down to the card you're using.

Actually, the Lepai should have an 2.5mm input on it. So all you'd need is a 2.5mm to 2.5mm cable from splitter to amp. If you have anymore questions let me know!

The built in recorder may not allow you to select sources. Audacity is probably your best bet as it's free and fairly simple.

If these speakers aren't powered internally/take power from a brick, you'll need to use a small amplifier. A really good choice would be the Lepai LP-2020TI which will provide power to the speakers. However, you will still need to use the splitter to use your headset.

I actually just did some testing on this so I can answer fairly well. Firstly, I did this two ways, firstly by using a physical loopback cable from the output of my interface back into the input which seemed to be the best way to do so. With that being said, I also tried using VB-CABLE which simulates an input and output. With this, I used the input and output as an insert in Adobe Audition routing some intentionally messy audio and got good results but it was a hassle to setup. If you want more information/have any questions let me know!

Interfaces have both and ADC an DAC component to them usually with high quality preamps. If you have an xlr microphone and a pair of speakers/headphones then I'd recommend running with an interface. If you just have headphones, a DAC should work fine and may even be better as they're specialized for outputting audio. Most people don't have both a DAC and an interface, especially if they have a high quality interface such as an Apollo from Universal Audio or something from Focusrite's higher end range. Let me know if you have any other questions.

So a couple of questions, does it need to be a headset? Like do you need a microphone? Also, what do you mean by 7.1 sound? Do you also want a speaker set? Once you get back to me I can help you figure out what you need.

I could have sworn these came with POE injectors? I think that one of these should work, though. https://store.ui.com/products/u-poe-af

So I don't really see why it wouldn't work except that I'm pretty sure that they're made to only connect to other devices. I.E. The endpoints need to have UI's to connect to the device. This may work for your use case, though.

Right now I'm wearing my pair of M40x's from Audio Technica and absolutely love them.

Unfortunately there wouldn't be an easy way to do this. Quieter hardware may be your best bet.

Ah okay, for only $50 more I would pick the 4040. It's a much more versatile mic than the c214 and I believe has a bit more detail in both the highs and the lows.