Am I missing something here?

O.k. so thanks to those of you who helped me before, especially regarding the M-Audio MobilePRE, which I subsequently dumped because it gave me so much trouble I had to swap it out.

So i picked up the presonus inspire 1394 and so far it seems o.k. except for 2 things and let me know if i'm missing something here:

1) I'm running my guitar through a Line 6 POD into the interface and the gain/input levels for the presonus are controlled by a application GUI (no buttons/knobs on the actual hardware), and it sounds terrible unless I turn the output level on the POD down almost 1/2 way is this normal- any thoughts? I believe the presonus has a preamp that could be magnifying the sound, but I can't find a way to turn it off.

2) The presonus has a Mixer Bypass channel that i'm supposed to be able to hear my playback and other computer audio like winamp, media player, TV source when my computers speakers are connected to the presonus output. Well I can't hear my winamp or TV through the speakers!

Essentially I want to be able to record through the presonus firewire connection and have all playback and winamp/tv/whatever come through my original sound card, which eliminates me changing the plugs every time i want to record then listen to music (good for translating) shouldn't I be able to just set the output on the sound control panel to output to the internal sound card, and record through the presonus? I tried this approach and it did not work.

any help is appreciated!