Recording/Sound Card Help.

I just bought Sonar X1 Essentials and I like the product.  I'm a real noob so I'm thinking I'm going to be on these forums a lot in the near future.

My computer lets just say was not built for music production and will need to be replaced.  It is an HP Pavilion with a Realtek sound card (which I already know is crap for recording).  

The problem I am having is when I try to record an audio track from a midi source within sonar itself.  I.E. I have Studio Keyboard Soft Synth set up and with a few notes of sample recorded.  That sample plays back just fine.  When I try recording it to an Audio Track is when I have a problem.  It records but the playback of that recording is scratchy and warbly, just overall terrible. 

From previous posts on here it sounds like it is a sound card issue.    My question here is would a sound interface such as M-Audio address this problem?  

first, you're in the wrong forum.  this is the Music Creator forum.  the X1 forum is at the top of the list of subforums.

second, you don't record MIDI to AUDIO so that's why you're having trouble doing it. 

there's no necessity for making it an audio track at all except to save on resources.  you can apply FX directly to the OUTPUT track or INSTRUMENT track depending on which type of track you used for your MIDI/softsynth combination.

if you need to convert a MIDI/output track to AUDIO tho, you don't record it, you either FREEZE it or BOUNCE it to an AUDIO track.

look in the help files on how to FREEZE or BOUNCE to convert the MIDI/output tracks to audio.  I also recommend working thru the tutorials included in the help files with X1.  they're very helpful and hands on for things like this.