Question : Problem: Can you run 2 sound cards on one XP machine?

I'm running an IBM ThinkCenter (fairly new system) that has an onboard SoundMax.  I've been asked to add a second sound card and wanted to ask if this can be done w/o too much problems with conflicts.

Parameters:
Windows XP Professional SP2 - Managed enviroment with Altiris
Second card would be PCI
The need is to record incoming phone calls (they use Audicity) and monitor same calls with headset.
They do need to be able to play back their recordings but we've suggested they use Windows Media Player instead of Audicity.

Answer : Problem: Can you run 2 sound cards on one XP machine?

If you need to record and playback at the same time then all you need is a Full-Duplex sound device - and SoundMax onboard devices are full-duplex.  It may be that you just need to fiddle with the recording and playback levels.

Theoretically, it is possible to have more than one sound device and I've used a rig with multiple sound cards - although they were all PCI sound cards.
In practice, the main difficulty would be to find a PCI card that would not cause an I/O or IRQ conflict with your onboard sound (or indeed a second PCI sound card) and in these days of PlugNPlay and the ACPI hardware layer it's nigh impossible to change these resource settings.