If i were to get a soundblaster exitgy unit, would that be good for hooking up a receiver and surround sound stereo to? or would i want something better?

I think that you mean hooking up your 6 surround-sound speakers to your computer. You can't hook up a receiver to a computer, a receiver is an AM/FM radio signal amplifier that is a separate thing to itself. You CAN,however, find online music broadcasting stations that function like a radio receiver-I listen to a couple all the time. I am not acquainted with that particular soundcard, but look on the description and the picture of the card. The ports should have the standard single audio-out jack (which will take care of your two side speakers and sub woofer), and in addition there should be two more, Center and Rear. Total of three (3) audio out ports.

ok, in light of ranchhand's post, i realize he is correct, however what im looking to do is hook up a amplifier then, i called it a reciever because all the ones i've seen usually recieve AM/FM, and therefore are dubbed recievers. I guess what i ment was to hook up my soundcard to a "home theatre reciever" and the "home theatre reciever" would be hooked up to a sort of 5.1 surroundsound stereo system. a picture of this item i call a "home theatre reciever" is at this ebay link: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3067536783&category=1499 im reffering to the large object in the middle, with the large volume control knob on it.

Music is not recorded in surround sound. Dolby and similar systems are primarily for the soundtrack of movies. If music is the main purpose of what you want to do, then hooking up the output of any soundcard to a "receiver/amp" will work. I personally have an old Sansui 5000 receiver and Pioneer speakers connected to a SBLive value output. I use it to play MP3 files in a large area. It works great. I use Winamp and playlists. Keep in mind that the quality of the sound can only be as good as the worst component in the system and the source sound determines what quality can come from the speakers. MP3 files aren't that great to begin with so it works great for me.