So for $250,what hardware combination would you guys recommend? From what I'm reading you want to have a surround mixer and/or amplifier - suggestions?
Personally? Audio Technia AD700 headphones (99.99 amazon), grab either an Astro Mixamp from the A40 setup on ebay or any dolby headphone mixamp on amazon (they're all about the same quality honestly, and run between 49.99-99.99) and just an X-fi Titanium soundcard (49.99-59.99) and a Zalman clip-on microphone (8.99 amazon). That's for gaming.
For watching movies, listening to music and so on I would maybe choose a more bass heavy pair of headphones, although honestly these are all closed-back and the pressure buildup tends to give me a headache over time, so I might just stick with AD700's even for home theater, since their sound is still very good and there is a big comfort factor.
It's worth mentioning that if money is tight, you do not need a mixamp right away. Creative's software and the community-made windows 7 64-bit drivers have no problem providing high quality digital surround on their own. Dolby headphone just enhances this. Even without the mixamp, a pair of real headphones combined with a soundcard that supports digital surround, will provide a better and more accurate surround sound experience than any of the headset gimmicks from tritton and razer with multiple drivers in each can, as well as providing higher quality sound since the drivers producing the sound are physically much larger.