Looking for best middleware for a Buck

I'm putting together a budget list and was looking at RadGameTools...why in #*&@$ is their tools so expensive?? Granny is $12,500 bux?? Holy crap, Torque is capable of doin just about everything Granny can with character and model exports, the only thing they got goin is the morph target usability and its unstable at times! Am I wrong to complain about thier prices on everything? Miles Sound, Bink, sheesh....

Anyways, is there any alternatives to Sound and Video compression tools I can add in the budget for a 3rd party, low budget company? Doesnt DirectX have its own sound api, im a noob to DirectX :P

I like Bink and Miles, both really powerful tools, but is the price of their SDKs really worth it? Is there alternatives I should be aware of?

Also, Im kinda new to creating budget lists too, besides salaries, software, licenses, copyrights/trademarks, lawyers, hardware, office space, utilities, and taxes, is there anything else I need to add? :) I suppose I could add food (vending machines), office supplies and gas.