NEW : The amount of memory usable on the SB Live! is actually half the available RAM in your PC!! This means that if u have 128Meg of RAM in your PC,you would be able to utilise (128/2) 64Meg for Soundfonts!! However,there's one other important thing to be aware of and that is the SB Live! is only able to "see" 32 Megs of Soundfonts in real time. Therefore the remaining RAM memory that's available (in the above case,64-32=32Megs) allows the user to load SF into the remaining memory,and select from the 64Megs of SF thru your sequencer's Patch Change command in MIDI. Yup! U've got a KILLER SAMPLER in your hands at the price nearly a tenth of normal samplers!! So for those "power users" who's stuffed 384Megs of RAM for your PC,well,u're gonna be able to load up to 192Megs of Soundfonts!!! Now,that's WAY above 95% of current pro samplers! So far,Akai's new S6000 can be fully loaded with 256Meg of RAM. But the SB Live! can equal that when u put 512Meg (1/2 a GIG!!!) of RAM in your PC!! Whoa!! These amounts of RAM is making me dizzy!!! :-P In any case,I hope this sheds a little bit more light about your new SB Live! card...stay tuned for more "discoveries"!!

So these Card rocks !!!!

Strengths: It has a nice Reverb for a SoundCard: Better than EWS64XL and any other. However, the TerraTec EWS64XL has a better, brighter sound; able to show off a greater, higher frequency response. And EWS64XL records more real-time audio and has a built in Mod file player and comes with a "dual" digital I/O channel! But of course, this all comes at a stepper price. I have more than one sampler for my two PCs, because I am developing Sample Libraries for PCs. The SoundBlaster Live, however, sounds better on the whole than any other sound card that I have listened to, except the EWS64XL (I am refereing to its Sampling, not audio! The EWS64 is also superior Audio wize, too!) I would like to know how the SBLive compares to the AVM Apex, sound quality wise. One advantace the AVM Apex has overall the others is the Kurzweil DSP and sampler. It can import .KRZ files, and if you have a MAC, you can copy files of a Kurzweil CD-ROm via Mac then transfer these files to your PC to load into the Kurzweil! But the SBLive is the best card to get, if you can only afford one and $150 is not to much for your budget!