The best of all in times of CPU-consuming VST that this little baby eats none CPU !. The sounds sit very comfortable in the mix.

Be shure you get an XGedit editor along with the card to beef up the sounds. It runs on every platform from windows 95 to XP and Mac's. Latency is app. 5 ms.

This card and a bunch of VST's and you are in professional business for a couple of hundred bucks.

I have to say this setup is amazing, and continues to impress me. Even better, yamaha's support for the card on xgfactory.com is incredible. Those guys keep improving the drivers, and now I can run DXI and VST instruments from 5.8ms (win2000) to 11.8ms (winme) latency. The website says 12ms to 30, but those are safe bets, my numbers as you can see are much lower. :)

There is alot of user created add ons for this card, and that makes new items available. This card has a community behind it, that loves it, and helps each other. When you buy this card, you belong to a elite group. It makes this a even better buy..

When used alone this is a killer card, when used with a DSP factory, it's incredible.

The effects on the SW1000xg are good, but the effects and control on the DSP factory are great. It makes it sing. When you add in the multiple XGeditors out there, my personal fav is XGedit, it really increases its value.

The PLG_an sounds great but in my opinio, kind of a pain to work with. But it sounds fantastic...

With the latest drivers soft synths have low latency and they sound great through the card...

You cannot go wrong with this card, and you should get a DSP factory to go with it. There are multiple add on cards you can get, and it seems like it just keeps improving over time..

I love all the orchestral sounds and pads, the drums sound great, and with soft synths, you can continue to add to its value. Any soft synth can be run into the Sw1000xg's output to the dsp factory and use its effects. Check out Vsampler, with it, and these two cards and a add on card, you have a killer setup for pretty cheap..

Highly recommended.

You would have to pry it from my dead hands..

Overall, however, this card can't be beat for a sound module. Of course it isn't a sampler, nor is it a synthesizer, but look elsewhere if that's what you need. With 1000+ patches, you will always find something new. I've been using this card for 3 years (and made 2 CDs and various singles using this card as the majority of my setup), and I've never felt limited by it when used properly as a sound module.

Of course the drums are a bit thin compared to a sampler (can be corrected some using the on-board compressor and EQing), and the pads aren't as dynamic as a real synthesizer, but that's comparing apples to oranges. This thing fulfills its role perfectly.

Want some examples? All of my songs at http://www.ampcast.com/chancesend are produced for the most part with the Yamaha SW1000XG (except for the drums, various effects, the solo violin, and the vocals).

Combine the SW1000XG with the DS2416, and you've got an absolutely killer budget system.