When I built my system, I had been searching for card that would acuratly recreate music in a midi format. After much consideration, with features included in my considerations, I decided that the Sound Blaster Live value card was the card for me.
In my system I have two cd roms and an ATI all-in-wonder video card with TV capabilities. That means that on my sound card internally I have to have at least three connections. I was very pleased to find that the sound blaster live card had 5 connections. Two cd rom connections, one analog, and one digital, a TAD connection, an AUX connection, and a SPDIF connection. Not many sound cards can boast to having connectivity like that. I haven't even used all of the connections yet, mainly because I don't have any spdif devices, and I have an external modem.
But back to the midi, I am a musician, and I compose my own music, so I needed something that would connect to my Midi keyboard and transfer what I am playing to a midi file, or take a midi file, and play it with the quality that I would expect from a high-end keyboard. This sound card delivers that kind of quality. I have been impressed over and over with the quality of the sound that this card produces. So impressed in fact that I hardly listen to the sound that my keyboard makes, but the sound as it comes across the sound card from the keyboard.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 150