available sound cards

[Gordon Dakin]

Hi,
I have a Gateway computer with a built-in SB AudioPCI 64D soundcard, and I'm using Cakewalk Home Studio. I'm looking for a better soundcard with improved sound quality (and reverb). After looking around on the web, the obvious choice might be Sound Blaster Live!, which supposedly has a "level of sound quality never heard from a pc before". But what puzzles me is that a couple of reviewers have raved about Live!'s sound quality for the low price, but they go on to say they that they would not recommend Live! as your primary soundcard.

So my question is, do any PC sound cards exist with better sound quality than Live!, and is the improved sound quality significant?

Thanks,
Gordon

[JM350]

There are plenty of cards that are better than the Soundblasters. The Soundblasters are gaming cards and don't even make what I would call a good semi-pro audio card. For $150-$200 you can get a good quality two channel card like the M-Audio 2496 or the Echo MIA, for about $250-$400 four channels and for around $500-$1000 eight channels. A few other manufacturers are Aardvark, MOTU, RME, and Lynx.