My SoundBlaster Live! Platinum is awesome. I think it's the best.

My Monster Sound MX300 works great.

See what do u need most, EAX or A3D, SBlive has more powerful DSP chip make it lower CPU utillization card makes it useful especially for lower spec. system, while aureal based cards such as Mx300 has much better sound positioning effects on particularly 2 channel based audio speaker system, but heavier cpu%is needed.

Also remember that the DSP chip on the SBLive is upgradable through software - we may see better position sound from future driver releases. I would also like to say that I consider low CPU unilisation an importsnt issue (even though I have an Athlon 800) - it really helps to have as much horsepower as possible when running the latest 3D games - this is especially true if you have a video card other than the Geforce series (which of course have a GPU which helps offload the cpu from some 3D Tasks.)
 
You may have guessed from this that I'm a bit of a Creative fan - I chose the SB Live mainly because it's more than just a games card - the Live Drive and Live Drive II addons supply you with an array of very useful inpuits and outputs - digital - digital optical and analogue phono which every biudding musician will find extremely useful. It's also nice to be able to link an MP3 player or DAT machine digitally to the card - resulting in no quality loss during transfers (I know some Aureal cards also have digital out dut the connectors are no as flexible as those on the Live).
 
[This message has been edited by Damien (edited 26 May 2000).]

Er... And remember Aureal is filing for bankruptcy, so it is doubtful that newer drivers will be released.
 
Which leaves ESS, Cirrus Logic, and Creative Labs. Beyond those companies, there aren't all that many options.
 
[This message has been edited by DrSchmoe (edited 27 May 2000).]

Good point - well made.

DrShmoe keep in mind that just because a company files for bankruptcy doesnt mean that they have no hope at all. If you remember, Creative Labs drove Aureal into bankruptcy by filing a lawsuit against Aureal claiming that Aureal violated certain patents on Creative's EMU sound chips. A good bulk of Aureal's money was spent on defending the lawsuit, and even tho Aureal emerged victorious in the end, it sapped their resources pretty bad. Creative filed the lawsuit knowing full well that even if they didnt win at the very least they could drive Aureal out of business. For this reason, i will never buy another product made by Creative Labs. It is my hope that will Aureal's new President and new board members, they can continue to be a driving force in the way 3d sound is heard.

Take it easy, folks, A3D truly shines when it comes to sound source positioing, HRTF, occulsion kind of cool stuff...
 
Try enabling A3D in Q3A, you will have another dimension waiting for you, I try it on my SBlive; though the Q3A is not officially supporting EAX, the difference is very profound.
 
[This message has been edited by tylau (edited 29 May 2000).]

I have the SoundBlaster Live Platinum. Don't see every changing.
 
Plus combined with the cambridge 5.1 dolby speaker system it's even better.

SB live drivers for win2k is very buggy now, new drivers will hopefully come mid-june.
It is a shame creative sued aureal but it is also a shame quake3 only supports a3d and not directsound3d. I hope id will make a patch that supports eax 2.0 when it comes and if it has wavetracing.

There will never be a patch for eax in quake 3
 
And how are the drivers buggy? They work fine for me.

Mx300 works great for me. The current drivers are ok and they work fine on Duel setup