Really nice, bright sound with lots of headroom.

Very, very low latency, astoundingly so! Must be the 32 bit DSP.

Top notch all the way.

Top notch card for the price.

Never really used it but they give you some decent manuals (PDF's).

It's a very good product but obviously a break out box would be more sexy but it would be more expensive.

Hobbyist

Rock, folk jazz

Blows away what I had before (Trutle beach Santa Cruz) The included Protesus X soft synth sounds great (although it is a CPU hog!)

The software bundle alone is worth the price of admission. I was a Home studio user so the Sonar LE software was a nice little upgrade. The dsp effects are neat, although I was slightly disappointed in that you can't use more than one or two at time in real time.

Seems well built....no forseen issues here.

What a deal....very happy with purchase

Excellent. EMU responded almost instantly to my e-mail to inform me of Flash Bios update. Only frustrating because I bought the card on a Friday night and wanted to play with it all weekend but EMU support wasn't available over the weekend

For the price it's awesome. About the only thing more you could ask for is additional I/O or a break out box.

Hobbyist

Contemporary Christian / Praise and Worship

The line out quality of this is simply amazing. You have to remember the emu-0404 is NOT meant to power your sound equipment, simply to provide a high quality line out. You ought to have it running into an amp or dac for it to come near its potential.

So many connection possibilities. Several great programs including patchmix.

Extremely well made. Shows its quality in the sound it puts out.

Nothing in its price range comes close to the abilities of this card.

Well, its creative.

The dongles on the back aren't sexy, but it stomps my audigy2 for music quality.

Audiophile

Rock, Trip hop, Indie

cristal clear.i love the quality it puts out for the price.its well worth the money.i give it a 8 because the ONLY 2 cards thats better is the emu 1212 & the emu 1820.

everything you need and want in a 100 dollar sound card plus a little more.

top notch and the good thing is its only 100 bucks!!! the emu 1212 is just a tad bit better and cost dubble the price.the 0404 is well worth 100.

well worth it.

i never need to use it but i heard it was top of the line support.

well.....i got it...lol

rap

Hip Hop & R&B

I've had this product for about a year maybe more. I have the 1212m. Sound wise, I think it sounds great. I had a ess something or the other before I bought this, paid about the same for it

The patch mmix is awesome, once you get your head around it. Took me a while, but I could see what was possible and struggled on. The fact that I can use logic for my parts and record a mix straight into samplitude or cool edit is great. No wires, no fuss. DSP and vst, big problem for me, waste of time in fact. They don't work in logic 5.5 for P.C. None of the updates have sorted this, in fact they make my system unstable, so I've not advanced from 1.6. But having said that they work in cubase, which I don't use, and have waves so I'm not sure I'd use the effects anyway. So 1.6 works and I'm cool with that.

Pretty good build, don't know about going on the road though, but hey it's a pci card so i wouldn't expect it to last forever.

The best at this price, and maybe a little higher.

Emu is a strong product name in music. Creative is Naff. Together not sure, but I think emu have had a lot of input on this product, and does what it says on the tin, so has a slight sex appeal, more if they drop the creative logo.

Active Producer, Terry Brookes

Techno, Dance

Awesome low noise, crystal clear recordings.

Cool features, great software!!!

Awesome!! Got quite a few great sounding recordings already.

Can't beat it for the price

Never used

Active Musician

Hard Rock/Metal/Thrash/Neo-Classical

For the price range, it sounds absolutely excellent. I don't know what actual converters are used, but they've no doubt trickled down from whatever was top of the line just a few years before.

While the 1010 is the most basic Emu card, the Patchmix software is completely insane (in a good way) and unprecedented at this price point. You can basically route ANYTHING, from the card's actual physical inputs and outputs, to all of your software's virtual inputs and outputs, to ANYTHING else; the sky's the limit. My most common "tricky" use for this is to record live mixdowns from Cubase into CoolEdit in realtime, rather than just rendering the mixes to disk. I'm not sure what's going on with the summing mathematically, but it definitely sounds better than just bounce-mixing! I couldn't do this on any other card in this price range. The onboard MIDI is exceptionally tight with the included Cubase LE and my existing copy of SX - it's noticeably tighter than my previous USB-based MIDI interface, especially when driving analog synths over a MIDI-to-CV converter. If you've struggled with sloppy MIDI timing from USB interfaces, you'll be pleased with how this tightens things up. I really can't vouch for the onboard effects; I never use them. Though I imagine that they're useful for setting up monitor mixes for tracking.

There's a definite learning curve with the Patchmix software; it's not as user-friendly as it could be, especially to someone who's never worked with the extensive routing that it offers. It took me about a week to get my head around it, and I've worked with the equivalent in the analog world. The included manual is quite lacking in this area, so I'd imagine that a neophyte would have a bit of trouble learning it. On the other hand, the ability to easily save and recall different patchmix presets and the included templates allow this to easily function as a "set it and forget it" card for those that just want to record the stereo inputs and maybe use the MIDI ports.

I've had no problems with it, though I'd worry about the heavy breakout cables putting strain on their jacks if it were mounted higher on my tower (I have it in the bottom slot, so the cables rest on the floor). My one frustration with the card has been that about once a week, it completely stops making any sound. This is easily fixed by choosing "restore defaults" in the patchmix software, but that requires a PC restart. Adding to the frustration is that this is a widely-recognized problem, but Emu seem to have no intention of fixing it. Not life-changing, but definitely an annoyance.

This is inarguably the best value for audio cards in its price range; it sounds better than anything else out there and it can do ten times what most of them can do when it comes to routing and onboard stuff.

It seems that software updates for the card have ceased at this point, though they do seem to have fixed the major bugs with the exception of the aforementioned "silence" bug.

It's an audio card, so it's utilitarian and unsexy. I do have to comment that the included Patchmix software is UGLY - it's an eye-straining shade of green that looks embarrassingly "techy" and "Matrix"-y. Luckily, there are a ton of free, user-created skins for the software out there on the internet, and I quickly replaced it with a very pleasant, clean one.

Active Musician and home recordist

Electro

the sound quality is great. neck & neck with the audiophile if not better.

this card includes everything you need. you dont need any hardware but a preamp. you apply the effect to your input before it ever touches you software recording program. for all you out there read the maual. its not a plug & play type thing. you half to understand how it works in order to get its full benifit. I payed $100 the audiophile is like twice that with no effects. then the effect work as vst's in side you software with no lag an your proccesor. This is buy far the best pc sound card on the market at this price. The emu line is the best line of sound card on the market. Forget all the other stuff no mixer or hardwarer needed!! Its the!! I own this and it work great never had a problem. dont listen to the reviews of people who cant read a manual

Its great and reliable

i would expect this product to cost 3 times what i paid

that i got it a 1010 delta or a 828 im good

recording engineer for a small recordlabel with alot of experiance

hip hop,rnb,rap, pop

24 bit at 44.1kHz and 48kHz sampling is fine for me. 96kHz is only available through the S/PDIF digital interfaces.

Unbeatable features if you want to do home recording. One nice feature is that you can save mixer sessions for easy recall if you need to have different setups for different software.

If your looking for a super duper sound card, this is not it. But if your looking to do high quality recording on your PC, you can't buy a better card for $100 than this.

None needed so far.

Home Recording Hobbyist

Folk, Gospel, Alternative

I think it is a very clean card. Unfortunately, I can't get it to work well enough to really judge it accurately.

Lot's of bells and whistles if you can find them them through the maze of pop-up windows. The work space design in Cubasis (the provided recording software is messy and difficult to figure out if you are new to the Cubasic format. It is missing a very major feature, AUDIO DRIVER!!! It's only way of recording audio is through the wave playback feature through Windows. Unfortunately most of the time Windows doesn't see it. And when it does it can't do it in stereo.

Oh it seems ok... craftmanship looks as good as any other soundcard I've seen. Actually a quite attractive looking card.

Worthless if you want to record audio. I thought I was getting a real sound card, not a virtual fx interface disguised as an audio recording device.

Follow the web page instructions correctly and it still won't work right. I don't think I'll even bother calling them, I'm going to return it to the store where I got it. I'm going to tell them the audio driver is malfunctioning. That's a joke because it doesn't have one.

I was excited when I popped it in... the install went smooth. I played back some of my previous recorded stuff on a cheap SB Live card. I sounded great. Then I tried to record with it and the nightmare began.

Musician, Hobbyist

Anything Rock

The sound works when I get it to magically work and configured the 2 out of 36 times I've tried.

The features appear to work when I get it to magically work and configured correctly the 2 out of 36 times I've tried.

Seems like it will last forever considering how often I get to use the thing.

I guess it IS worth the money if you have a degree in music recording theory but not for the average musician who just wants to record.

I did what the website has suggested and I still cant get it to work right.

Like a prostitute it looks great from afar but when you get it out of the box and installed it's nothing but problems.

Indie rock

When I could get it to work, it had about a 50/50 chance of recording clean. Occasionally, one channel would be all crackly, but never the same channel twice. I think others have said it better, but the first time I managed to get two clean tracks laid down, the ASIO send just stopped halfway through the third.

I would cut off every single tail on the fan if I could just get one input to record for 20 minutes (not continuous, total!) without crapping out either the PC, the host application, or itself. I really don't care about any of its other features when it can't do simple 2-channel recording (strangely enough, what I purchased it for).

It was clean.

Never never never never never never buy anything with the word 'CREATIVE' on it.

I've seen enough to know not to go that route. I've owned it for 48 hours, and will own it only long enough for its replacement to come in the mail. And if that don't work either, I'm off to dedicated hardware land.

UGH. Don't fall for the one or two positive reviews -- I did, and lo and behold I'm adding a coffin nail of my own.

Avid Hobbyist

Blues / Folk

Cannot get it to produce consistent output - popping and noise half the time, no sound a quarter of the time, and works the rest. I did everything recommended by e-mu, installed the hotfixes and upgraded xp to sp2. Didn't make any difference. Read the e-mu forums, this is a widespread problem and seems to be a driver issue that e-mu has not straightened out yet. I would personally weigh the negative reviews on this more seriously than the others, which sound like advertisements.

Who cares if it doesn't work. Woo-hoo features!

Rushed to market before the programmers had time to debug!? Sounds familiar. But this is the worst when it affects to core fuctionality of the product. At least MS bugs usually only affect your other non-MS apps.

Can't record most of the time. Value is worthless product to me.

Got a quick response to an email online. Advice didn't work.

Active Muscian

Indie(?) rock

Good 24 bit recording quality.

Lots of effects and channels. You can configure the card using the PatchMix software about anyway you can think of. Highly configurable.

Active Musician

Rock

the sound is good but whats the use with the most unstable drivers. the drivers havent been updated in ages emu needs to step up their support.

features are ok, nothing spectacular or better than the other guys

read the manual a few times

ok quality as far as the hardware side, software side your on your own

dont bother

dont even bother, unless you like getting the run around

never again will i buy any emu/creative soundcard product

The card is quiet and sounds good. Software interface sucks.

Included lots of unusable DSP effects. They are noisy if you use more than one at a time. Folks in the EMU forums are all ahving the same problem.

Quality is ok. Seems well made and easy to install.

I would not by another Creative/EMU product

Don't count on EMU for any help. If they ever do get back to you, they just BS you with all the typical PR junk.

I don't ever want another one

Active Musician

Jazz

Excellent 'workhorse' soundcard. Excellent value.

Would buy again.

Active Musician

pop

Very clean, flat, detailed sound. The analogs are very high quality and sound great with a headphone amp. It can also record/playback up to 192khz with the newest drivers.

2 analog ins/outs, coax/optical in/out, MIDI in/out. Great options for the price range.

Very high quality, probably the best card you can buy at $100.

Great value.

Never had problems, thus i never had to call support.

CLEAR, CRISP, no noise or hiss.

The mixer, sends and patching are complex so makes it hard to work it just going for it, so 1 point off, but the more I read and play with it the more interesting it is. The effects and ability to connnect sofware to software digitally is great. The free sofware is "free software", works great with my cubase sl.

It's a card so not much to say, solid, the blue is cooler then the green cards but since it's in your puter I guess it really doesn't matter.

Couldn't believe it was only 99. For all the stuff you get and the sound it's a real bargain.

Haven't used it because theres a great forum online, lots of users and some very helpful people from emu http://www.productionforums.com/emu/default.asp

It's all good. But after using it I think I should have gotten one of the bigger ones or at least the 1212m because this one is not expandable(!) i'm seriously starting to want more inputs since the mixer is so good, no latency at all and sounds SO much better then my mixer, lots of good effects, cuts down on the spaghetti factor. After listening to the card by itself and comparing it to having my mackie connected its night and day. If this cheapy one is that much better, can't even imagine what those Digi converters sound like.