Ok, I am getting rid of my sblive card.
I want to buy m-audio Audiophile 2496.

I need to use it for:
-MIDI
-MIDI to Audio conversion (using cakewalk)
-Gaming (myst series, black and white, ghost recon)

Any opinions on the audiophile 2496 for these purposes? I have read that it does not support hardware acceleration - is this a limitation for games? (pardon my ignorance).

Summary of my system:
P4 1.6 ghz
1gig ram
geforce mx 4000
Win XP Professional

THANKS!

just a little idea:
Use the SB Live for gaming
and the Audiophile for Audio... would this be ok for you?

I can't speak for the MIDI capabilities of the card, but it's true that you will take a performance hit when using this card for games with 3D sound. Here's a page from The Tech Report reviewing the M-Audio Revolution, which will give you an idea of the performance problems you might see with the Audiophile 2496. Here's another review on Digit-Life showing the same thing. I can't seem to dig up an Audiophile 2496 review that tests gaming performance...

Lokutus01 may be right: if possible, it would be best to keep both soundcards in your system. You can use the Audiophile for music and general listening, but keep the Live for games with hardware-accelerated 3D audio. The Live will sound worse for music, but it's possible that its positional-audio algorithms are better-sounding than the ones used by the Audiophile, so it will sound better for games and run them faster.

Thanks to all.

I can keep both cards in the system, but I am afraid of conflicts.
My music work is done mostly in Cakewalk Home Studio 2004XL.
Cakewalk is good about letting you choose which drivers to use for what.

However, SBlive has been the source of clicking and popping (that and my garbage mb).

Any experience using 2 audio cards in one system?

I have a SB-Live and M-Audio Audiophile and a ESI Waveterminal working in my system ;-)

Sounds like you have a VIA-system: Tried the latest bios-upgrade and latest drivers? Maybe changing the PCI-slot helps.

"Sounds like you have a VIA-system: Tried the latest bios-upgrade and latest drivers? Maybe changing the PCI-slot helps. "

Yup! Asrock M266A with VIA chipset. I have updated the BIOS, the 4in1 drivers, SBlaster drivers, changed PCI slots, changed the latency settings. nothing helps.
The SB currently shares IRQ with the USB bus. However, I am not willing to change the PC to "standard PC" from ACPI so that I could control the IRQ assignments.

I will probably get an INTEL motherboard, and get rid of the ASROCK!

Just a tip, be sure to install the VIA 4-in-1 AFTER installing the SB drivers. The VIA driver will detect the SB card and apply a special patch to fix problems with SB cards and the VIA chipset. Give it a try.