i don’t know why creative is being stoned to death by almost all veteran musicians? they’re cheap for beginners like me, has mediocre ASIO performance, and sounds rather decent too, although they’re not extremely flat-sounding.
personally i find them value for money… and in my place you can’t find anything better than an audigy 2 platinum ex.
Creative has pretty decent cards imo, but you have to remember that musicians are not their main target audience.
you forgot to install kx drivers.
ps. actually i’m not the creative’s fan, but i don’t give a damn for number of sliders and bits which i don’t hear.
i would agree with bantai. creative’s i/p and o/p and AD conversion is not quite good… i’ve read reports somewhere on the net about this.
platinum versions usually come with more RAM and a nice breakout box and tons o’games and such. that would increase the price by a substantial amount.
anyway, the computermusic mag has given it good reviews as an all rounder… so i suppose for beginners doing tracking it’s a good idea. most of our stuff is bounced, so it bypasses the i/o ports 
Many people believe the bogus that Creative states on their site (eg. their cards are pro-audio). At first sight it seems it is true, but once you put really put it to the test it will fail. Indeed, these cards are for gamers and ‘normal’ users and are made to be connected to a crappy 5.1 computer speaker system (instead of near-field monitors).
If you buy such a card, it is packed with stuff you actually do not need (eg. games, stickers, etc.), while basic things like a MIDI implementation chart are missing. Also drivers reveal the card is actually not suited for musicians. Loads of uninteresting EAX settings, CD players and annoying toolbars , but no Asio control or even a descent SoundFont manager.
With the 3rd party Kx Drivers everything looked promising but even Kx can not do anything about low cost design amplifiers. The hum and static noise the Live generates, makes it unusable for any musical application.
eh…? are you realy sure about that? the platinum cards aren’t very cheap, you can get a real pro audio soundcard for the same price… I don’t know how it is with hammerfall cards but I surly know that you can play games without problems on cards from the M-Audio’s delta-series for example, so to buy a pro card doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t use it for anything else than to make music.
And Mr Bantai, that’s a bunch of not very convincing arguments you have there. The drivers is infact the most important foundation of all factors when it comes to soundcards, without good drivers it doesn’t matter how good hardware there is in your soundcard. Myself for example didn’t buy my soundcards because it has good inputs/outputs, I bought it because it has the hardware and drivers that makes it possible to use 15-20 VSTi’s, several harddiskrecorded tracks, lot of effects etc etc. at the same time on a low latency. Something that is impossibe on a card from creative… Ofcourse it is nothing to complain about if you buy a “crap-card” and expect a “crap-card” 
but creative has actually market their platinum series as the alteretive for more advanced users, and there isn’t infact any stickers on their boxes that says “for gamers only” , so I would not say it is very strange that many people feels cheated when they buy their soundcards (Myself, for example, was once one of them)…
…and to answer your question: yes, creative’s cards suck
I found my SB Live! a decent soundcard but not for serious production purposes. I used WaMi Rack 192 and studio equipment for some production of my new album. Still it’s a good for any hobby musicians or gamers purposes.
If I’d have more money to spend I’d buy Terratec DMX 6 Fire. It has a good price/value and has been praised in many tests and music gear magazine. (Future Music etc.)