We all know Creative soundcards are crap with even worse drivers, but now they're even forbidding some guy to release drivers that actually work. Apparently they're just hoping everybody who has problems with his old Creative card will buy a new model.
Link

Its nice that such people still exist. I understand the company's side though. Best not to buy Creative products.

I stopped buying creative products years ago. Their drivers are utter and complete shit. Their sound card hardware has always been decent to great, in my opinion, but most of the rest of the crap they build is.... crap. Hence why I have to use a laptop to put new music on my Zen. Bunch of money grubbing bastards.

If/when I have to buy a sound card, I buy from Turtle Beach.

Wow, this guy is picking up fame fast. I saw the story on a website that is the estonian equivalent of pricewatch.com

I'm owner of the one of very first SB Live!s. It still works and I guess I will be ok so long as I use a desktop mech. After what I see in the linked thread, somehow I feel need not to buy any creative product in the future, so I come with a practical question:

For the laptop; What sound card I am after if I want good MIDI reproduction? I guess it will have to be external, but without Creative, I don't know what else to look at, except if I go for professional systems that cost 700eu and more, and are being ordered from Italy, Germany, Belgium etc.

I think there are a fair number of USB options that don't require Creative.

http://www.google.com/products?q=usb+so ... en&show=dd

Sat, I'm often doing small house music production (In other words, I'm a composer). So I thought not every available sound card would suffice for my needs. For example, I would like if it had capabilities of Creative's cards, when we're speaking of sound effects and SF2 support. So, I might be wrong but I don't think it is *that* simple.

For an example, add "soundfonts" to your query and voila:

http://www.google.com/products?q=usb+so ... en&show=dd

Only Creative's cards. I like the costs through, but screw it if only Creative supports the things I'm dependent on. (I hope now the problem has become a bit more clearer?)

*Guiltily strokes X-FI*

I think soundfont is a Creative creation, hence why only their cards support it. Doing a quick search for programmable usb sound cards yielded a whole lot of nothing, though. You may well be correct in that you're stuck with Creative for that.

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=pro ... =recording
Consider buying them from an American site like Amazon. I'm not sure what the exchange rate between your local currency and the Dollar is, but considering the uneven rate between the Dollar and the Euro is mostly the Dollar's fault, chances are Dollars are cheap for you as well.

Actually I could move to VST, but there I would be total n00b. I am not even sure I would not need a special sort of sound card to use VST properly.

no, vst works with basically any sound card as far as I can tell. I use fruity loops and vst with the integrated sound on my motherboard. If there are limitations, they're very small.

You're in luck: Apparently Asus has started to make sound cards as well. Review.

I read the entire review, then some more on the more powerful version and suddenly it hit me, I really dont care

The entire review? That's quite a bit, I only read the conclusion and a small article about it on a Dutch tech news site.