I would also like to point out one often unnoticed difference between the higher-end SB Live! cards compared to the lower-end ones. I believe the difference is between those labelled 5.1 and those not, but I may be mistaken (the difference was found when using a SB Live! X-Gamer and SB Live! 5.1 of forgotten type).
The Sound Blaster Live! cards have an interesting feature called SoundFonts, which make MIDI playback better. Unfortunately, the 5.1 cards seem to have "better" SoundFonts in some unknown way (though possibly total simultaneous playback). I have only noticed this to be a problem in one instance (and I do a lot of MIDI listening). When playing some Playstation games on both bleem! and ePSX, the sound will run slow, and some sounds will run quite poorly (running on wood floors will sound like bells).
Other than that, a great card. I can live with the emulation problems.