"Not the best!!"

Feature:
For the money, good features, but you have to spend a ton of time to learn how to use the thing at an acceptable level of audio quality. I still couldn't get the thing to work perfectly on its own. Only once I installed ASIO4All driver, did it work reliably without crashing quite so often with Sonar.

Quality:
Quality is fine, but the included software is not reliable on its own. It didn't come with a stand-alone audio driver, so you have to keep the Patchmix software always running. Had to install ASIO4All driver to prevent regular crashing, and to get decent latency with no crackles.

Value:
Good value, but they really need to create a reliable driver for this thing. If they had that, it would be a great product.

Desirability:
Good features, but driver not reliable, so it doesn't work well on its own - must install ASIO4All to get it to work properly (but I'm sure this introduces more latency than it should).

Sound:
My Darla 20 bit card sounded better than this one. All attempts at tweaking the 0404 failed to equal the Darla. Pretty close, but still a little noisy compared. Still the 0404 does have good sound quality, but you have to spend time to get it right. I use it with Sonar, VST effects, and external mixer.

Ease of Use:
Interface is not easy to use, and takes a lot of time to learn it properly. Difficult to get it to work reliably with Sonar. Had to install ASIO4All driver to prevent regular crashing, and to get decent latency with no crackles.

Support:
When I initially bought the 0404, I tried to get detailed specs on the thing, and the tech manager was a real ahole, and just kept giving me the run around, and didn't want to answer all my questions, saying something like 'the 0404 is a low-end card, and we've already given you more support on this thing than we had to. If you bought a more expensive card like the 1616 then you'd get better support...'

Overall:
I would get something reliable next time, however it did come with a good software bundle, the Production Tools bundle, with Proteus X (1000 sounds), Sonar LE, etc, so it's not a total loss, and it does work fine with ASIO4All.

"Top Knotch, easy to use, beautiful product."

This reviewer purchased this item from Same Day Music.

Feature:
The software features were good.

Quality:
Best quality I've heard or seen.

Value:
Let's see, a $100 dollar PC amp with 500 pre-set effects + custom effects, or a $500 dollar amp with 5 effects? I'll stick with my E-MU.

Desirability:
Knowing what it does, its appeal is extremely high, it IS beautiful, isn't it?

Sound:
The shound quality of this product is top notch 'Created' hardware, not only does it throw out better quality sound than my personal sound card, but the hardware generated guitar fects are amazing.

Support:
They have an 800 number for support and good calling hours, no complaints here.

Overall:
This is going to last me forever, great product, great quality, great sound, and unless I upgrade to the 1820m, theres nothing else on teh market I would trade it for. Top Knotch. And easy to use. Only proplem was my same day delivery I bought on Thursday (I admit, after 2pm) It came in on Monday... Not same day Friday. But not E-MU's fault.