The Emu drivers are rock solid (not that great on vista, but still no complaints per se)
The gain adjustments are a bit sensitive, but its nothing that cant be dealt with
What you get with EMU stuff is DACs and ADCs (digital to analogue and analogue to digital converters) that hit WAY above the price point, doubly so on the M models, and good mic pres and high-z inputs (again, way, way better than most stuff at the same sort of price).
You also get a kickass software package.
For recording guitars at home you can go 4 basic ways
- Mic up your amp. Just get an SM57 or an Audix i5 (I prefer this) and learn the wonders of mic placement, acoustics, speaker distortion, swing, steady state and blah blah blah. In the end there is NO subsitute for this, but its way harder to get good results (asside from anything else its way louder, which makes things harder and might annoy someone).
- Get a modeller. I get the best results with mine just lining them into the High Z inputs. Line 6, Vox, Boss and Zoom all make good ones that dont cost the earth. The best I've tried (and own) is a vox tonelab LE. I also have a pod XT that serves its purpose, but it sounds like a youre banging a kick drum filled with bees.
- VST amp sim. I find these are the worst thing. I've heard good things about guitar rig 3, but havent had the chance to try it properly yet. This has the sneaky and underhanded 'advantage' of what I'm going to call 'try before you buy', since I trust if youre going to be using the software you would render unto the developers what is the developers ;)
- Line out of an amp. Can work pretty well so long as theres a cab or speaker sim at some point.
Youre also gonna need headphones and monitors. Spend as much as you can on monitors. You should arrange your listening position suitably and try to treat your space a bit, too. PM me if youre interested in this, so as not to divert the thread, and I'll tell you what I know.
