Firewire cards are cheap too. For the price of an SB "Ugh-iddy" card, you can get that AND a better sound card.
I have an SB Live platnum, Audiophile 2496, and a firewire card all installed on the same computer. You just have to juggle them around in the slots until they don't share IRQ's in bad ways. My 2496 card is sharing with the firewire card. I use the firewire card for capturing digital video. Since firewire captures sound at the same time, I don't have to worry about a conflict with the 2496 card. When I do recording, I disable the firewire card just in case, but I doubt it would cause any problems as long nothing is plugged into it.
I can tell you for sure, that my Audiophile card sounds MUCH better than an SB card probably EVER will. Over the years that I've had the SB Live card, I 've discovered that "Creative Labs" really does not care about ever REALLY making their soundcards work, for musicians, the way they claim it's supposed to. They never completely supported the older live cards until they were fully functional, as advertised. They just tack on more bells & whistles to the NEXT card that they want your $200 for.