Hey Alex,
I don't know what your budget is, but I replaced a Soundblaster Live with an Echo Darla24 about 5 months ago and find the sound quality and connectivty superior to the Blaster. This card can be had between $200 & $300. I was using ProAudio software with the Blaster and experienced severe clipping at higher gain levels on peices with more than four tracks.
I'm now using Ntrack with the Darla which has a break-out box with 1/4" inputs and outputs (Blaster only had an 1/8"). The only down-side to this card is that it doesn't support midi, but for a 24bit card you could do alot worse. BTW, Darla ships with Cool Edit Pro. Good Luck...