My experiences with Audigy cards were awful. They crackled. I took my last one out when I realized that it was audibly inferior to the motherboard's chipset audio.

How is that a plus? ALSA has had OOTB mixing for a decade now.

EDIT: Just saw the timestamps on the post. Oh yeah...

Currently there may be one reason for use of an ancient sound card in a modern computer. These ancient sound cards provides native MIDI-Port and Gameport. Both are supported by the Linux kernel. If you want to use musicial instruments equipped with MIDI or ancient devices that must be connected to a Gameport an ancient PCI sound card is a better solution than crappy USB-to-MIDI or USB-to-Gameport adapters. Use of an ancient sound card isn't possible in all cases. These ancient sound cards require a PCI slot but modern mainboards doesn't provide any PCI slot. Therefore a PCIe-to-PCI adapter must be used and this requires additional place in your computer case. If you insert a µATX mainboard into an ATX case you have this required place. If you insert an ATX mainboard in an ATX case you normally haven't this required place.