I own 2 of these cards. I liked it so much I bought a second one for my other computer.
After messing around with digital audio and midi for 5 years, and going through over a dozen sound cards, I've finally found a card that had me producing music within 30 minutes of the time I had it installed. The soundfonts (including the additional soundfont CDs available from EMU, all of which I purchased) are unbelievable (incredibly realistic simulations of acoustic instruments, such as guitars, saxes, etc.; excellent electric guitars and basses; excellent drums; all the stuff you need for good rock/pop music), and put most of my other synths (Korg M3r, Korg 03Rw, Korg X5DR, Alesis Quadrasynth, Roland SoundCanvas, Yamaha DB50XG) to shame in terms of overall quality and realism of sounds (which is not surprising given that a typical acoustic guitar patch in the APS is going to be 1 to 2 Megs of memory, and only a small fraction of that in a typical sample playback synth). The ability to record the output of the card directly to a wave file, with effects added in the process, means I don't have to fiddle with any wires, and in a hour or two I can have a complete orchestration for a song recorded and mixed without leaving the domain of the computer. The mixer and sounfont control software are very well done and easy to use, and the numerous inputs to the card allow me to feed in signals from my other sound cards (mainly the Yamaha SW1000XG) and mix them with the APS. If I had to pick one card to own (and I have some pretty well respected cards, like an Event Gina and a Yamaha SW1000XG, both of which I like but are nowhere near as versatile as the APS), the EMU APS would clearly be the one I choose.