This is all from personal experience and I would hope that it's not the norm but I've had experiences with all of these cards. I bought a sblive value when they came out in 99 or so, had no problems with it ever. Then last summer I rebuilt my computer with a new board, new processor, etc, including a hercules sound card. 1st off win xp didn't like it and eternally persisted in complaining the its drivers weren't okay with it.
Finally got it to work, and it was all right. The sound quality seemed alright, definitely not anything to get excited about. Then i left my computer powered down and unplugged from the wall completely (i removed every cable from the back of the tower) for the weekend while I was gone. When I came back I got the bsod every time I tried booting it up and nothing worked until I removed the hercules sound card and replaced it with my old sblive. Whether or not that's an issue with XP or an issue with hercules or whatever... I don't know. What I do know is that I put that hercules in another computer where it worked for about six months, and then stopped working again. Now I've got an awe64 working perfectly in that system. I do not ever plan on buying another hercules product ever again as this makes twice that I've had issues with them; I bought a hercules super duper tnt2 ultra card that could only run for 10minutes before crashing as they had it clocked too high from the factory...
As for XP and the sblive... If it works for you then it's a good card. If it has issues, like a really annoying crackling noise, then its going to be an exercise in frustration. I got fed up with mine and bought a santa cruz on sale for 50 bucks and I have to say that the Santa Cruz has much better sound quality, and it worked perfectly in XP too. I'd go with the Santa Cruz, even with ghetto speakers it still sounds better than the sound blaster.