The difference in the SB Live and Value is really just the Daughter card with digital outs, though these aren't a huge amount of use as they are fixed at 48khz and seem to introduce quite a few pops & clicks into audio so I now wish I'd just got the value one. They've both got quite comprehensive sampling facilities using sound fonts - you can download Vienna Soundfont studio from Creative Lab's web site which is quite a handy tool for sampling with the SB Live. My PC's only a 266 with 128 meg but I don't have any problems so you should be fine.

You might want to audition the Vintage Synth card - won't be so hot for those analogue basses you're after but it should be quite useful for a lot of dance music.

Pete