Look retodded marketing thumbplum - misspelling "extreme" doesn't make this garbage any better. It's burp baconnaise and we know it. Take your heads out of your asses and realize that this whole "extreme" bullshit went south when Doritoes started being marketed as extreme. You're unoriginal burp who should be fired immediately. burp you and the donkey you rode in on.

sincerely,
toddsucks

Retodded.....enough said.

In other words, this sound card has the magical ability to add information that wasn't originally there to the audio data stream. Cool. I want a device like that for my member.

that may just be 8-bit too much information

"which delivers an experience beyond the original CD or DVD recordings."

Employer: Mr. Hendrix, your resume is impressive, but let me ask you: Are you experienced?

OK for gaming, not for high quality music.

what to get for high quality music?

Good price.

#7, this card. It is great for music and games. Excellent deal and an excellent card. It is a no brainer. Simply read reviews of this card or ask someone with a bad opinion of this card a better alternative for the money. There is none as far as sound cards are concerned. If they give you an alternative, read up on it instead of taking their word and see what you come up with.

i never know what to get. the audiophile cards seem too eccentric, and the sound blaster cards seem too gimmicky with worthless fisher-price style drivers and utilities.

#9 is right on the $. I have this card in my current machine and it's wonderful. I've had Sound Blaster cards since the "Sound Blaster" was all the rage for early shooter games like Doom. Every line actually does improve the sound quality over the previous one and sound processing is significantly faster. The driver gives you a plethora of options for customizing your listening experience and it allows you to switch modes depending on if you're gaming or playing music. A great buy at nearly half the price I paid at its introduction. Oh, and WoW sounds awesome, too.

The "crystalizer" (which can be accessed via the control panel) really does improve audio quality, at least to my ears. I actually noticed a difference upgrading from an Audigy 2 ZS, which is quite impressive as far as I'm concerned.

I use the sound card built onto my motherboard, and I couldn't be happier. I used to be very big into Creative cards, but they haven't been able to write a functioning driver since the SoundBlaster Pro. Crashes, memory leaks, poor optimisation and performance abound in the land of Creative cards.

Actually, a great alternative to the Creative line are the Auzentech soundcards. Their most expensive one, the X-Fi Prelude, is based on, and you may have already guessed... the X-Fi chip made by Creative. You get all the EAX 5.0 features and driver support without the added bloatware from Creative. I know I was sick of my Audigy 2 ZS installing AOL crap along with drivers/software.

I went with the Auzentech X-Plosion which doesn't have EAX 5 support (only 2.0) but, it does have Dolby Digital and other features that you don't get from a Creative card. The Auzentech cards have built in Coax and Optical hookups, none of that "flexi-jack" bullcrap that Creative is just too cheap to create seperate inuput jacks.

Oh, and by the way, feel free to read all the positive reviews about the Auzentech cards on Newegg or whatever if you don't believe me. There are plenty of others that were Creative enthusiasts before they came across this company, just like me.

what's this middle ground between sound blaster cards and eccentric audiophile cards, #10?

I'm put off by Creative since they ditched support on Vista for the Live! series. Not even surround drivers (only stereo available)

Agree ENTIRELY with #13. I used to use all their products but finally just gave up and use integrated motherboard solutions. They sound nearly as good these days so for the average computer user there isn't any need for a seperate sound card.

look like Creative have released closed sourced linux driver for this card, too.

Nicely put #14.

I'm currently running an M-Audio Revolution running digital coax to my receiver to power my speakers. Can't say I'm disappointed. Supposedly it's bad for games, but good for music and movies, which I care more about.