Alright... Creative? Not so hot these days. They don't make working Vista drivers (after easily over a year of access to the Vista driver model), and some people say they actually cripple the software when it detects Vista. Actually, all you have to do is search Google for "daniel k creative" and you'll see exactly what the arguments are. (Here's an article from Wired, too.) Whatever the case, it has become painfully obvious that Creative is, for some reason, not in the habit of releasing working drivers for Vista. Heck, I have a Creative Audigy ZS PCMCIA card for my laptop and I'm using Vista's built-in drivers. What kind of company is so lazy that Microsoft's generic drivers are better than their own? I'm done with Creative. I'll let you know that Creative was my very first model of sound card I ever purchased (to play Myst with, even) and in all these years, I have never purchased from another manufacturer. Sure, I've used built-in motherboard sound chips, but only in the off-time while my Creative cards were shipping. Point is, I honestly considered Creative the absolute best sound card manufacturer there was... Actually, I still do. Their hardware is phenomenal. It's their whole Sony-like approach to marketing and customer treatment that has me ticked and I'm not going to support them any longer.

As such... Being the Creative-fan, I have absolutely no idea of alternative sound cards. I would prefer something of professional grade... 7.1 surround sound capable, if at all possible. The whole 24-bit, 192KHz thing, too, if you please. Better, if possible! I'm what they an audiophile... I can, I swear, tell the difference between sound chips and sound cards. 128KBps MP3s and 320KBps MP3s and uncompressed Wave files. I want the best of the best, but I'd like to keep the cost at or below $200. An external connector box is nice, like what the Audigy has that fits inside a 5.25" drive bay... Where you have MIDI and RCA-In and manual volume controls and such. A remote control option would be equally lovely. It should support EAX and such, and I have seen cards that aren't Creative that support EAX, so I know it's possible. Optical connectors are a must, because I plan on upgrading to surround sound systems in the future. It needs to play well with games and DirectX, obviously, because this system is going to be built for gaming first.

So... I need help, because I don't know where to start looking for something like this. I'm afraid that if I can't find something else, I'll be settling for a Creative X-Fi like I've been planning. It might not work, but it has everything I want... But if there's anything else even remotely close to a card containing the same features as this particular card, please! Let me know.