Looks like Creative Labs is trying to win me back. For the past couple of years, I've been using the Auzentech Mystique 7.1 as my main system sound card, due to it's support of Dolby Digital Live. Back as far as 2001, before "Doby Digital Live" was a marketing term, Nvidia developed it's SoundStorm audio technology, based on requirements from Microsoft to support  their original Xbox console. The key thing here is that SoundStorm encoded ALL of the audio into 5.1 AC-3 digital signals. This meant that movies and games on the Xbox didn't require you to switch back and forth between inputs on your stereo system. Nvidia wisely added SoundStorm to their motherboard chipset line, and the rest, as they say, is history. Before SoundStorm, some audio cards had the digital output, but only when movies were playing (because they could stream the encoded 5.1 audio directly from the DVD), and reverted to stereo "PCM" sound for digital audio for the computer. With SoundStorm, hooking up your computer to your home theater A/V system was a snap - one cable, no noise.

8 years ago, Creative Labs' vision of innovation was to simply increase the sampling rates of it's cards and market as many "different" versions of the same card as possible.

I waited patiently, expecting the market leader to catch up to SoundStorm, but along came a new line of sound cards, the "Dolby Digital Live" cards. Turte Beach and HDA (which later became Auzentech) released their "DDL" cards and suddenly, Creative Labs looked incredibly weak. Their cards were still mired in the analog realm. The only "full" 5.1 digital option available from Creative involved bying their special digital speaker systems with proprietary connections.

Now, it seems, they've changed all that with the PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium audio card. Not only are they coming in full force with a Dolby Digital Live card, but it incoroprates the larger superset of Dolby capabilities of the Dolby Home Theater experience. Now gamers can enjoy noise-free connections for their full EAX 5.0 gaming needs.

It's about time.

I only have one question to those who have this card... does it have SPDIF/COAX digital output?