DocLotus:
If you haven't done so already, read the link I posted. You'll see that the Audigy is effectively a 16 bit/48 khz card with all the same problems as the Live. All marketing. A lot of PC magazines are also selling WMA as the best audio compression format. And look at how much play MusicMatch gets in PC magazines compared to MJ (when MJ is the clear winner). It's all about who is advertising with that magazine.
Poison Dan:
After reading that the SB Live! and Audigy both effectively waste 30% of the PCI bus, I'm not so sure they're the best at anything anymore. The Hercules GameTheater XP supports just as many 3D audio technologies as the Audigy, and it uses the same DSP as the Santa Cruz (stated in your review from Roy
). Not to mention that the Santa Cruz/GameTheater both have built-in hardware-based equalizers.