Man, so sad to see such a great company continue to circle the toilet. I spent good money on an Audigy Platinum EX card with external breakout box. It did good game audio, and had very clean inputs for doing beginning audio recording. But now everything is digital, there is no need for signal to noise ratio unless it is in your amp.
We all have USB headphones, or S/PDIF optical, or HDMI to our receivers these days, so why bother? And now on-board audio is more than good enough for all but the pickiest of audiophiles. And even for them there are much better sound card companies to go with.
They had great sound cards until Vista/7 rendered them useless. They had several iPod killers that had superb audio quality in the Zen players that never got off the ground because of a crap advertising department. They have good on board chips, but they overcharge for them so nobody wants them. They have very clean audio inputs, but have never pursued breaking into the pro recording industry. They could easily license their DAC and ADC tech to receiver makers, but they don't.
They are in such a great position as far as technology goes that they could take over the audio industry... if only they would hire an 8 year old to take over and run the business end correctly...