I had a sinking feeling when Creative took down Aureal, its only real competitor all those years back. I had hoped that by buying them out, at least some of their undoubtedly superior tech (and support, possibly, though I never needed to use it) would survive. I was wrong. It's sad to see a good company like Aureal go under (just as it was sad to see 3DfX disappear) - let's all hope AMD survives in some form or other, for obvious reasons!
Personally, I believe onboard sound is now 'good enough' for most people.
Though my Xi-Fi is excellent on Vista 64 headphones at the moment - I'm now dreading hooking them up to the CS 7.1 speakers (and upgrading RAM to more than 2GB). I might be OK, and it's not the end of the world but still...
BTW my Audigy 2 ZS in my other system (Athlon64 5000+, XP) has just stopped working.
For no apparent reason (Windows says it's fine, re-downloaded drivers, etc).
Switched to onboard and quite frankly just glad Realtek exist (used to scorn onboard as sub-par LOL)!