I hope that my views here can be of use to anyone searching the Hexus forums in the future.

I bought myself a Creative X-mod in June 2007 for about £55 (approx) from the Scan guys, and all arrived as expected.
It's initial purpose was to hook up to my laptop to play music at a party (a really nice Compaq Evo n410c, bought for £150 from ebay and after an extra 512MB RAM upgrade works really well, very light etc - anyway i digress).
The first problem arose however at this point, as there seemed to be something relating to the laptop's USB port (and the same with the laptop's docking station too) that didn't allow for reliable power and data signal to be sent concurrently - and there is no option for the X-mod to be powered on its own (a "feature"). So i buy a powered USB hub as an intermediary, no joy.
In the end i give up, borrow a newer laptop, which does the job. So the X-mod does work, at least on some laptops.

After the party i am now left with this device which Creative itself claims to give a better sound than original studio recordings (to do with the x-fi crystaliser I think, but smells of marketting to me) so decide to hook it up to my main desktop rig to replace my Soundblaster Audigy 2 (which although basic, did the job very well and i have always been fairly happy with, driver installation wierdness apart).
"You just plug it in, and it works, without the need for drivers". Well Ubuntu didnt have a great time with it (i dual boot), Amarok refusing to send any music down that path for more than one song (!) and all very odd. Windows did better, but kept giving trying to keep the default audio device as the PCI card until i removed my Audigy 2 (and uninstalled drivers). So ok, i go X-mod only, that seems to make sense....
And the sound quality was fine. Was it better? Well that's hard to say as i couldn't directly compare the two without a five minute switch over and re-install, and the mind plays tricks, but it was certainly fine.
But then the problems came ... being USB powered, if there was ever any USB - related hiccup, the X-mod would stutter ever so slightly and recover half a second later - no biggie, but the Audigy didnt do that. And Ubuntu still wasn't happy, so i stopped using that.
Then Battlefield 2, which was already installed, refused to load. So i uninstalled, reinstalled, and it refused to pass the VOIP test (despite me not using VOIP in BF2!) so wouldnt install correctly.

Other such little niggles occured, none of which could honestly be described as dramatic, but i came to think that the 'ease of USB, driverless superior sound' wasn't actually as good as my old PCI card Audigy 2. So i've now swapped back, and quite possibly have slightly inferior sound (i honestly couldnt tell you), but everything just works. And my £55 USB device is sitting in a drawer, waiting for a purpose.