If you do a lot of music production you should get a pro audio soundcard. I have not experienced the new X-Fi cards, but my Audigy 2 ZS can't handle 24/96 sometimes and is not very good with ASIO latency. Of course Creative claims otherwise. They also can't make drivers worth crap. I don't know if they've changed this yet, but with the X-Fi you have to switch modes from gaming mode to music listening mode to music production mode. Bad idea straight from a bad company! I've never tried using two soundcards but that might be an option.

The problem with going a strictly professional sound card is that it will not support any of the gaming protocols for creating spatial effects, which have become standard practice today (except for Miles which is software based). Another issue with professional audio cards is that they work in a software-only mode similar to AC97.

It is for that reason I propose anyone serious about music and sound design for gaming to get TWO sound cards, one for testing and general enjoyment, and the other for actual design work. Basically, you can switch between the two soundcards under Control Panel without any kind of problems.

However, I have noticed that SOME games will get confused if you have both soundcards enabled, which will either result in the game defaulting to a software only mode (which happened to me with FEAR) or the game will start producing some audible distortion (which happened to me with Oblivion). But the simple solution is just to go into Device Manager and temporarily disable the professional sound card when you are running a game.

My current setup is exactly this same way, with an MBox Pro and Soundblaster X-FI extreme music in the same system. Works like a charm!

-Noise