A reprise on this one, I got the Videologic SonicFury DVD (see above link), it's got some good features but argh the curse of bad driver support effects this card too. There have been NO driver updates since the original release and the original release suffers from stuttering and distortion under XP.
So having played around with the card for a few days trying to get it working under different configs I finally gave up and returned it. Paid the difference for the Audigy 2 and installed it.
This wasn't particularly easy as the calibration and documentation could be better, for a while it kept insisting I change my speaker wires but it was acutally because the input jacks were in the wrong slots. Once it was all set up correctly it is working and it DOES sound a hell of a lot better than either the Live or the Sonic Fury.
So far I've had no problems with it and it does indeed perform very well, it seems, for me at least that Creative have got it right this time and the Audigy 2 is a very good card. The positional audio really does work and the timbres are all fresh and clear. A minor winge is it does seem to have a little high CPU useage than either of the other two cards but not enough to be a problem, maybe significant if you are on a lower end system though.
So far, so good!
Darkheart