Pros: X-Fi...a hologram for the ears. Changing the way games are enjoyed...FOREVER.
Cons: Hmmm... no lights ?
The bottom line: An absolute "MUST HAVE" on any Gamer's list. A Revolutionary breakthrough in the way Sound is Experienced.
Recognizing the fact that the (PC) gaming industry drives sales for bigger, better, faster, stronger PC's... taking advantage of the latest features of a game (in this case Battlefield 2142) required another upgrade.

Since I had already maxxed out video performance in my old XP3200 /AGP rig with an nVidia 7800GS, the next area to look into was Audio.

Don't get me wrong, my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card had performed well for the past 5 years. The Battlefield 2142 user interface however, offered options like "Gaming Mode", "EAX", and "Hardware Rendering" that were unavailable to me, as my card did not support them.

Being that the X-Fi series of cards are...shall we say ..."pricey", I was kinda reluctant to part with the dough because, after all, how different can sounds be?

well, lemme tell 'ya...

If you could SEE sound, the difference is like going from black-and-white to COLOR.

It was that amazing. And that was with a regular set of single speaker headphones.

Sounds were no longer just left-and-right...but Above, Behind, Nearby, and Distant. And when I say 'distant', I don't mean 'faint'... it was as if the headphones melted away, and I could hear things that were going on a hundred feet away, off to my right, and slightly behind me.

I was so busy just LISTENING to things, I must have gotten killed 20 times in that 1st game with the new SoundBlaster X-Fi installed. Hearing an enemy unsheath his Combat Knife over my left shoulder was... blood-chilling.

I can hardly wait for my 7.1 channel headphones to show up.

*Hey, was that a doorbell?* Gotta go...UPS IS HERE!!1!111