Several answeres in one shot:

To Squirrel meat:

A soundcard should NOT emphasize the bass or colour the sound in any way. If you want that then go get a speaker system with overwhelming bass like the Klipsch Pro Media line or the Logitech Z-560s.

To CrawlingEye:

I'm not biased - I just happen to prefer clean, accurate, neutral sound. If that isn't your thing then that's fine. Also, if the same differences I hear can be heard by many others then it's not a bias is it now...

"I agree that the sound quality of the Audigy is inferior to the Turtle Beach, but the EAX3 makes a VERY big impact as well. "

You DID read the title of the review, right? The Santa Cruz is not for hardcore gamers - the Audigy is better suited to that task. It's for people for whom sound quality is the driving force with gaming secondary.

It's amusing to see you attempt to split hairs and wriggle around details even though it's rather obvious you have no arguments to get around them.

To pbirkett:

I await your findings on the Live! comparison with interest since I did own a Live! and tossed it after a month because of how it sounded (it was replaced with the Santa Cruz I now own). Heck, The PCI128 I owned before the Live! sounded better than it did and after seeing the mneasurements on both cards it became aparrent why.