I bought a _lot_ of Creative Labs products over my pre-teen and teen PC building years. Saving up to get the SB2 or the AWE32 or the AWE64 or SBLive... so that

I bought a _lot_ of Creative Labs products over my pre-teen and teen PC building years. Saving up to get the SB2 or the AWE32 or the AWE64 or SBLive... so that I could eventually get something that supported 4.1 for my Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 kit that I got... (mentioned elsewhere in the comments here). This was really the primary way to get any sort of good sound. And when it came time to upgrade my computer late last year to an AM5 chipset, I realized that my Klipsch 5.1 system wasn't going to cleanly plug into the on-motherboard outputs. You have to split and use your front panel audio out in order to feed the rear channel, which is kludgy and stupid, so off I went again, and found I could still buy a Sound Blaster: this time, the AE-7. It's been pretty reliable, has a little volume knob/input guy for my headset, and the desktop software and drivers aren't as nightmarish as the internet had led me to believe they'd be, even on Windows 11. It did lead me down this path of wondering how CL was doing nowadays, so it's funny to come across this piece outlining their history in detail and where they are today.