I'm sorry. I thought an example/explanation would be rhetorical given the amount of posts on the topic. The X-Fi competes nicely with other Creative cards for gaming, due to the always-discussed APU it brings to the table. However, for those of us who care notta about gaming, and just want high quality audio for movies/music. There's lots of other choices that likely have less driver headaches and none of the "Rice Crispy" effect that the SoundBlaster line of cards lay ownership to. What card manufacturers are these?
Chaintech
M-Audio
Turtle Beach
Terratec
and so on, and so forth.
I like the X-Fi, obviously, I have 3 of them but since I'm not a gamer it probably wasn't the best bang for the buck for me. The 24bit Crystalizer is pretty much garbage to those caring about audio purity, but its easily selectable and can be almost telepathically disabled. The CMSS3D thing is hit or miss, and its a miss for me. Given my slowly rising desire for the purist sound, the X-Fi's re-sampling of EVERYTHING is less and less attractive, but at least I'm not using its DACs on my audio rig, which are not bad, by comparison to other contemporary cards. ...and there's the other issues concerning multi-channel digital output, these don't affect me, and I won't even pretend to be versed in those issues, but there's plenty of posts by the venerable Astrallite, Choirbass, and many others that know their business quite well who can better inform you on what the X-Fi isn't doing quite right, in that area.
So, IMO, the X-Fi XM is a great card for gamers. The Platinum and Fata1ity are way overpriced for what is offered. ...and the Elite Pro is great, but overpriced.
With that said, the X-Fi doesn't "own" "pawn" anything for me, I'm not a gamer. It's just a nice card (a powerful card too) with bells and whistles that complicate it drivers (and have likely lead to some of the audio issues associated with it (thank goodness, I've not really experienced any of these myself, but I handily believe they exist). When they drop the price, for good, by $40 it'll be in a better position as far as I'm concened.
Now you see, I could have just stuck with, "No." as your opinion of the X-Fi has not likely changed. For the purist, the X-Fi is not the card to be had. I just don't have any excuse to replace mine as they've worked great for my needs.
Do I have "buyer's remorse"? Yes. ...but that's what I get for foolishly believing the hype and not doing my homework. One must crawl before they can walk, however.