First let me get things straight, I'm looking to get the best possible music listening experience as well as gaming sound experience.
How it's done is irrelevant, if a card lacks EAX for example, so what? I'm not looking to have "EAX", I'm looking to get better soundstage/positional cues while gaming, it doesn't matter if it's done in software, hardware, maybe a renderer, for me it's all the same, they all have a goal to improve the positioning and that's WHY they can be compared, which do their jobs best. I'm only interested in the result and don't care what method or whose name or whatever stands on the product, neither method can be definitely put as a winner in this case based on subjective listening which my videos would give a hint of too.
I'm using configurations that many other people recommends for best gaming experiences, how can that be "odd" configurations. Just because windows may list it as "5.1 speakers" doesn't mean it has to be treated like such or maybe you have the exact details of how it handles it the way I've configured? It's irrelevant what the options say, it's what heard that matters why it's always best to try it for yourself no matter what it says and then make up your mind. Depending on product it may work very differently. But yes ofc I have tested with "stereo" speaker configuration too which I did very early and it didn't sound any better, possibly a bit worse.
Outperform? Can you provide me some examples/demonstrations where it outperforms? Or is this yet again based on the fact it packs full EAX 5.0 support, OpenAL etc? *yawn* It's how it sounds like in practice what matters, and then comes the subjective factors into account as well.
The Creative's drivers for Audigy 2 ZS leads to lower quality, it's audible both for music and gaming and is certainly not limited to the EQ alone. It may have proper EAX support for example but again Surrounder+ seems to take care of my soundstage/positional cues processing in games. Maybe Surrounder+ should be named CMSS-Enhanced instead, enhnaced positioning without the sound quality impact.
You may think whatever you want about Audigy 2 ZS's hardware resampler but to me based on listening tests, I've got an Audigy 1 as well which I've done comparisions in this regard with and there was very audible differences, on Audigy 2 ZS the resampling is really not much of an audible concern, like I said I hear a bigger difference between 192 kbps vs 320 kbps mp3, cables, comparing different EQ's against each other, you mention it and some of those things are even questionable if it brings differences to some people, then the resampling is even much less of a difference on Audigy 2 ZS, have you done A/B tests on this ? Well I have and I don't suggest you speak about it unless you got experiences with it.