So what if Asus picked shorter names for their cards, it's simply that typing "Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCI-e Sound Card" each time is unnecessary, since people have been following along well so far. Would a rose not smell as sweet, if called by any other name?
Saved you the trouble of repeating yourself, in good humor
But seriously, the "true" X-Fi cards may be the only ones with "full" EAX 5.0 and OpenAL/ALchemy features, but that doesn't change the fact that OpenAL and EAX have mostly been dropped by game developers in favor of their own in-game processing. For example, has anything that's been released in the last two years featured native OpenAL support? Does Bethesda's RPGs use EAX 5.0, and not have environmental "cave-like" sounds anyway from in-game processing as an alternative? Does even Bioshock, a game with fantastic audio design from the peak era of OpenAL and EAX, have really much need for accurate height imaging? Borderlands sounds like it does without help from X-Fi "exclusive" APIs. And how much do "X-Fi Only" features help in-game cutscenes, movies, and music? Seems gamers have to go all the way back to Battlefield 2 to make the most of X-Fi.
Creative's X-Fi products are good, don't take me wrong, but their gaming superiority is only ahead by an eyebrow, and their significance diminishes as new games abandon Creative's proprietary or old APIs. Meanwhile, the more powerful amps and better SNRs of alternative cards will always be a differentiating feature. I don't see many other people or reviews taking as hard a stance on promoting the Ti HD, not even the company that created it. The Ti HD certainly didn't bring Creative back into profit margins as a "must-have" item. You may feel frustrated that I'm offering a different perspective, an unfortunate emotional side effect, but I'm only making a point that the future of gaming audio may require a reevaluation of benefits and value-return. Thanks for reading this far, I hope that you found this mildly stimulating, and realize that this post isn't a personal attack on you, but rather "will the Ti HD still be the clear choice as the gaming industry moves forward?"
Also, it's interesting to note that Creative now advertises the Ti HD with the THX TruStudio Pro processing instead of CMSS-3D. Like I've said before, TruStudio, CMSS-3D, Dolby Headphone, Etc, these days the choice between these processing techniques is mainly down to taste (and availability).