Audiophiles, hear this: The amazing Asus Xonar Essence STX finally faces a true competitor.Creative’s Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium is startling in several ways. A gaming and music enthusiast’s audio card, this X-Fi is ready for Windows 7 (and Vista) out of the box and comes armed with Creative Alchemy, which restores multichannel positional audio for legacy Windows XP and Vista games. Watch out, though: The sheer fidelity of the card’s output will really make you notice any shortcomings in the quality of your speakers’ or headset’s sound. Another thing you’ll notice: Its analog outputs don’t include an option for more than two speakers. Users of 5.1 or 7.1 systems without optical or digital audio inputs or a decoder will probably want to think about another soundcard because of this.