About time, there is another entrant into the Audio market with Guillemot just launching what looks to be a pretty good audio card under the hugley successful Hercules banner.

After the Aureal saga, leaving hundreds of thousands of people with the MX300, and no support (let alone decent win2k drivers) there are currently plenty of people looking for the the next upgrade to their Audio Card. It looks like its going to be the new Guillemot Hercules card or the new SB Live Platinum 5.1.

By the looks of things the SB live will be cheaper without all the USB crap that the new hercules is going to ship with:

The first Hercules audio product is Game Theater XP, a revolutionary gaming concept that is guaranteed to appeal to hardcore gamers with its unique features: a sound card and an extremely convenient and powerful external rack which includes amongst other features, a high-speed 4-port USB hub and game port for easy connection of game peripherals, and Dolby Digital™ decoding on up to 6 independent gold-plated RCA outputs. Hercules Game Theater XP will start retailing at the beginning of November

Unfortunatly it doesnt say what 3D sound API its going to support, my hope would be EAX since its already out there, but who knows with these companys.