These days, there's not much to talk about in the sound card industry as it's pretty much dominated by Creative Labs and its SoundBlaster Live! Recently though, a few surprising competitors have attempted to step up against Creative and its onslaught with powerful offerings of their own. Most of those who have tried battling Creative Labs have either failed or retreated back to their roots which have no stems in the PC sound card business at all.

It was rather surprising to me when Hercules announced that it would be entering the soundcard market with its Game Theater XP. It wasn't that I doubted Hercules' efforts or its ability to deliver, but I did question its potential success.