For the third year in a row Creative Labs has decided to release new soundcard based on the emu10k1 chip, a chip that thanks to driver updates still manage to remain competitive against more recent chips. Just like the fall of 1999 Creative Labs decided to not only refresh the software bundle but also enhance the connectivity of the boards to be competitive with the new slew of boards. In the Fall of 1999 Digital Output started to be more common and Creative Labs addressed this by introducing a Digital output jack as standard rather than exclusive for the top of the line Live board as the previous year. During the last year we started to see more boards offering not only 4-speaker output but also 5.1 analog outputs and this fall almost every new $50-100 soundcard offers that functionality. To address the new competition Creative Labs refined the Digital Output jack so it could do doubly duty as Digital Output and analog subwoofer/center channel. To do one better than their competitors Creative Labs also included the ability to do Dolby Digital Decoding as part of the Live 5.1's drivers rather than to having to rely on the Software DVD player.