I'm not convinced there's much of a market for sound cards, honestly. I think Creative has been struggling to survive (notice all of that diversification?) Aureal didn't die just because Creative sued them. Lots of sound card makers and chip developers have come and gone (died off or went to other markets). ESS chips, Philips cards/chips (Tbird), Hercules/Guillemot cards, VIA (Envy doesn't seem to be making them big bucks). Creative buys out struggling/failing competition just like any other company would. Like, say, NVIDIA did after they sued near-dead 3dfx. Heh.
All those Aureal cards had going for them was excellent 2D audio positioning and spatialization. And low host overhead, which actually mattered back then. Their MIDI quality sucked. They were absolutely not usable as any sort of pro-audio solution. Their analog output quality wasn't very good either. But they were fun for some games, but only a few really used A3D 2.0.
