I can't blame people for modding the CL soundblaster drivers, since the driver support by Creative Labs sucks like hell. I got an Audigy 2 and Audigy 2 ZS and the last driver updates date from oct. 2006 (02.09.0016 for windows xp 32bit). This driver is almost one and half year old. If that happened with Nvidia's Forceware drivers or Ati Catalyst drivers, they would be sued by many customers.
Creative Labs have newer beta drivers at their connect.creativelabs.com: Sound Blaster X-Fi Audigy BETA Driver 20070827;
"This latest driver includes some performance enhancements made in particular for Unreal Tournament 3 and other UnrealEngine3 based titles."
Well, many Unreal 3 engine based games have launched, and still there's no final driver, well not for the Audigy series, while there are still bugs in the beta driver.
Creative Labs should provide better support, even for their older cards like the entire Audigy series and soundblaster live (the emu10kx family) since these soundcards differ not "much" from each other. An unified driver for all their Audigy series and X-fi series would be great and in my opinion possible. If it's possible for Nvidia to make their Forceware drivers work for their Geforce FX, 6, 7, 8 and 9 series, why Creative Labs can't do the same thing for their soundcards.
I have heard that Asus can provide EAX 5 support (in software) for their Xonar soundcards with their new 2.0 drivers, also no "Alchemy" software is needed for direct3d sound supported games under Windows Vista. Now Creative Labs feel somewhat uneasy and claimed that the software solution by Asus is not as good as Creative Labs hardware solution.
Here's Asus reaction on the matter:
X-bit labs - Asustek Computer Claims that Its Audio Cards Do Support Latest Environmental Audio Extensions.
More and more onboard soundcards (HD Audio - Azalia) have surfaced and they do not sound bad, e.g. the Realtek ALC889 and ADI 1988B. Many people would not buy a dedicated pci soundcard if the onboard already is already sufficient and good enough (Realtek update its driver very frequently, well at least more frequently than Creative Labs), while companies like Creative Labs got bad support for their products.
Also in my opinion the multi-gpu war has some indirect impact on add-in soundcards: If you want a multi-gpu setup you can't use a pci/pci-e soundcard; you can't put a pci or pci-e soundcard in your pc system since 3 gpu cards (Nvidia's triple SLI) or 4 gpu (AMD-ATI's CrossfireX) require alot of space, especially with their "2 slot" vga coolers.
In the end Creative Labs make good products and there are still people who love their products. But since Creative Labs sucks in their driver support, people are "making" the drivers and apps do what they are intended to do: working flawlessly, so you can enjoy your music, movie and games with your favorite soundcard you have bought with your hard earned money.
So, Creative Labs blame yourself, because if your drivers are working the way they should be, people won't have to mod them on their own!!!