For a very long time now I have tried to find an alternative for the Sound Blaster series but unfortunately I couldnt find a real competitor. Few weeks ago I read at NvNews about a new sound card named HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold with Dolby encoding support and many cool features. I pulled out a few strings and managed to get a sample of this card. The one million-dollar question now is does the HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold offer a real competition to the Sound Blaster series?