  == 'Squeal of death' ==  I moved that particular criticism here, because it's written in a horribly POV way, openly endorsing Creative's competitors, and citing only one post on CL forums as a reference. It is true there are some hardware problems with the X-Fi lines (some, like the infamous SCP, were actually carried on from the Live! and Audigy series), others are more critical and unique to X-Fi (e.g. outright defective firmware  on some batches, resulting in totally unusable cards) but independent backing up for each of these facts is needed. And surely openly endorsing another manufacturer isn't in Wikipedia's style. Here's the removed excerpt:  :====The 'Squeal of Death' problem==== :A great many Creative customers have suffered from an intermittent fault known colloquially as the  Squeal of Death'. This manifests as a high pitched whine or squeal which plays constantly until the computer is rebooted. It manifests on many high performance PCs. The X-FI card appears to be incompatible with NVidia SLI based systems and with ASUS motherboards.  :Creative have failed to fix the problem, directing blame at the motherboard manufacturers. Users report that replacing the Creative card with a rival such as the Razer Barracuda card cures the problem. The 'Squeal of Death' only affects Creative Labs products.  If it's fixed, backed up properly and expanded...then it may go in the article again.  