The bad things you guys heard about the microphone is that it's QUIET. Even with the 20 dB boost, its very quiet. Example: in ventrilo I have to keep outbound to +10 The quality is good though.

The line-in works great, I have no complains. Same as the Creative card. Maximum sampling rate is 96 kHz, not 192. Thats a mistake on Newegg.

As far as the optic/coax connections, I wish I could try them for you guys, but I don't have a receiver with digital inputs in my room, just analog stereo. Plus, I wouldn't be able to test multichannel streams, because like you have read AC3 and DTS pass through is broken in XP. For now at least.