It was a strange time. We quickly went from PC speakers to far better cards like the Soundblaster/16/AWE32 (one couldn't find the other makes where I lived).
But since then the PC audio market has gone rather quiet? Apart from built in you obviously still get Soundblasters and the ASUS Xonar's, but there seems to be very little to no competition and drive left in the field.
Indeed. And games have stopped flaunting advanced effects like environment-based dynamic reverb and position-based occlusion etc.
What the hell happened?
I suspect it was Microsoft's push for the dumbed-down XBOX, which also cost us the more advanced DirectInput API in favor of XInput (which, the last time I checked, was missing many features from the older API, like complex force-feedback.)
But since then the PC audio market has gone rather quiet? Apart from built in you obviously still get Soundblasters and the ASUS Xonar's, but there seems to be very little to no competition and drive left in the field.