Vista - Why no more X-Meridians were made

Thought I would post this, in case anyone does know. Recently Auzentech's president posted a letter in the faq's on their website, why there are no more X-Meridian's. According to him, sometime in the early part of last year or the fall of 2006, ASUS paid CMEDIA a bunch of money for exclusive rights to the 8788HD soundchip.

06.17.08 - How the X-Meridian Became a Limited Edition Soundcard Dear Valued Customers:
"One week after product launch, we received notice from C-Media that they had granted exclusive rights for the CMI-8788 chipset to a competitor..."

From time to time, we receive inquiries as to why we stopped production of the Auzen X-Meridian 7.1 sound card soon after its launch. That sound card was custom-designed to make the most of the CMI-8788 chip from C-Media. Our next sound card, the Auzen X-Fi Prelude, has been custom-designed around the Creative X-Fi chipset.
Moving beyond the X-Meridian 7.1 so quickly was a difficult decision. One week after product launch, we received notice from C-Media that they had granted exclusive rights for the CMI-8788 chipset to a competitor, ASUS, and that we must purchase any chip inventory by a certain date. Sound cards from other companies that use the CMI-8788 are built with chip inventory purchased before the deadline.
It had never occurred to us to squeeze our competitors out of the market for a chip, and we still find it troubling – especially in light of the time we spent developing a product around the CMI-8788 chip. Other companies that only built the "reference board" may not have suffered significantly, but Auzentech lost development time, effort and money – the very things that even now make the X-Meridian 7.1 the best CMI-8788 soundcard to have reached the market.
The only reason we moved beyond the X-Meridian 7.1 so quickly after product launch is because we no longer had reliable access to the chipset. We have attempted to acquire additional stock from C-Media, but those requests have been rejected. If you have an interest in more X-Meridians being manufactured, you might consider lobbying C-Media to supply the chipset to Auzentech.
Sincerely,
Stephane Bae, President
Auzentech, Inc.

It sucks that this happened.

That does indeed suck! I specced a meridian for a friend of mine, on Vista 64, and it's simply a superb card. I was using an X-Fi prelude, but got fed up of that rather quickly, more the X-Fi limitations than anything else. I replaced that with an Asus Xonar D2X, which is also a great card. So, the CMI-8788 chip must be "the daddy" for current cards. Any wonder Asus paid up for exclusivity.

I don't know, and but there are drivers still be released for the 8788D cards that are still on the market.