Actually, there's more at the hardware level in the line leveling, and i see way more caps on the board.
the newest, X-FI, actually has 10mb local memory, so of course, the processor is quite different, but the audigy4pro is still based on the same architechture. All they have done really is revised the layout of the board, and this has got them the bit extra signal performance

There's more plugs on the external box...
