I hear about Creative Labs the most, but are they really the best?

Best at what? What company makes the best cars, computers, etc. Hardly any company makes the best product for everyone or for everything.

Creative labs makes very good soundcards for the consumer market at a reasonable price (for games and listening to audio). Other companies make professional level cards for recording audio, which are vastly superior to anything creative makes in both performance and features. However these card sell for as much as $1,000 US or more. Manufacture's like Yamaha, Event, M-Audio, Digidesign, Terratec, Aardvark, Echo, etc. Here's a list of top quality audio cards: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/sid=020426124834066032240180403217/search/c=4059/