Sound Card question...TB Santa Cruz..

Bear with me a moment - I have a TB Santa Cruz ..called a VideoLogic SonicFury here in UK, playing through a Cambridge Soundworks FSP(?)1000 - four speakers and a sub-woofer job. Abit KT7A mobo and an Athlon 1gig @ 1.33, on Win98SE and DX8.1.I wondered if my sound card was having a big effect on 2K2 performance.I was trying out settings in Control Panel/Multimedia and turned off Hardware Acceleration - my soundcard suddenly sprang to life! The sub-woofer woke up and blasted my eardrums, MS2K2 sounds ('specially those new air racing P-51's) are now amazing. It is as if my sound card was running muffled before.DX diagnostics sayes my sound pans out just fine, but I am not using the .vxd, sound is "emulated." The Santa Cruz Control Panel features all work - Reverb etc - and sample rate conversion quality is set to best.Anybody please tell me why my sound card works better with hardware acceleration turned off?Thank you muchly.PH