Chuck is muted by game

[Protozoan]

Hi. I am fairly new to Chuck but I've been having fun with it for a week or two.
I've been working with Inventor to get his Second Life => OSC => ChucK experiments to work for me.
My problem is that ChucK is being muted whenever SL or any "game" application has the focus on my windows desktop.

I am using Windows Vista and Soundblaster XFI Titanium sound card.

I've tried changing the priority of applications. I set Second Life to lowest priority and ChucK to highest and that didn't help.

This sound blaster card I got is loaded with features. I am suspecting that they included a "feature" to mute certain sounds when I am "gaming".
I have searched high and low in my sound cards settings but I can't find any checkbox to turn off this "feature"

Any help is appreciated as I said I suspect the sound card but if you know of a different solution please let me know.