In order to take advantage of better performance I have switched on Extended Events auditing on my SQL compliance 5.5.1 instance.
Version 5.8 includes Extended Events Auditing on DML and select activities but it does not support Extended Events auditing on DML and select events if only some of the tables are selected for DML activity.
My servers are configured to capture Before and After data for only a selection of tables.
There is therefore no upgrade path available to me that will allow me to take advantages of Extended Events auditing and the performance benefits it offers us.
The ideal solution would be to support Extended Events Auditing on a selection of tables in future versions of the product.
Alternative a setting to reproduce the Extended Events Auditing available in version 5.5.1 (i.e. exclude DML and Select activities from Extended Events) in future versions of the product would be a less favourable but workable option.