Value in the Eyes of the Beholder
Written: Sep 24 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: 3D sound, good configuration utilities
Cons: not much bundled software, no onboard memory
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| anecdoter's Full Review: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Value Sound Card |
While great for gaming, this card leaves much to be desired for the aspiring musician. Beneath the polished sheen of 3-D sound posistioning,a familiar beast resides; the Sound Blaster Live Value is more closer to the old Sound Blaster Awe 32, then it is different.
In the four years since the AWE 32 was released, the hardware has improved greatly - instead of a full length card crowded with chips, the Live Value is a slender little card gracefully laced with several processors. Honestly, who cares about how the hardware looks? Probably only the most appearence obsessed and they can look else where for commentary about eye pleasing circuits. More to the point, though the silicon hardware has progressed, the software has seemingly stood still for the most part.
By far and away the coolest and most useful software that ships with this Creative Labs board is the Speaker utility that lets you configure how many speakers you have, what setup they follow (in front of you, in front and behind, etc) and what sounds should be played through which set of speakers. For instance, you could play your CDs through your back speakers while listening to .WAV files through your front. It is disappointing that most of the programs that come with this card are for configuration; however, a talking parrot program and a demo version of Unreal came with my card as well. It would be nice to have more sound and music creation and manipulation utilities. While you can download Voyetra's sound studio (for .WAV file manipulation) and a MP3 player from Creative's www.sblive.com site, the folks at Creative Labs could have thrown in some more utilities, such as a program to clean up (eliminate static and noise) from music and sound files, a drum machine program that plays with you as you fumble along with the included keyboard utility, and some other programs to help take advantage of the card's 512 voices.
While 512 voices is significant in number over the old AWE 32 and 64's respective 32 and 64 voices, it is very hard to tell the difference. 512 different sounds (voices) being played at once is probably more than most untrained ears can distinguish. However, it might be one of those things that you don't really notice, but, on a subconscious level, is still very pleasing.
If you have more than two speakers, you will be impressed by the card's 3D sound capabilities. 3D sound allows a computer to fool a person into believing that a sound that is presumed to be coming from the back left corner of your character in a game, is actually coming from behind and left of you. Now if only someone would make a spine tingling horror game, this feature might be really fun. The effect is still present and distinguishable, yet significantly diminished with only two speakers. This feature is almost exclusive to games, and people who play few or any games would not miss anything if this sound card did not have it.
Also, if you have more than two speakers, or two high quality speakers, you may want to buy the Sound Blaster Live. The main difference between the two is a daughter card that plugs into the Sound Blaster Live card. This daughter card is nothing more than more outputs for your card. Some of the outputs are high-quality, all digital SPDIF outputs that allow you to hook up digital speakers to the sound card.
Speaking of digital feature, I really like the digital input from CDROM drives(2 wire connection). While only some CDROM drives support digital output, this is a very nice feature to have. At first I was skeptic, quick to dismiss any promise of potential clarity, but the all digital connection from CD to the sound card delivers a crisper, more clear sound. Also, theorectically, by using an all digital connection, you can prevent a generation degradation when you copy music from your CDROM drive to your computer, however such benefit would be slight, if ever noticed.
If you're not playing games, then you probably will not notice much of a difference between the Sound Blaster Live Value and an AWE 32 (or 64). When playing CDs over an analog (4 wire) connection, the two boards will sound the same. The two cards record at the same rates, so recordings will sound pretty much the same as well. Even games that do not use 3D sound support will sound nearly the same. However, the Sound Blaster Live Value has Direct Sound acceleration which reduces the amount of effort your main processor has to put forth to play music and sound.
Too bad that Creative decided to defeat much of this advantage by using shared memory for the sound fonts. Sound fonts are program or user specific instrument libraries that can be used to provide unique sounds for a game or composition. Shared memory basically means that instead of using memory on the sound card the Live Value's main chip, the EMU101K, will use your computer's main memory, reducing the amount of memory available to your applications. The old Awe 32 cards had 512k of memory built in and could be expanded with relative ease up to 32MB.
In conclusion, the Sound Blaster Value is a good card for the occasional gamer. Hardcore gamer, or people who uses their computer to watch a lot of DVDs with surround sound, and musicians should consider a higher end card. The Value's software library is similar to the values you find at the day old bread rack at the supermarket - it is edible, but not for too long. While the hardware has improved, it is more spit and polish than serious evolution - to be fair, how much can you do with sound cards that has not already been done? The lack of onboard memory for the sound card is a major negative in my book, but if you have over 64MB of system ram and a decent video card, there probably would be little effect of system performance.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 99
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Epinions.com ID:
anecdoter
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Member: Steve
Location: Toledo, OH
Reviews written: 40
Trusted by: 3 members
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