The best thing that's happened to PC audio in years
Written: Aug 01 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Supports 3D positional audio and EAX, excellent sound quality
Cons: Liveware is worthless and Creative tends to be very, very slow at producing new drivers
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| Pavlovs_Fish's Full Review: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Value Sound Card |
The next generation of PC audio is here, and its name is Soundblaster Live!. I got a Soundblaster Live! Value about a year ago because the integrated audio in my Gateway was really quite awful. I chose the Live! Value because it had a low price, some very attractive features, and it was from Creative, who set the standard for PC sound with the original Soundblaster cards.
It’s probably best to start with a bit of info on the Soundblaster Live! family of cards in general. There are five models now – the original Soundblaster Live!, the SB Live! Value, the SB Live! X-Gamer, the SB Live! mp3+, and the SB Live! Platinum. At the time I bought the card, only the first two on that list were around and I was on a budget, so I picked up a Live! Value for $50. Having learned a fair amount about these cards since I made the purchase, I think I chose wisely. The card itself is the same no matter what version you buy. The only difference is what else comes in the box. All that came with my Live! Value was a driver CD, a game I already owned, and a voice recognition program for which I have no use. This is fine by me, because I really don’t see the point of software bundles. I buy based on whether or not the hardware meets my needs. It’s rare that I get something in a software bundle that I can actually get any use out of, so it’s nice when a company like Creative offers their product with a minimal bundle to keep the price down.
There were two main features that made me decide on this card. One is that it has outputs for both a front and a rear speaker channel. The other is that it has full support for Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX). 3D positional audio adds a lot to computer games that support it, and EAX is just incredibly cool. The idea behind EAX is to provide a standard set of tools for deforming sound effects to make them sound like they’re happening in a different environment. When used properly, this adds great realism to a game, as the sound of your footsteps changes based on what kind of surface you’re walking on and the sound of your weapons firing reverberates differently inside of a warehouse than it does in a large outdoor environment. EAX is used in a very impressive number of high quality games (Unreal Tournament, Half-Life, and Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption, to name a few). I’ve played many of these games with and without EAX enabled, and the difference is amazing.
Even if you’re not a gamer, the Soundblaster Live! Value is an excellent card. The sound quality I get is just incredible. Some credit for this goes to my speakers, but my current setup is the cheapest set I could find with four satellites and a subwoofer, so I give most of the recognition for my computer’s audio quality to the sound card. Since I’m a college student and space in my dorm room is always a precious commodity, I gain a lot of breathing room by letting my computer be my one-stop entertainment center – it is my TV, it is my stereo, it is my DVD player, and it is my primary gaming platform. I can use the computer for all of these things without the Soundblaster Live!. In fact, my computer was my entertainment center long before I got the Live! Value, so I can say from experience that the quality of the Soundblaster Live! makes anything and everything that causes my computer to produce sound much more enjoyable.
Although I do think that this is one of the best pieces of computer hardware I have ever bought, the software for it is another story. The drivers have always seemed to be reasonably good, although they’re not always timely. It took far too long for Creative to release Windows 2000 drivers for the Soundblaster Live! – the operating system was released in February and they didn’t have good, current drivers for it until June. And then, there’s Liveware, which consists of several utilities that are meant to help you take advantage of the card. A couple of them could be useful if Liveware as a whole were remotely tolerable. In my experience with Liveware 2.0 and 3.0 under Windows 98, Windows NT, and Windows 2000, Liveware is anything but tolerable, as it seems only to serve two purposes. First, it causes all sorts of strange behavior in the sound card, such as arbitrarily muting my Line In, CD, or Auxiliary sound just because a WAV file played. Second, it wastes system resources and, on occasion, does bizarre things to your operating system, resulting in crashes and lockups. I hate to let poor software ruin such wonderful hardware, so now I just install the drivers and forget about Liveware. I still get amazing sound quality, 3D positional audio, and EAX, with the added bonus of a stable computer.
All things considered, the Soundblaster Live! Value truly is an excellent card. If you use your computer for anything that involves audio, the Soundblaster Live! is a must have, and at $50, it is quite a bargain. I believe the Live! Value is a little hard to track down these days, as Creative is mostly pushing the X-Gamer, mp3+, and Platinum models, but the Value is out there if you’re willing to look for it, and trust me: it’s worth it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 50
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Epinions.com ID:
Pavlovs_Fish
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Location: Herndon, VA
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 4 members
About Me:
Technology addict, movie buff, and above all, a gamer.
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