SB Live! Probably the best so far (Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1)

Name: uncle_bob

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Product:	Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1
Date:	29/08/01 (2829 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good quality, probably the best on the market, Easy use and setup

Disadvantages: Not supported in XP

I recently purchased a Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1 in an auction from the States and shipped it over to the UK where I live. This worked out cheaper after paying the import duty I found, as long as you can pick up the item at a good price. I paid £129 including import duty.

On getting the product I installed it straight away, after I had repaired my power pack after a recent lightening strike. Installation was easy, you just plug in the card and fit the front panel and that’s it.
Software for it, like the drivers, installed no problems and it all worked first time, a rare event indeed, once I got the outputs the right way round.
The only problem I found was with my previous sound card, as it was a Viper Pro chipset and since it was not a card I could not remove it, this confused windows a little bit, and although it didn’t give any performance problems, it did create errors for a while, but removing it from all hardware profiles sorted it out and now it runs fine.

The soundcard software is very good, and the capabilities of the card are above all else as far as I am concerned. Being a DJ I find it very useful for mixing music due to the 2 outputs it supports. So you can have a monitor for setting up your tracks playing through headphones, while your mix is playing through the speakers. This I found very nice and is the prime reason I got it in the first place.

The Front control panel is a neat idea and makes adding external devices easy. You can plug in external mixers for example and mix on decks, and record your mix into wav form to burn onto CD, or edit at a later date.
The package I got came with a large amount of software, including, Mixmiester (which I already had) MixMan Studio, which is a music editing package, Cubase VST which I have not installed as I already have it, but as far as I am aware it is the full version. Games including Unreal tournament, Thief. which are designed to run with the plat
inum card and makes for good gaming. And Creative Labs software, including things like, a wav recorder, mixers etc.
All the software for the card is included and plugins are not needed to use certain features.
The remote control is a neat trick. And although not essential, is nice to have as a luxury.

The EAX effects are very good fun, and add good effects to your sounds, especially if you want that live appearence in your bedroom

The set up I use on it is a 4 channel 300 watt amp powering 2 3way pioneer 120W speakers and a 10inch 200W sub, and 2 3-way PC speakers I use in the second output as monitors when mixing. I find external amps give the best quality as you can set them up how you like, whereas with the pre made setups, like the creative labs one, you are limited to what they give you, and although good for those who just want games, and to play MP3's, for me they are not what I need. The SB live supports this well, and is perfect for any setup you want.

I also have a keyboard and a FM radio connected which I use to make tunes, and the FM radio is good for recording things off the radio straight into WAV to encode to MP3 or burn onto CD.
I am yet to find a complaint with it, as so far it has done all I need, and has been worth the money and wait to get it, although a good processor and memory is better as although not needed, it aids in running the software sometimes. Anything under a 333 processor and 64MB RAM will probably cause you problems with some of the software. I only run a 333 but have 196MB RAM and it works fine with that setup.
definitely worth the money if you want a top of the range soundcard for your pc, without going into industry hardware.

********UPDATE*************
Well it was all going so well wasn't it?
Unfortunately, I have now found a big problem with it, and thats it won't run in Windows XP.
Creative do a driver pack which will make the software run, but
not the Live! Drive, and Microsoft do an upgrade which will make the Live! Drive work, but not the software, unfortunately you can't put them together.
Creative don't seem to admit this is a problem, or is they do, are not rushing around frantically to sort it out, so be warned if you want to use any Creative SoundBlaster Live! products with Windows XP.

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