Worth its' weight in erm... platinum (Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1)

Name: The Duke

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Product:	Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1
Date:	29/08/01 (2108 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of inputs and outputs, Loads of software, Good sound

Disadvantages: Expensive, No paper manuals

It was a landmark birthday for me recently (I’m not telling you which landmark though) and some of my friends clubbed together and bought me this soundcard, mainly because it allows optical recording to minidisc (but more on that later).

I’ve already used Creative soundcards – in fact I replaced one (a Live! 1024 Value 1024) with this new card. They’re very good pieces of computer equipment indeed, and if you’re thinking about replacing your own soundcard, I recommend Creative as a brand name to consider.

OK, the Platinum 5.1 card is a serious piece of kit aimed at musicians and people who want their computers to be their home cinema set ups. The 5.1 refers to the surround sound capabilities of the sound card, but there is so much more to the card.

When you first open the box, you find that it is jam packed full of cables, CDs, a big thing with knobs on (the Live! Drive being the proper name) and the soundcard itself. Being a bloke, I would usually scoff at such a bewildering array of components and go about installing the whole thing by using “The Force”. However, due to “The Force”, I’d only recently managed to fry one of these soundcards (handily replaced by my friend as he still had the receipt) as well as my motherboard and modem (obviously, the dark side of “The Force”) so, out came the manual.

Now, this is my bugbear – the only thing the manual shows you is how to install the card and drive bay themselves. Other manuals for software etc. are on the many CDs that come with the package. I believe if you’re going to pay well over £100 for something, the least you can get is a paper copy of the manuals you’ll need. The manual for the soundcard, and associated Creative software packages alone is 90 A4 pages, and that’s without going into any detail. Want to print out 90 A4 pages? Thought not!

Installation was easy, if time co
nsuming due to three pieces of hardware needing installed: the soundcard, the Live! Drive and digital DIN bracket (for connecting to surround sound speaker if you have any).

Next up, is the installation of the software. The bundled software comes on six CDs, which is a fair amount of software. You get two games, Rage Rally and MDK2, two music packages, Steingberg Cubase VST and 3D Future Beat, and two Creative CDs containing drivers and a multitude of programs to fully exploit your soundcard.

I can’t really comment on the two games or the two pieces of musical software as they’re not really my thing and I haven’t yet used them, but I have used a lot of the stuff that Creative give you, and by and large, a lot of it is very good quality indeed.

As you might expect from a company with the reputation of Creative, there are lots of diagnostic utilities which range from testing for errors, to enabling and disabling certain features e.g. enabling digital CD audio while switching off analogue CD audio.

Their surround mixer enables you to set up your sound system for 2 or 4 speakers, as well as headphones and other output options. You set these during installation, but can be changed any time at a later date through the software.

The two pieces of “proper” software from Creative that I use most are the Playcentre2 (a media player for playing mp3s, WAVs etc.) and the Minidisc Centre which enables you to use the optical outputs to record to an external source digitally (in my case, a minidisc recorder). These two pieces of software are excellent and in the short time I’ve been using this card, I’ve found invaluable.

Other, more fun pieces of software are thing like the Keytar (crummy name, eh?) that enables you to use your PC’s keyboard as a guitar. Recorder lets you record from an external source and MediaRing Talk lets you chat over the Internet, and alter your voice to ma
ke it sound different.

Obviously, with a soundcard like this, you’re going to need a semi decent set of speakers. I use Labtec Spin 70 speakers and for the price I paid for them (£30) are excellent speakers that are going to be better than those free ones you got with your PC.

Ok, onto the most important matter. Sound quality – is it any good? The answer is “Yes!”. Creative have always had a name for producing quality soundcards, and this one is no exception. Music is crisp and clear with a good bass sound. Sound in games is good without being exceptional, and sometimes I do get a crackling sound although, this might have something to do with DirectX 8, or the game I’m playing rather than the card.

Admittedly, the card is not really any different from any other Live! Cards on the market, and if you are only looking for a soundcard without any of the added extras, then I suggest you get one of those and save yourself £100. However, if you want surround sound audio, and need an array of input and output options through MIDI, SPDIF or optical SPDIF, then I highly recommend this card.

If you already have a Soundblaster Live! Card without the bells and whistles, it is possible to buy the added bits without going through the hassle of buying a totally new soundcard package, but I do feel their asking prices at a touch on the steep side.

Driver updates are always regularly available on the website (www.soundblaster.com) as well as updated manuals, FAQs, extra pieces of software and numerous customer service options including phone numbers and postal/email addresses.

Warning: If you do want to make use of this soundcard, you must have a spare external 5.25” bay on the front of your computer (that’s the same thing as your CD-ROM or DVD player is in) and a spare slot on the back of your PC (as well as the one for the card itself) for the connector for the 5.1 speakers.

All
in all, a thoroughly recommended soundcard.

Summary: