Dont wake the neighbours, the neighbouring countries that it (Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum)

Name: 2000andone

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Product:	Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum
Date:	13/09/01 (291 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Just amazing, Sound Quality, Output types

Disadvantages: Installation proves to be tricky, Still VERY SLIGHT room for improvement

I purchased the Soundblaster Live Platinum soundcard after I received a set of Cambridge Soundworks DTT3500 speakers for christmas. I had brilliant sound quality just from the speakers but in my stupidity of youth I thought why the hell not make it even better, and how right I was.

After installing the soundcard in a free PCI slot and placing the Live Drive in the front of my tower then connecting all the cables I was all set to start making some noise. I flicked the switches to get my pc in motion and like stated in the manual the card was detected and windows went about installing the drivers off the provided CD. But no I then got a error and couldnt do anything except restart the machine in safe mode. After consulting a friend it was determind that I needed to disable the original soundcard (an obvious thing to do now I think about it but not a mention anywhere in the supplied manual). All problems are now sorted and windows is chugging along as well as can be expected.

There is a huge amount of software supplied with this product including games, music making software and loads of things to do with the soundcard (play center 2). You also get a microphone to use with the karaoke software (not for everyone no doubt). I havent had chance to test all these out yet but the games are great and certainly sound better. The only grip I do have is the amount of junk that was added to my system tray. I have removed it all now and everything still seems to be running fine.

So to sound quality, I cant say I have noticed a huge amount of difference but that is probably because I have only been playing MP3's and games. The sounds are definatly crisper and you can choose the type of atmosphere you place yourself in with the edition of EAX (ie ally, bathroom, cave, city, the list goes on) but im sure if I were to pop in a DVD movie I would be convinced I was in a cinema such was the quality before the soundcard was introduced.

So to c
onclude. This is an expensive bit of kit at around £150 but if you are into games, DVDs, music etc and you want that bit extra from the type of sounds you are getting then the card is probably going to be worth your money.

Summary: