| Product: |
Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum |
| Date: |
17/09/01 (170 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Good Qaulity, Easy to Install
Disadvantages: Hard to find
At my college over the past few weeks we have been experimenting different things with a computer system, hopefully this will mean I can do some good detailed reviews for you to read over the next few weeks.
Creative Labs took its fantastic Live! sound card and kicked it up a notch in an all new version called the Sound Blaster Live! Platinum.
The Sound Blaster Live! Platinum comes with a ton of software that will let you do everything from playing MP3 files to recording your own tracks. It also includes a few games. Creative Labs ships the Sound Blaster Live! Platinum sound card with more than two-dozen software titles.
The most intriguing aspect of this sound card, however, has nothing to do with the additional software or even the sound card itself. This package includes the Live! Drive. The Live! Drive slips into your computer's case like a CD-ROM drive and includes MIDI and composite connections for external audio components. The Live! Drive lets you connect audio components to the front of your computer, instead of fumbling around in the back.
The Live! Platinum has an excellent signal to noise ratio of 100dB. Its polyphony (the number of sounds it can play at once) can reach over 1,000, using software and hardware voices. The Sound Blaster Live! Platinum also supports downloadable samples (DLS). As for application program interface (API) support, the Live! Platinum supports Microsoft Direct Sound, Direct Sound 3D, and Creative Lab's own EAX API. The sound card is compatible with Windows 9x and Windows NT 4.
We tested the Sound Blaster Live! Platinum on a 300 megahertz (MHz) Pentium II system with 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM, running Windows 98. We also used Labtec's excellent LCS-2514 five-piece speaker system to get the most out of the Live! Platinum's 3-D positional audio abilities.
Audio Test.
For our first test, we loaded up one of our favorite CDs to check out the sound card's
audio quality. We were very impressed with the sound reproduction. The bass and higher frequencies sounded excellent, and we didn't notice any background noise.
Game Test.
Next, we ran a popular game to test the 3-D audio ability of the Live! Platinum. We turned on the EAX sound setting in the game, which is designed to enhance 3-D audio. We were not disappointed with the results. The sound card delivered excellent 3-D effects, which always adds an extra bit of realism to a game.
This is currently Creative Lab's top sound card, which is saying a lot. If you're a bona fide audiophile, this is your sound card.
I tried to keep this not too technical, but I know at times the computer jargon did get a bit much, for which I am sorry.
Jay
Summary:
|
|
