I bought a new computer a few months ago, and as I am an audio fanatic, and the new SoundBlaster Live Platinum was out, I decided that I would stump up the extra cash and get one installed.

When I got home, I plugged the computer in and connected up my speakers (via my sound system), and popped in a CD. Wow, I was absolutely amazed with the quality!

I have used the card for editing music and the break-out box on the front of the computer has made this much easier. I can plug in my quitar, keyboard, CD-player, tape player, minidisc player, record player, television etc. and it copes with them all. The Steinberg Cubasis VST mixing package is useful although by no means the best package available on the market. I have created a couple of remixes and songs using the software, and have found that it can cope with very large WAV files.

The games which accompanied the card are also well worth the money. Coupled with a good graphics card (such as an NVidia GeForce 2MX) and a decent spec computer, game play enters a new dimension! The sound quality just envelops you in the game, and even with a standard two speaker set-up you really get into a game.

Overall, I think that this is one of the best sound cards on the market if you don`t want to move into the professional range, and I will never, ever go back to using a Creative PCI 64, which I had before!!