Creative Sound Blaster Live!

Creative Soundblaster Live! I have had this card for sometime now, after winning it in a competition. I was going to buy one anyway though as I was after a new soundcard, the Soundblaster was a good recognised make. The version that I won was the Soundblaster Live Platinum - which is essentially the same product as the cheaper Soundblaster Live 1024. The difference lies in the front panel you get with the Platinum called the Live Drive. The Live Drive is something that will appeal to musicians, as it's used to plug external devices into the computer, such as Music keyboards, Electric guitars, and Proper headphones. I don't use the ...

If you've read any of my other Creative opinions, you'll know that I'm not too impressed with the quality of their products. The GeForce II MX graphics card I bought from them started to shed parts, and the CD-RW drive I bought decided to stop working after 6 months. However, I needed a sound card and I needed one quickly. So, for a laugh I decided to buy a Soundblaster Live! 5.1. However, after a few minutes using this product I was actually quite impressed. Combined with a 5.1 speaker solution from Cambridge Soundworks, I soon had my PC running with full surround sound and EAX support in games. So, what do you get with this piece of ...

I've had my SBL! now for around 2 years and bought it along with the Cambridge Soundworks 4 point surround sound speaker system. Two years on, and it's just as great as it was. As more and more software is being written for the EAX environmental sound system, the card seems to get more and more useful. Also, Creative Lab's LiveWare upgrade program ensures (up to a point) that the card can be upgraded easily and with little cost to the end-user. I've upgraded to LiveWare 3 for Windows 98 about 4 months ago without any OS problems - more than I can say for a lot of other upgrades that I've done in the past! Creative Labs, ...