Your ticket to the show
Written: Oct 04 '00 (Updated Oct 25 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: bundled software, bells and whistles, solid quality and compatibility
Cons: When are they going to learn to synthesize horns and guitars???
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| ajwall's Full Review: Creative Sound Blaster Live! MP3+ |
Am I glad I bought the Creative Labs Soundblaster LIVE! + MP3? Well, I'm listening to it right now. The bass vibrates my feet and the high end falls like snowflakes on the limits of my hearing range. Is the ability to pull top quality sound out those MP3's unique to this product? No, but I'll tell you what is.
The bundled software really brings the capabilities of the Soundblaster LIVE! to light. Included with your card is Cakewalk Express, a toned down version of the popular Cakewalk Home Studio or CakeWalk Pro Audio. This program allows you to record multiple audio tracks and mix them in real time adding effects such as reverb and chorus. This sound card has enough processing power to play back three high resolution audio tracks at the same time that you lay down a fourth. It is plenty of capability for the casual to serious home recorder/mixer.
CD-ripping and MP3 encoding software is also included, so there's no need to go back to the store before you can start throwing those tracks on the internet and distributing the contents of the artist's heart and soul with lawless abandon. (I know what people say about Napster bringing down the big corporate music businesspeople and flattening the playing field, but I'm sure Tolstoy would have been quite a famous pauper if his works had been disseminated to the whole world without his seeing a penny except at book signings. It is theft, so if you do it, keep doing it, but don't pretend you're not stealing.)
On top of the above features, you will have the capability to alter the sonic environment of Windows and all of her Microsoft suckling applications. Environment Audio resides in the system memory accessible via a desktop pop-up menu and you can make everything sound like its in a cave, a concert hall, like you're tripping or like you're in a tiny, tiny room. In addition there are customized EAX settings for 40 popular games including Age of Empires and Starcraft to add that 3D spacey edge that is sure to bowl you over into the snack-food wrappers.
For the meticulous sonic purists, there exists a utility to customize surround sound speaker output to your speaker layout. Just adjust the speaker icons in the graphical interface and slide them to where they are in real life in relation to you head, and surround-sound bliss is yours in which to indulge.
The only groups I would not recommend this sound card to are recording executives, Dr. Dre, Metallica band members, and professional music produces who might want something with better synthesizing power.
While this card reproduces the sound of a piano very accurately with its fancy WaveTable Synthesis in MIDI, it still makes guitars, violins, saxophones and brass sound like a low-grade electronic keyboard reproduction.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 140
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Epinions.com ID:
ajwall
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Location: New York, NY, USA
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 4 members
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