SB PCI 128 Good Sound for the Budget minded!
Written: Aug 06 '00 (Updated Sep 09 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good Sound, dual output, Legacy compatibility.
Cons: Only 16 hardware channels!
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| El_Terrible's Full Review: Creative Sound Blaster PCI128 |
The SoundBlaster PCI is the offspring of the Ensoniq (now Creative) Audio PCI. This series at the time of release were the only PCI sound cards with legacy (16-bit DOS) compatibility (as of right now only the Live series has joined this card in this aspect). This is the beginning of the modern day Creative labs sound. At the time Creative was pushing the AWE 64 Gold, Ensoniq was quietly selling the Audio PCI (32 voice wave-table synthesis) and pushing its legacy compatibility. Creative was hurting in it’s sound technology not yet having a PCI card to compete with Aureal’s A3D or Ensoniq’s Audio PCI, in short they were about to be left behind in the technology they helped to pioneer and later became the master of. Needless to say they stepped up and did the next best thing; they purchased Ensoniq, which basically solved all their sound problems. Then followed the Audio PCI with the Audio PCI 64 and then again with the Audio PCI 128 (this was the only card with dual output jacks for surround sound in the series) which is the product that I’m reviewing today.
*note – A Sound font is a compilation of digitized samples of real instruments.
This card is no slouch when it comes to good digital sound. If supports 2,4 & 8 Meg wave fonts for decent sampling of Midi sounds. Even more amazing is the card is capable of using the Sound Blaster AWE series wave fonts. This produced high quality midi playback through some very nice samples and showed the card to be compatible with the EMU sound processors of the older AWE series. The most disappointing feature here is the fact that the card still only has 16 hardware channels (the live series actually has 32 hardware channels) and 16 software channels, which means getting great sound taxes your CPU.
As I’ve said before the card had 2 outputs for use with a second set of speakers to create a positional audio effect. To further enhance this sound quality they added Reverb, Chorus and Echo to make the sound more rich and full. In short the soundcard can make your music sound very sweet with nice clarity. To go along with these features the card has 90 dB +/- signal to noise ratio, which was miles ahead of the 80 dB +/- ratio of the AWE 64. Adding to that they removed the IDE port from the sound card, which further reduced the noise. I guess what I’m trying to say here is the card has a nice clean sound.
Overall the card installed in to my Athlon based system without a single problem. I like the rich clear sound it has to offer and really like the $20.00 price tag that I paid for the OEM version (an Athlon 750 isn’t cheap you know!). It’s a good card for people on a budget that don’t want to lose quality. The only real downfall here is the lack of 32 pure Hardware channels but the software channels have a decent sound if you have a fast CPU. So I’d say if you can’t afford the Live series of soundcards then give this one a try you won’t be disappointed. However, if you can afford the Live series then don’t even think twice just buy the Live card.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 20.00
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Epinions.com ID:
El_Terrible
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Location: Tampa, FL, USA
Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 9 members
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