Luxury sound at a luxury cost, but good price
Written: May 08 '00 (Updated May 09 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: 3D audio, MP3 encoding, good sound
Cons: 3D audio is just luxury, not necessity
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| kfgecko's Full Review: Creative Sound Blaster Live! MP3+ |
This card delivers quality sound, nice 3D audio, and MP3 encoding. 3D sound and MP3 encoding is on the luxury end of cool things to have in your computer (unless of course you regularly work with MP3's as a business or something). As cool as 3D audio is, and as much as 3D audio adds to the gaming experience, this is luxury to the bone.
Equipment like this is just plain expensive and the benefits are usually nothing so critical that you MUST have it (unlike a 3D graphics card). So at a PRICE of $99, this card is a good deal relatively speaking. But just like it takes an enthusiast to be willing to pay $10,000 for a high fidelity stereo system and speakers, it'll probably take a gaming enthusiast or MP3 junkie to be willing to eat the COST of obtaining 3D sound and MP3 encoding functionality.
The Sound Blaster Live! X-gamer and MP3+ are exactly the same card but with different software bundles. Although I bought this card primarily for 3D audio for games, I would rather have MP3 software rather than the 3 games the X-gamer ships with (since I already one one of them, one I know I don't care about, and the other I have only cursory interest for).
This card used the EAX 3D audio technology which doesn't quite deliver the accuracy of the other popular 3D audio technology, A3D. With the ability to deliver 3D audio with headphones, 2-speakers, or 4-speakers; this card delivers a very nice 3D audio experience. The sound is crisp and clear, but rather nebulous on precision of sound location. (Although, much of this depends on your speaker location setup and quality of speakers.)
Regular audio quality is also great but I honestly can't give a fidelity review because I know from being a home audio enthusiest years ago that this largely depends upon the speakers; of which I merely have a "adequate" Altec Lansing system.
The card installs extremely smoothly, both hardware and software. When EAX is on, there was almost no noticable slowdown due to the extra load of 3D audio on Athlon 500MHz system. This too, however, will depend on a myriad of factors from the game you are playing, to resolution, etc.
I'm not about to do fidelity tests with this card for this review, but I am able to say I am a happy customer. If you play games, already have a nice 3D card, fast CPU, good amount of memory, and nice controllers, then maybe the next $99 you spend should be on this card.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kfgecko
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Location: San Jose, California
Reviews written: 165
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About Me:
30-something male, born/raised in Northern-California.
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