Inexpensive & Great for Gaming
Written: Mar 28 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: great for gaming, music, comes with good fx software.
Cons: awful for recording (guitar), pain to install on my motherboard
The Bottom Line: Inexpensive. Great for gaming, music, pretty good software package.
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| MjrVodka's Full Review: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Value Sound Card |
The Soundblaster Live Value is a great sounding, inexpensive sound card.
Gaming.
It works wonderfully for gaming, providing more channels than most games have sound effects. The software that comes with it even has preset "Environmental Audio Settings" for certain games.
Installation
The Live! requires that it have its own IRQ. On some motherboards this means that you will have to move the sound card around (on many boards, multiple PCI slots share the same IRQ). Additionally, you may have to go into your Device Manager (Control Panel--System) and disable IRQ Steering. I had to do both - it really is very easy to do especially if you pick the right slot on the second try.
Software
The software that comes with the Live! is top notch, even if it looks somewhat suspicious.
The launch bar is pretty annoying - I got rid of mine launching at startup - but it has some nice features. It allows you to change presets both for the purpose you are using the card (playing music, playing games, recording external instruments, etc) and change presets for individual video games.
The PlayCenter is something I never use - it plays all audio media, but with Winamp and Media Player being far superior in appearance and features, I have never used PlayCenter.
The Recorder works very well, better than Windows Sound Recorder, but it only will sample at rates up to 48kHz, as opposed to the program I use for recording - Sound Forge, which samples at up to 96kHz.
The Mixer is about the same as the Windows mixer (that great "Volume Control" on your toolbar).
The best program is definitely the Environmental Audio program. This allows you to pick from many preset audio effects (such as Alien, Auditorium, Wah-Wah) and create your own effects with Wah, Reverb, Bass, Distortion, Phase Shifting, Modulation, etc.
Recording
The one downfall of the Live! - and all Soundblasters - is that they are terrible for doing direct line (pluging straight into the sound card) recordings from instruments, such as guitar.
Still, the Live! Value is a great card that can be purchased for around $50-60.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 55
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Epinions.com ID:
MjrVodka
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Location: Tampa FL
Reviews written: 72
Trusted by: 53 members
About Me:
soccer, guitar, music, computers
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