Sound Blaster Dead!
Written: Jun 05 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Live Drive Looks Cool
Cons: Doesn't work
The Bottom Line: I was never able to get this to work correctly. Fortunately, there are other good choices available.
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| egale's Full Review: Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum |
Ever since I have owned a computer, I have always had Creative Soundblaster cards. I recently built myself a new system and decided to go all out on the sound card and bought the Soundblaster Live! Platinum. What a mistake.
First, this card comes with a ton of software, plus a remote, plus a microphone, plus the very cool looking Live Drive. The Live Drive installs in a 5 1/4 inch bay and has connectors for almost every type of input imaginable. I thought it was a good idea for my microphone which I use with Dragon Naturally Speaking. This way, I could plug the microphone into the front of the machine rather than the back and I could remove the microphone when I wasn't using it. Unfortunately, the microphone jack in the front is not recognized in Dragon's software so the jack was useless. For most people, I think the rest of the connectors in the front will never be used.
Installation was a nightmare. The installation routine never completed successfully the first time and trying to delete the drivers and reinstall was difficult because it wouldn't uninstall as it never successfully installed. After a reformat and a minimum installation, I finally got the drivers installed. I did not install most of the other software as I found it useless, space hogging and hard to install anyway.
I finally get everything installed and I now have sound. I try and play a game and the sound is unbearably loud. I look in the mixer and the volume is up to 100%. I move the slider down and magically all by itself, it moves itself up to 100%. I assume it is this game that is doing it so I close up the game and sure enough, I can move the volume down and it stays down. Of course I assume the game is at fault and try and find a patch but there is none. I chalk it up to bad programming until I decide to try out Creative's own utility for playing CDs and magically once again, the volume moves itself up to 100% and will move itself back up if you change it. Closing Creative's software allows you to move the volume back down.
I uninstalled and reinstalled and checked for driver updates but could not fix the problem. Finally, I pulled the card and bought a Philips Acoustic Edge card. Finally, a sound card that works as advertised. The Acoustic Edge doesn't come with a ton of software nor a microphone nor a remote, but it works.
So in conclusion. The Soundblaster card looks great on paper. You have connectors front and back for every analog or digital device imaginable. It will handle 5.1 speaker systems. It should be perfect for home use. But at least in my case, didn't work. It was a waste of money and only switching to a different brand sound card worked.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 175
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Epinions.com ID:
egale
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Reviews written: 53
Trusted by: 9 members
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