A great card with some minimal flaws
Written: Jun 05 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Surround Sound, fairly good sound, high compatibility with games, front access to plugs, remote control.
Cons: Front access to plugs sometimes hard to route AC-3 cable to stereo receiver.
The Bottom Line: Great card, great features - provided you have intel motherboard/chipset for compatibility. Avoid at all costs with VIA chipsets and AMD and get an A3D board.
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| matwood's Full Review: Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum |
Background
Due to the PC’99 spec, when I replaced all my motherboards, I no longer had any ISA slots, so I had to part with my AWE gold soundcards :( . My first attempt was with a soundblaster 128, but due to compatibility issues with DOS games, it went back to the store. At that time, the Live! Cards were hitting the market, and I initially bought four units for my computers. After all of my Live! Sound cards died a premature death, due to compatibility issues with games, they were replaced with SoundBlaster Live 5.1 cards and this one Platinum version which I got a great deal from Buy.com.
Installation of Hardware
Installation was very easy. Find a free PCI slot and slap the card into the slot, and then attach the cables from your various CD/DVD ROM drives into the sound card. About a 1 minute process for me since I never attach the screws to the case due to constant upgrading….
Software Problems
Installation of software is also very simple. However, I would advise not to install all the garbage that comes with the installation CD and concentrate on the items you will use. The problems I have encountered with the drivers have been issues when powering down the computer, specifically on Windows ME. When you do a start/shut down, it never does, but comes back with the Blue Screen of Death (and you thought only Windows 95 did that…). Ah yes, the porting over of Windows 95/98 drivers has not been successful. I assume some year this will be taken care of in the next Liveware release as well as updating the drivers. How do I know for certain it was the sound card drivers? I have reinstalled Windows Me (and when I mean reinstalled, including reformatting the hard drive). After every device was added, the reboot process would tell me which item was causing me grief. Every time, after installing the sound card drivers, I could no longer properly shut down about 40% of the time. I am sure new drivers will eventually solve the problem. The software comes complete with built-in settings for common games and listening options for music. I always disable the top bar that Creative Labs installs because you can double click on the sound card icon in the bottom right hand corner to configure the same items.
Playback Quality
While the sound quality is great, it is not phenomenal. I am not sure why, but in my opinion, the AWE64 Gold sounded much better on games and music probably because the processing chip was still on the sound card. However, I do like the surround sound capabilities that do add some realism to game playing, as you can now here people sneak up behind your back in games like Quake! Also, it is nice to have the Dolby Digital Converter so you no longer need a DVD decoder card to get 5.1 out of your stereo system.
Compatibility with games
I have only found one game that would not work with the sound card, and this was an old DOS game called Richard Scary’s Busytown. Games that seemed to write to hardware, such as Mame also worked fine on this sound card so it is a mystery as to why this one game didn’t.
Recommended Accessories
The Altec Lansting ATP5 is the best speaker system I have heard for any computer system (with a high price tag of $150) . Also, for playing games when the family is in bed, I bought a Y-Adapter. This adapter site between the front input of the speakers and a set of headphones. If it is late at night, I configure the sound card on–the-fly to use the front speakers only, then I turn off the speakers completely and use the headphones as to not disturb anyone! If you attach any gaming devices, do so with the USB port and not the joystick port if you want superior performance. If you watch DVD’s from your computer to your home entertainment system, or want to hear your games in 5.1, it is a must to get the Dolby AC-3 cable to hook up your sound card to your stereo. Then, kick back and REALLY hear a sonic boom. (hehehehe..evil grin). Another must have is a Universal remote. Before that remote, I had to have a remote for: the Creative Labs unit, the receiver, the TV, the VCR, CD Player, for the toaster (just kidding there). So, why have 60 thousand remotes when you can use a Universal Remote. In my case, my Receiver remote also was a standard Universal Remote, so this is all I use to operate all devices, including the remote control on the computer!
Quality of Unit
After the fiasco with the original Live! Cards, these have given me no grief. It could be due to the fact that I now only use USB joysticks. I do believe there are flaws on the joystick port that cause the cards to “blow” out. When this happens, all you here is static when you boot your machine. Also, there are some compatibility issues with non-Intel motherboards.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 149
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Epinions.com ID:
matwood
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Member: Michelle Atwood
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 3 members
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