Is it ALIVE?
Written: Jun 29 '01 (Updated Jul 02 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The sound is phenomenal, the remote is a great toy, good response from tech support
Cons: Can be finicky during setup, Sblive.com's site not much help
The Bottom Line: Great card! if you are a gadget type person, you will love the remote.
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| WildBillm's Full Review: Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum |
I bought this Sound Blaster Platinum 5.1 card on 4/30/01 for $168.95. This sound card is literally the Ferrari of sound cards. The Sound Blaster Live Platinum 5.1 is a high performance engine that needs to be fine-tuned just like a Ferrari. If you know anything about sports cars, sometimes it is a headache to even start it, but once it runs it purrs. I don’t own a Ferrari, but I know someone who does. You can’t treat your Ferrari like a VW bug. It has to be tweaked, adjusted and fine tuned for it to work at it highest performance level. Same for the SBLive Platinum 5.1.
Don’t get me wrong, I love this sound card, but it is not for the faint at heart. If you don’t know very much about computers, I wouldn’t purchase this unless you know a computer guy/girl first hand. Luckily for me I am that computer guy.
Let me give you a little outline of the rest of my review:
1.) Why did I buy the SBLive Platinum Live 5.1?
2.) What are the specs of my system?
3.) What problems did I have during installation?
4.) What are my likes and dislikes about the card?
5.) More info on programming my remote
6.) Comments on tech support
7.) Conclusion
Why did I buy the SBLive Platinum Live 5.1?
When I was looking for a sound card, I didn’t really know what I wanted. I did know that I was planning on playing DVD movies on my computer and from my computer to my TV. So I wanted to take advantage of my SPDIF digital audio output on my Ricoh MP9120A CDRW/DVD player (http://wildbillm.epinions.com/cmd-review-27AA-3370CB73-3A41150E-prod5/tk_~CB005.1.9) and I wanted to have expandability when I upgrade my speaker system. I also wanted crisp digital sound for my movies and game playing. So why did I choose the SBLive Platinum 5.1? Because of all the bells and whistles. When I heard this card came with a remote, I was a little intrigued. I wanted to know what this thing did. I started reading a little more and I read that you could shutdown your computer with the remote… I thought to myself, “That is pretty cool, but I can’t justify getting it because of just that.” Then I read that you can play your DVD movies with the remote. OK… Sold. That was about the extent of my purchase decision. Now you are probably wondering why was that the selling point. Well. I have a Matrox G400 Dual video output video card. (This review was updated Jun 29,2001 to explain how I setup my TV to play DVD movies off of my computer- http://wildbillm.epinions.com/cmd-review-2268-B42EB5A-39F5FD2D-prod2/tk_~CB003.1.46) and I have the second video output going to my television set. The only problem of course is when we watch DVD movies, I have to go to the computer and click the play button with the mouse. Then walk out to the living room to watch the movie. When I read that this video card’s remote can play DVD movies, I had it all planned out. Now I don’t have to walk to the computer and click the play button. I know longer have to walk all the way to the computer to click the play button. I can just turn the corner, point the remote to the Live IR drive and press play. Then take a few more steps back to the living room. Now a lot of you are thinking I am pretty lazy. And you are right, but I also have a new toy. I am kind of the gadget guy who loves new toys. The expandability to a Dolby Digital 5.1 speaker system is what this sound card was made for. So that is why I decided to go that route. And if you want to find out how I play DVD movies on my TV, read my updated Matrox G400 article listed above.
What are the specs of my system?
OS: Win98 SE
CPU: AMD 800MHz Athlon
Motherboard: Microstar 6195K7Pro
HD: Quantum 10gb EIDE, 18GB Seagate EIDE
CDROM: 52X Creative
CDRW/DVD: Ricoh MP9120A (12x Write/10x ReWrite/32x CDROM/8x DVD)
RAM: 512 mb (Micron PC133)
Video: Matrox G400 32mb Dual Head Video card
TV Card: Hauppage WinTV
Sound: SBLive Platinum 5.1 w/ Live IR Drive
Network: Linksys 10/100 LNE100-Tx
What problems did I have during installation?
When trying to install the sound card as mentioned above when working with Ferrari engines, everything has to be just right to get the performance you are seeking. When I installed my sound blaster live, I was getting IRQ. I went into my system settings and traced what device was conflicting with the SoundBlaster card. It turned out to be my wintv card. Since there are multiple solutions to IRQ conflicts, I went to the web to find out how other soundblaster live owners resolved their conflicts. The solution that worked for me was shifting my pci cards around in my box. Since my system is loaded with cards, I was fortunate enough to have available pci slots to isolate the soundblaster card at the bottom of my tower where it did not try sharing the IRQ with other cards. This resolution was discovered after a lot of reading and experimenting with various things. Once I found the correct combination of card placement in my computer, the sound card started was working without any problems.
What are my likes and dislikes about the card?
Likes:
I love all of the features of this card. If you are upgrading your sound system to a dolby 5.1 digital surround sound, you don’t have to buy a dolby 5.1 digital decoder. And with the Live Drive IR you can attach midi devices, mini disc players, digital audio devices, headphones and other things in the front of your computer. This eliminates the need of having to pull out your computer and plug something into the back. It also has the IR port and remote. With the remote, you can program almost any application (with download of software for programming). As is, the remote is setup to play your audio CDs, shutdown and reboot your computer, and various other functions. The playing of DVD movies was a feature that truly hit home with me. I was however, disappointed that the use of the remote was not pre-configured for DVD play. I was however very pleased with the push in the right direction from Tech Support via email. A rep pointed me in the direction of looking for key map editors online. For more information on the remote programming, see the next section. I also liked the ability to adjust my headphone and microphone volumes on the Live IR Drive.
Dislikes:
I did not like the fact that Creative didn’t take any responsibility for coming up with a remote programming tool. Someone who is not supported by Creative put the remote programming together. I have heard numerous complaints about the drivers needing to be updated and Creative is not very fast about releasing new drivers for their cards. And the last thing I disliked was their FAQ page. It wasn’t put together with the end user in mind. It was difficult to navigate, and never had a question that pertained to anything that I wanted to know. (But then again, that is the way most FAQ pages are)
More info on programming my remote
I found an application to program the remote. The only application I was interested in program at the time was for my DVD application (PowerDVD 3.0). I found a program called “Key Cutter” at http://plaza.powersurfr.com/tgi. With Key Cutter, I was able to program the keys on my remote to keyboard keys for PowerDVD 3.0. Once everything was said and done, I was able to punch the start button on my remote a three times to pull up the application menu, scroll to PowerDVD, press the OK button to launch the application. If you are unfamiliar with PowerDVD 3.0, it has 2 windows that open up. One of them is the viewing window and the second is the controls window. Once PowerDVD is open, the control window is selected; blinking indicators at all 4 corners of the window lets you know which is selected. This of course is the wrong window to allow the use of the remote’s play button, so I then have to hit start 2x. There are 2 PowerDVD listings to choose from, and I have to select the bottom one. Once this is done, I am able to control the PowerDVD application with all of the features I programmed into the remote. So the steps are not as smooth and nice as I would like, but the outcome is complete control of my DVD movies with a remote to my computer. There are a lot of buttons on the remote that you can customize to any application you wish. It will just take some time and a lot of patience. There are some other key map editors out there, but this was pretty straightforward and fairly easy to use.
Comments on tech support
I managed to get my sound card up and running fairly quickly by using the news groups so I didn’t give them a chance to fix that problem. I decided I would give their online tech support a try with configuring my remote. I was pretty impressed with their support. I submitted my first question with their online form, and within 2 days I got a response. Even though the response had nothing to do with my question (my fault… The wording led them in the wrong direction). So I submitted a reply to the comment and corrected any confusion. The third reply came the next day because I had responded very early in the morning. The tech support told me that to get PowerDVD player working, I would have to re-map the keys. He told me to browse the web for key mapping tools and also mentioned that Creative doesn’t support that. But he led me to the solution, so I was excited. And it didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. (See “More info on programming my remote” for more details on that)
Conclusion
Well, let me start off by saying I didn’t plan on this review being so large, but that is why I decided to break it up so you could find what you wanted and didn’t have to read the whole thing if you didn’t need to. What are my comments about this board? I had some stumbling on getting it up and running, but I love it. I have a headset with microphone that I use that I can plug straight into the Live IR Drive with volume controls easily accessible as well. I have my sleek and slender creative remote for my movies. And the sound output is remarkable. I would have to say I love this card. If your system doesn’t have a lot of things in it like: network cards, wintv cards, modem cards, etc. Then you may not have any problem at all installing this card. If you don’t mind calling tech support to have them help you if you have problems I would suggest buying this card. However, if you are the type of person who doesn’t like waiting on the phone and not having the possible problems spelled out for you in a book they provide, you may want to steer away from this card. It all depends on what you are willing to sacrifice. And for those of you who didn’t have to sacrifice anything for this card. Cheers to you.
One last comment, I just made my system a dual boot W98SE and Linux 7.1 Professional server using the KDE X windows environment and the sound card was found without any configuration. So even Linux sounds great on my system.
Thanks for reading,
Bill
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 168.95
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Epinions.com ID:
WildBillm
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Bill Mounsey
Location: Slidell, LA
Reviews written: 57
Trusted by: 43 members
About Me:
Unix Administrator in Louisiana. Love college basketball, football, baseball and computers.
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