Creative Lab’s Excellent Baseline Sound Card is an Exceptional Value!
Written: Oct 28 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The best cheap sound card if you just want to hear sound through your speakers.
Cons: A little more money can get you a better Sound Blaster.
The Bottom Line: A true Value! Best sound possible for the average user.
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| grimjack2's Full Review: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Value Sound Card |
Don’t be fooled by the picture above where it says “Geared for Gaming”. This may have been true two years ago, but now there is a much better card called the Sound Blaster X-gamer that is much better for Gamers. I recently replaced my Sound Blaster Value with the Sound Blaster X-gamer for two reasons. One is that the X-gamer comes with four games, three of which I was willing to buy. The second reason was that my Live Value card didn’t have an internal AC-3 sound input, and since I recently put a DVD player in my computer, I wanted to get the AC-3 output.
Before Windows 95, every card said they were “Sound Blaster compatible” but none truly were. Sound Blaster’s ruled the market, especially for games. I think Creative Labs got a little lazy and many companies started producing superior sound cards. Creative Labs actually bought a few of the struggling companies, others went out of business, and now I think only Diamond is any competition for them. A few years ago, Creative Labs finally replaced their aging Awe-64 series and came out with its Live series of cards. Of all the Lives, the value pack is the cheapest, with relatively no frills.
The Live Value only costs approximately $50, but you can get the same card packaged with some extra features for not too much more money. If you care about what the X-gamer, the MP3, or the Platinum has to offer, it may be worth the extra cost.
If you are truly into games, then the Sound Blaster Live X-gamer comes with full versions of four games! These are Thief 2, Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament, and MDK2. I could have thrown the card away, and these four games would have been worth the $99 price themselves. The MP3 gives you software to make it easier to rip MP3s from a music CD and to burn MP3s back onto a CD in either MP3 format, or as a standard music CD. This software isn’t really necessary in my opinion since there is plenty of free, or very cheap, software that does all this. If you get the Sound Blaster Live Platinum then you get most of the MP3 software, and you also get an extra piece of hardware that can be very nice for the serious musician. There is a piece of plastic that fits where you currently have an empty bay that would fit your average CD drive. It has multiple input and outputs that are much harder to find and use from the rear of the case.
The Live Value comes with none of these frills, but what it does come with is an excellent sounding card. Measurable tests show that the Sound Blaster Live series has superior stereo separation than any of the competitors. Also, the microphone-in line is cleaner according to the dictation software tests. This can be very important for people who use that type of software. Aside from the physical tests, most audiophiles just think the Live cards sound better. The general quality of the card is also very well respected in the music industry. Sound Blasters are known for their low noise levels at high volume. Apparently there is a patented chip made by Creative Labs called the EMU10K1 Digital Signal Processor (DSP) which is what all the praise the cards get owe it to.
Well, now on to why this card is really great. The Sound Blaster Live Value works just fine with a 4 speaker receiver, and the EAX adds really cool effects to any game that uses it. Play Halflife for just a little while to see what I mean! Another important feature for game players is how low the CPU usage is for the card. Computer Gaming Review did a comparison between this card and Diamond’s premiere A3D card, and they found that while most cards were around 5-8% of CPU usage playing complicated sounds, the Sound Blaster Live was consistently only around 3%. This doesn’t seem like a lot, but to most gamers, getting an extra 5% out of a graphics card is reason enough to throw a party.
Also, unlike the early Live Value edition, A3D is now handled just fine, although I don’t know if this is 100% compatible, or if it is just translating what best it can. But EAX seems to be the new standard, and the Sound Blaster Live is the new computer game standard, by far.
To describe for just a moment what EAX is, it allows the sound to appear to be in different environments. I.E. while playing a song, I can select different environments like a cathedral, underwater, a tile bathroom, etc., and the music really does sound like it’s being played there. For games like Half-life, while running and shooting I could suddenly jump into a metal crawlspace, and the effect is amazing. The same goes for Thief 2, which came bundled with this card. With four speakers, the sounds truly come from their appropriate sources. In some games that can make huge difference in immersion, and can be helpful to your gameplay. You will really want a four speaker setup once you’ve heard it for games, music or a DVD.
Also, if you enjoy making crank calls, or just pretending that you are a kidnapper demanding ransom money, EAX can alter your voice like the villain from the “Scream” movies did.
The software packaged with the Live Value keeps changing every few months. However, it will likely come with a game like Unreal or Need for Speed to show off the EAX. It will also certainly come with Text Assist and Voice Assist which lets you play text files through a simulated voice, and a simple voice recognition software. It will also come with a wave editor, a wave recorder and some demo sound files.
The most annoyingly software it comes with is the "Live!Ware" program. This is a TSR that makes it easy to change settings, and to download updates etc.. It isn’t used enough by me to warrant being run in the background each time you boot your machine. I wish it were easier to keep from auto loading. It can’t just be removed from the startup folder unfortunately. It doesn’t get in the way, but I would prefer to run it only when I want to.
Along similar lines, I have a complaint about the fact that I cannot turn off the DOS compatibility. It takes up an IRQ, and I can’t seem to keep it from re-installing itself no matter what I do. I’ve removed it from the system control panel, the add/remove programs, and I still keep getting new hardware detected messages. And it self installs. It doesn’t even offer me the option to ignore it.
Another larger problem for the card is the fact that these cards just do not ‘play well with others’. They cannot share IRQ slots, and there are no warnings on the box, or with the software. You will just happen to get a random crash within 10 minutes of using it. These means that on any motherboard that has multiple slots sharing IRQs, you have to make sure the Sound Blaster goes in a slot that doesn’t. Almost all modern motherboards do this, so this is an issue for many. (My current motherboard is an Asus P3B-F).
The card has everything you need on the back. There is a front output, a rear output, a microphone in, a line in, a joystick port, and a digital out (the older versions do not have the digital out). On the card’s internal portion there are two input jacks for CD music, which is very helpful if you have a burner or DVD drive alongside your regular CD player. Not that I recommend putting CD play mileage on anything other than a standard CD-rom drive, but with my old card, I commonly wanted to play CD music from my burner temporarily to test a song quickly, and I hated to have to switch drives for just 10 seconds of testing. There is also a SPDIF-in for your DVD player, and a TAD for modems with telephone answering features.
If you are one of the people using Redhat Linux, this card has drivers that works at least up through version 6.
The card is also flash upgradeable, which should make a huge difference in terms of longevity. This is truly the best sound card the average user could choose. With all these features, I’m sure this is the last soundcard you’ll ever need.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 69
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Epinions.com ID:
grimjack2
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Location: San Rafael, CA, Marin County
Reviews written: 181
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About Me:
Film is my favorite art form. I live a life of constant amelioration.
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