When upgrading my computer to an AMD Duron I needed to get a new motherboard which did not have any ISA slots, which meant that I needed to upgrade my sound to a PCI card. I was looking for an inexpensive card and my voyage led me to a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1

My sound system was only a 2 speaker setup so I do not use any of the multiple channel or surround capabilities but of what I do use this card is leaps and bounds above any card I had experienced before. First of all, the signal-to-noise ratio of this card is great. You have to crank it to it's full output on the card and the speakers to hear any noise.

Some of the software it comes with is actually useful (Who would've thought.) It comes with a very handy mixer where you can also configure the DSP (Digital Signal Processing) that can give your all-around sound some pretty interesting effects such as underwater, cave effects and many more.

MIDI files (that simple instrumental music you hear load up on web pages) are actually decent sounding and can almost come to life like an actual symphony performing the song when using the included sound fonts. The sound fonts are instrument information that are stored on the sound card's RAM that beef up the quality of the sound.

IF you're looking for compatibility and great sound quality at under $50 this is the card for you. Don't waste your money on the Platinum! or MP3! 5.1's... this one is just as good without all the expensive software.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 40