Product Description: The Sound Blaster Live! brings cinema-quality sound to your movies, music, and games with digital 5.1 clarity. Driven by the powerful EMU10K1 Digital Signal Processor, you will experience the highest-quality sound reproduction with real-time audio and effects. The Sound Blaster Live! makes it fast and easy to create, customize and listen to quality MP3/WMA files. With the ability to connect to Dolby Digital and multi-channel digital speaker systems or analog audio devices, you can experience true 5.1 surround sound with all PC audio entertainment. Creative Multi-Speaker Surround (CMSS) mode lets you experience 5.1 audio from a stereo signal, or enjoy movies in Dolby Digital 5.1 audio when connected to digital 6-channel speakers or analog Dolby Digital-ready home stereo receivers. For riveting movies, music and games with digital 5.1 audio quality - take advantage of the Sound Blaster Live!
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - What morons
I laugh at the people who say they cant install this card, or it wont work, crash, bad drivers, etc. I am only 17 and I have installed the card on several different computers without a problem ever. Just uninstall your current sound card, or go to Sound Properties and disable the current sound card drivers. If you have a motherboard sound card, just do the same, and when your PC starts press delete and in the Bios disable onboard sound. From there snap the new sound blaster in the PCI slot and install your new drivers. It isnt that friggin hard, and the Sound Blaster 5.1 is the best sound quality I have heard for the money. If you want better, go for a high end Turtle Beach card or a Sound Blaster Platinum/Audigy but it will cost you more. Anway, you have to have the brains to install a sound card in the first place no matter what card you install. Otherwise, take it to your computer shop and let someone else do it for you!
Rating: - This sound card is quality
This sound card is of high quality and is quite versital. I would recomend it
Rating: - Wrong chipset
This card does NOT have a EMU10K1 chipset as advertised, so it does NOT work in linux.
Rating: - A decent little card
I bought mine off of Ebay. Got all the hardware and software. I put it in my system after pulling my old Aureal Vortex 2 (Creative labs bites for buying them out) I turned on my system and it works perfectly. I have thrown audio conversion, mixing, recording, running about 64 channels and more at it and so far it has done just fine. It is a decent card for a cheap price. I does everything I need. I have not had any crackling, popping, or snapping. I would say if you want a decent card for a cheap price this is a good one to go with. It handles 2 channel, 4 channel, and 5.1. It also has a SPIDF connector, and a game port connector for those who have not upgraded to a USB joystick yet.
Rating: - I let my daughter install the card.
I've read the poor reviews for this soundcard. However, I thought for the price of this card (30 bucks), I'd give it a try.
In other Amazon posts I've said, "When all else fails read the directions," and this installation is no different. I went through the installation procedure with my 12-year-old daughter. I did help her with lining up the card on the board, but after that we turned on the machine and booted into XP (we put the Sound Blaster installation CD into the CD drive before Windows fully loaded). The system found the card immediately and pulled the driver from the CD.
She said, "Is that it?" I said, "I believe so," and yep it sure was. Now we have pure, crystal clear surround sound from a thirty dollar card!! I also do not have any hissing or cracking noises out of the speakers others mentioned.
The Sound Blaster Live! CD also lets you install apps that work with the card and they were just as easy to install, but I did not install all of the apps.
Now I am not saying you will not have any problem (how would I know that?) as I have had some Creative issues with some other products, but I have always gotten around them.
Some tips:
1. If you are going to purchase this card online goto the Creative website and do some research. (e.g. is the card compatible with your Operating System? do you have any available PCI slots, how much memory does it require? THE BASICS!). Otherwise, just goto your friendly neighborhood office supply store and read the specs there (and be careful when the friendly clerk wants to give you a lesson in sound cards, you'll pay more in the end).
2. Consider which other devices you may wish to connect to the soundcard e.g. a mini disc player, microphone, etc.
3. Consider whether you need a full or half-duplex card. Full-duplex cards can record and play back sounds, while half-duplex cards can do one or the other, but not at the same time.
4. If you have onboard sound on your current computer, don't forget to disable that before you go installing this card or for that matter, any sound card.
Hopefully, if you do choose this card, it will work as seamlessly as it did for my daughter. Maybe she'll turn into a computer geek yet.
- What morons
- Wrong chipset
- A decent little card
