Creative
has been bringing us one of the best sound cards in the last
couple of years but when the Aureal3D Vortex audio processor
came out, sound cards went top a whole new level, the SB
AWE64 wasn´t enough and the SB PCI128 which was supposed to
be ready for possitional audio had a very poor DirectSound
3D support, now the SB Live! is the first true 3D sound card
from Creative and yes, it´s a 3D Gamer sound card !
Although it has been out for a couple
of months now, the SB Live! is still one of the best
products out there, new revisions of the drivers of the SB
Live! have been improving it´s features, from the original
256 MIDI voices now they´ve been improved to 512 although
just 64 of them are implemented in hardware.
There are two versions of the card,
the SB Live! and the SB Live! value which it´s only
difference is that it doesn´t come with a daughter card
which carries some extra connector and features.
Actually the SB Live! comes full of
connectors, the main card has line-out 1 and 2 for both
front and rear speakers as well as an analog input and the
microphone connector. There are also connectors for a
telephone answering machine, modem, condenser microphone, an
auxiliar output , DVD input, digital and analog CD audio.
Installation
I really had no problems installing
the SB Live!, I popped the card, installed the drivers and I
was ready to use the card, even if you´re newbie you´ll be
pleased with the very complete documentation packed with the
SB Live!
You have to remember that if you´re
using the full version of the card (the one that comes with
the daughter board) you´ll need enough room to put the
extra board.Also make sure you have enough machine to use
the SB Live!
Minimum system requirements:
133MHz or faster Pentium® class processor
Intel or 100% compatible motherboard chipset
16MB system RAM (32MB strongly recommended)
Windows 95, 98 or Windows NT 4.0
Open, half-length PCI 2.1-compliant slot
Headphones or self-powered speakers (available separately)
CD-ROM drive required for software installation
Requires a 166 MHz or faster processor, microphone and 32MB
of RAM for speech recognition software.
Test System:
Intel Pentium II 300
64 MB SDRAM
20X CD-ROM drive
Windows 98
DirectX 6
