The Live! Drive

Although the idea of easy access buttons and features isn’t new at all, the Live! Drive is a welcomed addition to the Platinum package. When I first think of this thing I remember of those Compaq Presario PCs that had video in/out and USB connectors in the front of the case, now Creative has done the same thing but of course applied to their product.

The Line In jack is the perfect complement for the telex microphone that is included with the SB Live! Platinum. Not to mention the Headphone jack that I found ideal when you don’t want to bother anyone with the loud sounds of an Unreal Tournament match, especially for using with those force-feedback headphones that I got with the Xitel Storm Platinum (Vortex 2 based) a while ago. Here is a list of the options you have with the Live! Drive:

Live! Drive Front Panel Connectors

• S/PDIF In (RCA/coaxial jack)
• S/PDIF Out (RCA/coaxial jack)
• Headphone Out (1/4" stereo jack with volume control)
• Line In (1/4" stereo jack with shared Microphone In)
• Microphone In (1/4" jack with gain control)
• MIDI In (standard DIN)
• MIDI Out (standard DIN)

Audio Quality

Here we come down to the usual EAX vs. A3D thing. I compared the Live! Platinum to the original Live! Card as well as to an Aureal Vortex2 based soundcard, the Xitel Storm Platinum that I mentioned before.

The first thing I noticed is that the volume level of the Platinum was a tad higher than the original one, I’m not sure if it was the drivers or the configuration that caused this but the change was notorious after the upgrade.

In my opinion the original Live! Soundcard always had crisper sound over any of the Vortex2 based ones, here I’m talking of Music and Wave files playback, the difference is pretty much the same now with the Platinum.

In games however the Vortex2 soundcards had a tremendous advantage over the Live! Card, no matter you were using a 2 or 4 speaker setup, this has changed with the time, with the introduction of LiveWare! 3 and EAX 2.0 the difference has got much smaller, in my opinion the biggest difference can be noticed on a 4 speaker setup, positional sound on the Vortex 2 is still superior but not for much,

Also a year ago we could say that the A3D/A3D2 API was a big advantage for Vortex2 soundcards over the Live! however now we have a huge list of EAX enhanced titles available, apparently because of its easy implementation developers include support for it on most of their new games.

For now we can say the Live! Family of cards have got the advantage on the sound API wars but not for much, EAX is an open API and Aureal drivers with full support for it are very close to release.

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