A problem I ran into a couple of times as well as other persons with the Creative SoundBlaster Live(That probably happens with other EMU10K? cards like the Audigy series) is that there is no sound at all when installing the drivers, even if you unmute and raise the volume of both Wave and Master and the speakers are OK. The problem is that the "Digital Output Only" feature of the SoundBlaster is enabled per default.

Solution :
Go in the Windows Mixer (Run "sndvol32")
Under the File menu, click "Show Advanced Settings".
Now under the Master volume control, there's a "Settings" button, click it.
Uncheck the "Digital Output Only" checkbox, click OK and close the mixer.

That's all you have to do, good listening!

Also ensure your speakers match the card output. Digital for digital, analog for analog. You need to check the speaker output in your settings to digital if using digital speakers. Most of the time it will default to analog.

And that, if you're using 2 speakers, that you plugged them in the front outputs, not rear or anything else. (Unless you use kX drivers, which swaps front and rear for higher sound quality.)

I used to have one of these cards, and by default, Digital Output was never enabled - Unless I selected it !

Actually, only -some- drivers had this option as default. (The web update, the ones on the CD didn't have the option at all)

Solution :
Go in the Windows Mixer (Run "sndvol32")
Under the File menu, click "Show Advanced Settings".
Now under the Master volume control, there's a "Settings" button, click it.
Uncheck the "Digital Output Only" checkbox, click OK and close the mixer.

well when i run sndvol32 it opens up the volume controls, and then i don't see no file menu there to click the other stuff

hey man thanks heaps, my auntie gave me a soundblaster and i couldnt get any sound out of it, i tought it was broken but this fixed it thanks heaps. good advice.

I have a SoundBlaster Live! 24bit, but I never came across this problem.

I later saw that in the latest LiveWare drivers(Not the ones on Creative's website), they added an option in the setup to enable/disable the "Digital Output Only" directly in the drivers setup.

The Live 24-bit is much more recent than the older Live! and Live!Value (1999) and the drivers coming on the CD might not even have the problem.