Product Description

Creative Audio Sound Blaster Live 24Bit External

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27034 in Consumer Electronics
• Colour: fire
• Brand: Creative Labs
• Model: 70SB049000004
• Released on: 2004-09-29
• Platform: Windows 2000
• Format: CD
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Memory: 256000000MB SODIMM
• Hard Disk: 30000GB
• Native resolution: 640x480
• Display size: 66.9291338583

Manufacturer's Description
The Sound Blaster® Live!" 24-bit External is the easy to install 5.1 surround sound upgrade with Remote Control for your Desktop or Notebook PC.Featuring convenient digital and analogue connectivity and controls, this compact USB powered design delivers 24-bit/96kHz fidelity with CMSS upmix of stereo content to 5.1 surround. Upgrading to Home Cinema surround for your music, movies and games with the benefit of EAX® Advanced HD" 3.0 technology was never so easy. With Creative's MediaSource" software, you have an intuitive yet comprehensive tool for ripping, managing, burning and enhancing your music collection with the added bonus of navigation via Remote Control.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Brilliant
This is an absolutely wonderful bit of kit. I haven't had any problems with it since I got it 4 years ago, and I've been recommending it to plenty of friends, who have also all told me how happy they are with it.

You will find that you must install the official supplied driver for the soundcard when using it in Windows. It will work without, but it would appear the generic windows driver limits the USB bandwidth, meaning reduced quality or number of channels. For instance, you may not be able to record at the same time as playing back. This might explain some of the problems mentioned in other reviews... You also don't get as much control. (You only get a couple of volume sliders, instead of the whole set.)

The card works fine in Linux and MacOS X, but you certainly don't get as much control as you do in Windows. Your mileage may vary.

Very good, worthwhile upgrade for a laptop
As my laptop is famous for a poor sound card and I use it to listen to music via a hifi system I decided to upgrade.

This is a good upgrade. Stereo image, bass and musicality has improved considerably. It sounds sweet and more than listenable. Compared to a CD player the treble is a bit soft even with the equaliser tweaked but that seems to be the case with all but the XIFI sound cards which have a 24 bit crystalliser. This doesn't and due to limited USB bandwidth it won't run 96 KHZ : 24bit either. Only 96@16 or 48@24.

The creative media centre is fabulous. Using the remote, can control your music from a distance thanks to large screen interface, change the volume, and even set it up to control your DVDs in power DVD. Simply brilliant.

If you need to transport laptop about, disconnect and on board sound card will activate automatically. Plug it back in and this will take over. Works seamlessly.
Its not as good as a XIFI but for considerably less its a great upgrade.

Wonderful value, works perfectly for me.
I have used this Soundcard on two computers, both in Shuttle cases with 512 MB RAM but otherwise very different. One has an Asus Motherboard and AM 64 3000 chip running Windows XP Media Centre Edition. The other is a dedicated juke box with a VIA SP3000 motherboard and embedded VIA 1.3 GHZ chip running Windows XP Home.

The Soundcard has performed faultlessly especially:

NOISE - This should be quiet as the specification quotes a Signal to Noise ratio of 100db.

And so it proved, the signal was fed into Linn, Harmon Kardon and Marantz amplifiers running B & W, Monitor Audio and Eltax Symphony speakers and Yamaha sub woofer. At maximum volume without music playing all combinations were totally silent when optical output was used, and with analogue only the softest of purring with the ears pressed against the speakers.

Therefore it appears the noise experienced by some users is generated within their computers, I have experienced this where a soundcard in an old mini tower case was noisy, but silent when transferred to a new shuttle case. Also I use a very high quality 3.5mm to phono interconnect, poor quality interconnects do cause unnecessary noise.

LINE OUTPUT LEVEL - This is a trifle low for my dedicated HI FI amplifiers, but hopefully more experience will reveal a few tweaks to increase output.

Another advantage - it can be connected to two systems at the same time, one using the phono interface and one the digital interface.

REMOTE CONTROL - works faultlessly, although the specification indicates a narrow angle of acceptance and a limited range, I am using it at two metres.

DOWNSIDE - although called "Live 24" in fact the USB interface can only cope with 16 bit sound.

MediaSource Organiser - this is the first music organiser I have used that has attracted me away from Windows Media Player 10, fortunately it also works independently of the USB SoundBlaster.

If your require a good USB card solely for music this takes some beating.