Review: Sound Blaster Live!

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Review: Sound Blaster Live! David Yee, 16 September 1998
The Sound Blaster Live! is Creative Lab's long-anticipated next-generation PCI sound card. Taking the card out of the box, I was surprised at how small it was (5 inches or 13 cm long). In fact for some reason it looked longer on the box than it actually was. From the days of the Sound Blaster AWE 32, I still had the notion that high-end sound cards are supposed to be lengthy. The Sound Blaster Live! has completely dispelled that silly notion of mine in a big way. Other contents of the package include the digital I/O card, the ribbon cable that connects it to the SB Live!, manuals, a 2-pin digital SPDIF cable, the standard CD-ROM audio cable, a plastic microphone with stand, and a 3-fold CD jewel case that contained the installation and two application CD-ROMs. Installation was straightforward. After plugging the Sound Blaster Live! into an empty PCI slot, I proceeded to connect the CD-ROM drive to the card using the supplied 2-pin digital cable. Then I connected a pair of powered speakers for the 4-speaker setup and turned on the computer. Windows 98 detected the card, but I canceled the drivers setup in lieu of running the setup program on the installation CD. After a reboot, the Windows start up sound was replaced by a rumbling, 3D thunder which alerted me that the four-speaker configuration is working. Below you can see the drivers installed by the setup program.

When I turned the volume knob on the speakers way up, barely any static came through- a tribute to the card's shielding circuitry. In contrast, turning up the volume knob on my Ensoniq AudioPCI produced unwanted hissing.

Environmental Audio - Wow!
Next I wanted to try out was SB Live!'s 4 speaker support and Environmental Audio. Via the AudioHQ control panel, I was able to select where different sounds sources (e.g. wave, CD, line in, etc.) are positioned by dragging the icon for the source to an X,Y location on the 2-D plane. The mapping is fairly realistic, but unfortunately I was not to position sound above or below me for true 3D sound. There are presets you can use for different games such as Quake II and Starcraft, although they're usually nothing more than minor adjustments to placement of the wave and MIDI output.

I then proceeded to try out Environmental Audio (EA). The EA effects are done in real-time, which is like (or even better than) having a high-end DSP receiver. EA claims to model sounds as they exist in their natural setting, and it achieves this feat through the use of the following parameters: Decay Time (seconds) High Frequency Decay High Frequency Cutoff (Hertz) Size Diffusion Density Early Reflections Level (%) Late Reverb Level (%) Detuning Rate (Hertz) Detuning Depth (%) Reverb (%) Chorus (%)

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