I was in the hunt for a new sound card and picked up this Sound blaster 'Live' by Creative from PC world for just £35.
The sound blaster Live is powered by the EMU10K1 digital signal processor which means you get very high sound quality without losing any of the power of your PC which other sound cards and onboard sound chips may take away as they require your PC's processor to power the sound, this ofcourse is great news for gamers who need all the spare power they can get in order to obtain maximum framerates.
The Creative sound blaster Live 5.1 has the ability to connect to dolby digital and multi-channel digital speaker systems and provides an awesome quality of surround sound in all its glory through 5.1 (providing you have surround sound speakers ofcourse) so you can experience movies via your PC as tho you were in a cinema.
The card itself is in PCi format and slots perfectly into a vacant PCi slot and is compatible with Windows 95 upwards, the card is detected as soon as you boot up to your desktop and after a brief (and very easy) installation of the drivers CD the Creative sound blaster Live is ready for use.
Updating the drivers is a breeze as Creative are one of the better known and far superior companies in this field at keeping you up-to date with drivers and customer support should you need it.
The supplied manual i got was a little sparse but to be perfectly honest i didnt even require one, the card was extremely easy to install and setup.
The connectors on the rear of the sound card are all colour coded which is especially useful for anyone wanting to hook up thier surround sound speakers, it just makes life alot easier to have things colour coded and is a very welcome addition.
For gaming this sound card is simply stunning, you will hear sounds that you never knew were there and in fantastic quality too, all in all this sound card is well worthy of a purchase and especially at this price (£35 or less if you shop around) so if you're after a great sound card to play your downloaded music on or for gaming or watching DVD's then consider this product, it really is top quality.
Thankyou for reading
Rabid.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: Excellent value for money, easy to install, great sound quality, excellent Creative software set Disadvantages: No extra software, but you wouldn't expect that from a value card
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