Is it worth the price to buy a sound blaster live 5.1?

Kane · Jul 16, 2003

OK.... The only possible explaination I can come up with is that your driver installation is fooked. I have no probs with dsound/dmusic accelleration, and the gameport (not that I use it anymore) worked fine. Try uninsalling hte card and drivers, then insalling only the apps htat you acualy use (AudioHQ, surround mixer, creativer recorder, maybe the taskbar app)

GSDragoon · Jul 16, 2003

The default MS drivers that get installed with your hardware suck. Just like video card drivers don't support everything, such as OpenGL, sound card drivers don't support hardware acceleration.

Kazuya · Jul 16, 2003

Im using the drivers of the cd. I just tried again and the driver i saw was being used was ctaud2k.sys. I made a search in the cd and a just found one: in the 2k-xp folder so that may be the problem since im on 98. Reinstalling wont do any good since it always installs the same. I will try changing the drivers in device manager and will tell (the 98-me folder doesnt have any install aplication).

Kane · Jul 16, 2003

Ah, well... Creative's driver support sucks, but you might wanna check out thier website: www.creaf.com

Kazuya · Jul 18, 2003

I just used an autoupdater aplication that suposedly downloaded something in the internet and it solved the problem, the strange thing is that i was not connected ot internet at that time :lol: It should have detected the 98 folder of the cd.
Btw, having it fully funtional it really amazes me but i dont think i will ever be able to use all its potential.

GKort · Sep 26, 2003

heh...we have several Sound Blaster Live! cards in the shed...theyre all on old PCs...yes theyre ISA!!!! lol!!! they worked very well until they were MAJOR outdated comps...

zerocopy · Sep 26, 2003

why buy an sblive at the first place when you could get an audigy for 20 percent more the purchase amount

Gamer1 · Sep 27, 2003

i got a sblive! 5.1 for $35, a really good buy. But i have now upgraded to an audigy 1. the live! is good for basic audio.

the audigy 1 seems to not slow me down when i enable eax in counterstrike and ut2k3. with my live!, audio is late o well.

N1ghtw0lf · Sep 27, 2003

i bought a SBLive! for like $33...very good buy...i think its worth it

Guest · Sep 27, 2003

A Sound Blaster Live 5.1 simply isnt worth the investment. At least get an Audigy. if you absolutely have to get creative.

But if you like bloatware drivers. SLow driver releases. Terrible customer support. By all means get a creative labs card.

Chinoz · Sep 27, 2003

Yeap the SBLive 5.1 is the best card out there!!! That is, if you're living in the year 1995

GSDragoon · Sep 27, 2003

Mine is dated 1997. For only $32, it's better than my onboard would be.

Katsuya · Sep 27, 2003

I wrote this before, but I thought it would be a good idea to post this again.

This is all you need to know... about high-quality Sound on the Computer.

-Sound Card-

If you use the AC97 codec (most onboard sound) then you will have a drop of 5 to 15 frames per second in games. The reason for this is because AC97 uses all the CPU it can to decode audio data.

The two best solutions for this are

1 The nForce2 audio chip, you have almost no loss with this one, but it's only for the nForce2 motherboard (and XBOX)

2. The Sound Blaster Audigy. This one has very little loss (1% more then nForce) and you can get it for $60 USD

Sound quality

1 Sound Blaster Audigy1 (Best sound, for under $100)

2 nForce2 (Excellent)

3 Onboard AC97 (from alright to bad depending on what board)

That's about it...

zerocopy · Sep 27, 2003

5-15 frames per second on what game quake 3 at 640x480 thats averaging 300-400 fps. On modern games like unreal 2 youd probably only see a drop 2-5 fps

Katsuya · Sep 28, 2003

It depends on the game.

aolforbroadband · Jun 2, 2004

It's definitely worth the money. Nowadays you can buy it for around $30, to as low as around $20. I used to have some *****ty AC'97 onboard, and all audio sounded weak as hell. Not to mention the horrilble static, pops, beeps, and hisses I got from it. No bass boost options either(I'm a big bass freak

).

I used a regular Ensoniq AudioPCI(SB PCI) add-on card until I got my SB Live! a few weeks ago, and I noticed a big gain in audio quality. The bass boost is far superior, no more pops or hisses, and awesome features in the AudioHQ software from Creative. The tones and bass sound fantastic, and I couldn't be more satisfied. I had zero problems installing it too.

Eargasms galore, and on a tight budget. Got it for $30 flat @newegg.com

dpence · Jun 3, 2004

Samor said:
that's true, but it's not a problem, IMO.

that was on my old board, which didn't have onboard; I got very weird static noise every now and then. According to some things I read on the net it was caused by the sblive and happened with some mobos. My new mobo has ac97 and works fine; why on earth would I want to put an sblive in again?

It was a VIA issue I am betting. They put out a SB latency patch that cleard that up....

dpence · Jun 3, 2004

Katsuya said:
I wrote this before, but I thought it would be a good idea to post this again.

This is all you need to know... about high-quality Sound on the Computer.

-Sound Card-

If you use the AC97 codec (most onboard sound) then you will have a drop of 5 to 15 frames per second in games. The reason for this is because AC97 uses all the CPU it can to decode audio data.

The two best solutions for this are

1 The nForce2 audio chip, you have almost no loss with this one, but it's only for the nForce2 motherboard (and XBOX)

2. The Sound Blaster Audigy. This one has very little loss (1% more then nForce) and you can get it for $60 USD

Sound quality

1 Sound Blaster Audigy1 (Best sound, for under $100)

2 nForce2 (Excellent)

3 Onboard AC97 (from alright to bad depending on what board)

That's about it...

You need to update that...the Audigy 2 can be had or as little as $50 and has the Best sound of anything out. Other than the commercial Audio cards that is...I am speaking strictly Consumer side.

cooliscool · Jun 3, 2004

dpence said:
It was a VIA issue I am betting. They put out a SB latency patch that cleard that up....

Yep.. I had the same prob with my old MVP4 chipset.. I'd be willing to bet that's your prob Samor. Try the Live! in your new board.. mine's perfect.

Also, anyone heard of using the Audigy 2 Drivers on a Live? They work, and support all features+compatibility, minus the 24-bit/192khz audio, EAX Advanced HD, 7.1.. The drivers are pretty good, I'm using them now and my card identifies as an Audigy 2. :evil: Trust me, the sound quality is much better with these drivers installed.

http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45004

hushypushy · Jun 3, 2004

creative's drivers, for some reason, never do what i want anymore....and i cant get matrix mixer to work in MPC so, you know what, screw it. KX drivers do what i need

Is it worth the price to buy a sound blaster live 5.1?

Kane

GSDragoon

Kazuya

Kane

Kazuya

GKort

zerocopy

Gamer1

N1ghtw0lf

Guest

Chinoz

GSDragoon

Katsuya

zerocopy

Katsuya

aolforbroadband

dpence

dpence

cooliscool

hushypushy

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