When people think of Creative Labs, they think of Video Cards, DVD-ROM drives, as well as other peripherals geared for mostly gaming. But where Creative dominates in is the sound card market. This was proven many years back when Creative released the Sound Blaster series of sound cards. And along with this domination of the sound card market by Creative, meant for us, a new standard called "Sound Blaster Compatibility". Creative carries on this tradition with the Sound Blaster Live! Value. This is the same card as the Sound Blaster Live! With only two differences between the two, the Live! includes the I/O daughter board which basically allows for an 8 speaker setup, and also has extra connections such as a Midi In/Out port and SPDIF In/Out port. The Live! Value doesn't include the daughter board and is $100 less in price. But the Live! Value does include a whole slew of features, as well as the best sound on the market, when paired with a good four speaker setup of course. Let's take a more in-depth look at what this latest offering by Creative has to distinguish it from it's competitors.

Features

E-mu Systems EMU10K1 music synthesis engine

Sound Font technology with user-definable Wavetable sets that includes 2MB, 4MB, and 8MB sets

64-voice polyphony with E-mu's patented 8-point interpolation technology

48 MIDI channels that includes 128 GM & GS-compatible instruments and 10 drum kits

192-voice polyphony PCI Wavetable synthesis

Load up to 32MB of samples into host memory

E-mu Systems EMU10K1 patented effects processor

Capable of processing, mixing and positioning audio streams using up to 131 available hardware channels

Supports digital effects like reverb, chorus, flanger, pitch shifter, or distortion across any audio source

Customizable effects architecture allows audio effects and channel control

Full bass, treble and effects controls available for all audio sources

Environmental 3D Positional Audio Technology

Support for Environmental Audio property set extensions (EAX)

Selectable settings are optimized for headphones and two or four speakers

Creative Multi Speaker Surround technology places any mono or stereo sound source in a 360 deg. audio space

Accelerates Microsoft DirectSound and DirectSound3D

32-Bit Digital Audio Engine

Sound sources handled with 32-bit precision

Selectable bit rates from 8 to 16 bit

Analog and Digital I/O modes supported

Utilizes AC97 audio codec

Selectable sample rates from 8kHz to 48kHz

Technical Features

Line In to Line Out Rated Line Output:

Line Output Dynamic -- 1.0 Vrms

Frequency Response at -1dB -- 10Hz to 44kHz

Signal-to-Noise Ratio (A-weighted) -- 96 dB

THD + Noise (A-weighted) -- 0.002%

Line In to Line Out Full Scales Output:

Line Output Dynamic -- 1.40 Vrms

Frequency Response at -1dB -- 10Hz to 44kHz

Signal-to-Noise Ratio (A-weighted) -- 100dB

THD + Noise (A-weighted) -- 0.002%

Noise Floor with all inputs ON at rated power:

Front Channel -- 115dB

Rear Channel -- -130dB

Other Features

Supports MPU-401 UART mode

IBM compatible 15-pin joystick port with analog support

Support for digital and DirectInput game devices

Right out of the box, the Live! Value looks like any other sound card, but looks can be deceiving. The Live! Value has four plug-ins on the card labeled Line In, Microphone In, Line Out (for front speakers), Line Out (for rear speakers) as well as the Joystick/Midi 15-pin connector. But what makes the Live! Value such a powerful card, is the EMU10K1 processor. At an estimated 2 million transistors, the EMU10K1 can do 1,000 instructions per second! With the EMU10K1's use of 8 point interpolation, combined with 32-bit, 48kHz rates, the Live! Value is able to produce very smooth and clear sound. Although the Live! Value is geared more for a four speaker setup, it can use a traditional two speaker setup. My personal recommendation is to use a four speaker setup, because when you have a good quality sound card such as the Live! Value, you don't want to ruin it by having an el-cheapo two speaker setup.

After I installed it into my homebuilt, I was very pleased to find that the Live! Value plug-ins were color coded (Especially since I have the Cambridge SoundWorks FourPoint Surround Speaker Set). I was quickly able to plug the green plug into the green plug-in on the Live! Value for the front speakers, and for the rear speakers, I repeated the procedure, except the plug-in was black for the rear speakers. Unlike the Cambridge SoundWorks FourPoint Surround Speaker Set, Creative actually included plenty of documentation, and explained the setup and features in an easy to understand way. Now came the part where I pop that CD in my CD-ROM drive to continue on to the software installation. When I started up my homebuilt, Windows 98 recognized the Live! Value right away and proceeded to update my system with the Live! Value drivers. When I put the installation CD in the drive, up came a options menu. Personally, I like this feature because I feel it's good to install what you want, and what you don't want, but to the person who likes everything to be installed all at once, this may be an annoyance. I chose to install everything, overall the installation took less than 10 minutes.

Now to the good part! My test would be with a music CD. The reason I opted to do the test with a music CD rather than with a game, is because of so many different games on the market and very few of them, to my knowledge, support the EAX standard. I put it in, the Creative PlayCenter came up and started playing the first track. It was unbelievable how crisp and clear the sound was! After I read in my manual about the Environmental Audio Extensions preset environments, I tried a couple of those, but the one that struck me was the Auditorium environment. One word, AMAZING! It really did make me feel like I was in an Auditorium listening to the songs. I spent hours messing with the different preset environments, and my conclusion is that the sound is definitely better with the different EAX environments.

This is another area that Creative did a good job in. They included a complete software bundle to make the Live! Value even more productive. They include PlayCenter which is a multimedia player that can play many different types of files. But I mostly use it as my CD player. Like most companies today, Creative includes a taskbar, that let's you easily select different programs that are included with the Live! Value. Sometimes the Creative Launcher can be very useful, but other times it can be annoying. You can choose to disable it if you wish. They also include something called AudioHQ, which lets you customize and control different aspects of the Live! Value. Such as 3D audio, SoundFont samples, digital effects, audio mixer and Environmental Audio settings. Prody Parrot is a program that let's you perform many Windows tasks with single voice commands. And he does keep you company too, but mostly this was pretty useless for me. Creative Rhythmania allows you to create different types of music along with music sequence presets. Creative WaveStudio is a .WAV file editing program that lets you play and record .WAV files and also lets you convert them into SoundFont samples. I found WaveStudio to be quite useful as I recorded many waves. And finally, Creative Keytar mainly teaches you how to play different types of guitars via keyboard. You pluck the strings on the virtual guitar by using your keyboard, which is pretty cool since I don't know how to play the guitar. Pretty decent lineup of software from Creative.

As an alternative to Aureal's A3D 3D Audio APi, that all the other manufacturer's use, Creative decided to come up with their own 3D Audio APi, called Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX). Software support for EAX is rapidly increasing almost everyday. EAX was designed and based around 3D objects and real-life environments. Take for instance if your in Unreal, and your in a room that only has three walls and your standing on a boardwalk, and you fire your gun. With EAX enabled, (Unreal uses EAX) the sound of the gun will echo off of the walls of whatever room your in depending on the thickness of the walls, and whether your in a small or large room. Another example would be if your listening to a music CD, with the different EAX environments depending on what kind of room your in such as if you were in the living room, and you had the living room environment on, it would sound like if it were playing in a living room. Again, it depends on what environment you are in as well as what is selected. It definitely adds a new sense of realism to whatever you maybe listening to or whatever game you may play. Another tidbit on EAX is that Creative has worked with Microsoft to have the EAX APi incorporated with the DirectSound APi, so that will further enhance the realism of whatever type game you may be playing.

The Sound Blaster Live! Value is a definite winner! It's sound quality is unmatched in every area possible. Whether your seriously into music, and recording, or if your a serious gamer, the Sound Blaster Live! Value won't disappoint you. With its slew of features, Environmental Audio support, good software bundle, and the ability to keep the Live! Value updated through Live!Ware, the Live! Value is a strong rival to other sound cards, especially the Diamond MX300. If you do buy the Live! Value, be sure to pair it with a good four speaker setup. Make sure you are willing to spend the money it costs, but I can assure you, it is a good investment.

Rating: 9.5/10 SystemLogistics