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Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Manufactured by
Creative
Labs
Review by Chamila
Sumanasekera
Introduction |
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Creative Labs have always been a pioneer in the sound card industry, especially with their very successful Sound Blaster lineup. After all, they designed the very first sound card, way back in the late 80s. After the world had a taste of PC sound through Creative’s wonder cards such as the Sound Blaster Pro and the Sound Blaster 16 with stereo and CD-quality sound, a new era in computing was about to dawn. As with anything to do with the computer industry, everything moved quickly. More and more manufacturers entered the fray, quite a few of them giving Creative a run for their money. The sound industry boomed and, thanks to their solid reputation and great products, Creative Labs had a solid footing in it. Other manufacturers compared their sound cards with Sound Blaster compatibility. Old DOS games were designed for Sound Blaster compatibility. While Roland and Yamaha General MIDI boards were to become popular among gamers, nothing could stand against Creative when they released the Awe32, bringing them back, quite spectacularly, into the limelight. Later still, Creative launched the next sibling in the series- the Awe64. This was also a big hit and remained a standard system component for a time to come.
Now, of course, time has passed and things have
changed. Everything is different now; we have higher-powered CPUs, state-of-the-art
graphics accelerators, much bigger hard drives, much faster CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs,
solid motherboards, much higher price tags, much more powerhungry software
and games. The 3D graphics revolution changed computer gaming for ever.
Graphically, games became far more realistic than ever before, but the
sound component was getting somewhat
left behind. This, too, changed when Microsoft
introduced DirectSound and DirectSound3D with newer versions of DirectX;
sound card manufacturers had something to believe in. Companies like Aureal,
Ensoniq, Yamaha and E-MU developed special DSPs (Digital Sound Processors)
capable
of accelerating the sound signal from your PC
to a true 3D sound experience. The most successful competitor was Aureal,
with their own DSP chipset and their API, Aureal 3D, with many manufacturers
designing and shipping sound cards based on this popular chipset. On the
other hand, there were manufacturers such as Yamaha and Creative, who were
shipping their own products
based on their own chipsets and designs.
When Creative bought Ensoniq, they managed to manufacture low-cost sound
cards capable of DirectSound3D acceleration by including Ensoniq DSPs.
Later on, when Creative bought yet another valuable partner, namely, Cambridge
SoundWorks, they had all cards to play a new hand, and they’re playing
it now. There’s a new gun
in town. It’s the Sound Blaster Live!
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