Brand: Creative Feature: The Sound Blaster Live! brings cinema quality sound to your movies, music, and games with digital 5.1 clarity. Driven by the powerful EMU10K1 Digital Signal Processor, you will experience the highest quality sound reproduction with real-time audio and effects. Label: Creative Manufacturer: Creative Model: SB0220 Publisher: Creative Studio: Creative
Features
The Sound Blaster Live! brings cinema quality sound to your movies, music, and games with digital 5.1 clarity. Driven by the powerful EMU10K1 Digital Signal Processor, you will experience the highest quality sound reproduction with real-time audio and effects. The Sound Blaster Live! includes Creative PlayCenter with a full 320kbps encoder and 9X MP3 acceleration, making it fast and easy to create, customize and listen to quality MP3/WMA files. With the ability to connect to Dolby Digital and multi-channel digital speaker systems or analog audio devices, you can experience true 5.1 surround sound with all PC audio entertainment. Creative Multi-Speaker Surround (CMSS) mode lets you experience 5.1 audio from a stereo signal, or enjoy movies in Dolby Digital 5.1 audio when connected to digital 6-channel speakers or analog Dolby Digital-ready home stereo receivers. Works with the Following Standards: Windows 95, 98, 98SE, NT4.0, 2000 and Millennium Edition, General MIDI, MPC-3, Plug and Play, Sound Blaster PCI, EAX, Microsoft DirectSound, DirectSound 3D and derivatives, PCI 2.1 compliant, AC '97 compliant, Dolby Digital. Minimum System Requirements: Microsoft Windows 95, 98, 98SE, NT 4.0, 2000, or Millennium Edition; Genuine Intel Pentium 166MHz or AMD 200 MHz; Genuine Intel, AMD or 100% compatible motherboard chipset; 32MB system RAM (64MB recommended); Open half-length PCI 2.1 compliant slot; A CD-ROM drive is required for software installation; Headphones or amplified speakers.
Editorial Reviews:
Product Specifications:
Manufacturer: Creative Labs
Part # SB0220
Package- NEW OEM CARD ONLY
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: Great card, but hard to find drivers Comment: I've bought this card to be used in one of my older PCs. The card works nicely, and the sound is great.
However, I must warn you that finding drivers for this card can be a real pain. SB0220 is an OEM version. CreativeLabs does not provide drivers for their OEM cards directly. If you dowload drivers for Live 5.1 cards from CreativeLabs web site, the installation program will abort with error that it hasn't found any Sound Blaster cards in the system.
It is possible, but not trivial, to find drivers that work with this card on the net. There's several "drivers" web sites around that has them. Just make sure you don't leave them your email address (or leave them some discardable/temporary email address). Some of those drivers work good, some don't. Have patience, and with a bit of trial&error you'll find a driver that works OK with this card.
If you want a card that you'll just plug into your computer and have no trouble finding the drivers, than this particular submodel of Live! 5.1 card is not a card for you. Make sure you buy *retail* version. CreativeLabs provides drivers only for their retail cards. OEM cards, zero support. Not even generic device drivers. Not even for the OEM cards that are absolutely identical to retail versions (apart the model number). However, it is really hard to tell which Live! 5.1 cards are retail and which are OEM. This card is not produced anymore (available only as old stocks or used). Product number databases are incomplete, have errors, and CreativeLabs web site isn't helpfull in identifying them either. It's kind of hit and miss. I really must give credit to this particular seller for telling up front that the card is OEM in the description of the product.
This card really deserves 5 stars. It is really an excellent and outstanding card. Great value. But because of the CreativeLabs policy of not providing generic drivers for OEM versions of their products, I must take at least 2 stars from this particular submodel (SB0220) of the SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 sound card.
