Customer Reviews

Creative Labs CT4760M Sound Blaster Live! MP3+

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Sound Blaster Live +MP3 is a great card but it is just the standard Sound Blaster Live with extra bundled software. I was expecting some type of additional hardware acceleration for mp3 playback and encoding but the price still isn't bad for the great sound quality. Some of the software is pretty useless, however I found the encoding software to be great with encoding support up to 360 Kb/s and full CDDB support. The software also goes nicely with my Nomad as it makes it easy to increase the volume of a quiet recording or add special effects easily.

The difference between the Live! MP3+ and the Live! X-Gamer is the bundled software. If you want a great sound card that supports 4 speaker setups, then this is the one for you. I recommend downloading LiveWare 3.0 if you get this card. It makes audio adjustments for different purposes. If you want to listen to a CD then just click "Listen to CD" or if you want to play an enviromental audio game(such as Half-Life: Opposing Force) then just click "Play EAX game". It is a very good program that really brings out the best in the Live! series of sound cards. By the way, with the Live! series of sound cards you will also notice an increase in frame rates in first person 3D games where there is alot of sound. It' just a GREAT sound card. Everybody I know that has upgraded or built a new system is exceptionally impressed with this card.

I bought the Soundblaster Live! to replace an onboard sound card that was Direct-Sound "compatible", but not a true Direct Sound card. An audio program that I used frequently did not run reliably with the old sound card. Installing the Soundblaster Live!, made all of the difference. I found the installation process to be simple (be sure to disable your old sound card under "System" in Control Panel before installing the Soundblaster) and the documentation to be adequate. The included software bundle was an added bonus. The audio program I use takes advantage of the extra speaker outputs on the Soundblaster Live! and uses them for a cue channel. I use my PC to record and edit sound files for radio and TV production and I really like the features of the Soundblaster which include a digital output and the rear speaker output as well as the audio quality it produces. I would highly recommend it for anyone with a home recording studio and believe it's a good value.

I've upgraded my computer many times in the past, but I had a few problems with setup this time. First, it was confusing because the drivers for Win98 are designed so that you *don't* install them when Windows prompts you. While the card included a "Quick Setup Guide" that explained this, the main manual didn't. Also, my Gateway has a sound card wired into the motherboard, and this caused a *major* conflict. The manual wasn't really helpful in troubleshooting this problem, either. But once I disabled the other sound card in the system bios the card started working perfectly.

Other than setup, though, the card is working wonderfully. My old card was a SB64, so I wasn't sure how much better the sound would be. It is, however, noticably better. And it gets even better when the environmental audio settings are used.

I do have to agree with some other reviews that some of the software seemed a little silly. The mp3 player/recorder looks great, but I can't seem to get it to play both mp3s and cds, which makes me kinda prefer realjukebox.

Oh, one other thing about the card -- it includes support for multiple cd drives, so I can finally use my second cd drive for playing music. A wonderful advantage if you have two drives.

The drivers for the SBLive have never been great. With Windows 2000 the drivers were horrible. With Windows XP, you can have basic functionality, but instally Liveware (required to get all the features from the card) will cause system instability, etc. Don't buy this for XP!

I bought this card in a bundle that included the FPS1000 and I've been fairly pleased with the card. (The speakers are a different story. Please see my rant under the Soundworks FPS1000 if you are interested.)

I realized from the get-go that this was just a Soundblaster Live with extra software. However, I'm a sucker for bundled software, and so I took the bait.

As to be expected, the software has run hot and cold in its usefullness. I will say that once I FINALLY get Cakewake to interface with my MIDI keyboard, I will be quite pleased with my purchase. (However, the last time I tried to get it to work, Cakewake was strangely silent. Something must have been wrong in my setup somewhere.)

Some of the software is quite lame. Creative's LAVA and "Keytar" come to mind. (The former is a bad rip off of some of Winamp's finer visual effects and the latter is a poor, poor excuse for guitar effects on the keyboard. Get a real guitar.)

In the end, however, I'm pleased with the performance of my card, and I still maintain that this was the bundle for me. (I certainly shouldn't have bought the "X-Gamer," and I'm still not certain how useful the "LiveDrive" that comes with the Platinum edition is.)

I give it 4 stars because the chipset is a GOOD chipset for a consumer sound card. If you are serious about sound and computers, definitely look elsewhere. Myself, I'm only semi-serious, and, for better or worse, this is where I landed.

Sblive MP3 comes with some excellent software for listening and recording music including Cakewalk. It also has a Karaoke program and a voice assist program with an animated Parrot! It's worth it just for the Creative Playcenter and effects. The sound card itself performs very well. It was easy to install and I'm happy I got it.

First I thought about buying the Santa Cruz by Turtle Beach but the software bundle wasn't as good as Creatives. So for the great audio and MP3 tools I went with this card. It was very easy to install. I had no problems with it running on Win2k. Another good reason it has Dolby Digital 5.1 decoding and with the DeskTop Theater™ 5.1 DTT2200 the sound is just stunning! I had a little money left so I bought the PC-DVD Encore 12X with Dxr3 technology. That makes it the best thing in the world. Creative has the best products!

Great Sound card. Awesome features. Acelleration is very noticble with MP3 music (both play and record) as I have slow P233 computer. The environmental audio is way cool and can be completely customize and work whether the game supports it or not (have to configure it to behave that way though). This has the potential to massively boost the bass in both games and music (need different setups as game optimization makes music sound bad) more than any bass system under $1000.

I give it 4 stars becuase the drivers have stability problems with games from Electronic arts (worst with SImCity 3000 unlimited) and both the newest download and the orginal CD drivers are not microsoft certified for directx (which means compatible, but could be buggy or unstable as in the case of EA games - which need picture perfect drivers and hardware to not give you problems).

This card has been rendered obsolete by the sond blaster live value/mp3+/xgamer/plantinum 5.1 cards, with the dolby digital decoder built in (the regular SB lives have dolby pro-logic built in but need external decoder for dolby digital 5.1 channel)

The sound on this card is great. Installation was simple with no problems whatsoever. Lots of included software that lets you customize the sound you want. Highly recommended!