Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 PCI Sound Card

by Creative

Product Details

Product Manual [313kb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00000J579
• Item model number: SB4740
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #40 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Computer Components > Internal Sound Cards
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 1, 1999

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

For value-oriented and upgrade customers and businesses who are looking for a dependable, reliable, and branded solution. The Sound Blaster 16 PCI is an easy to use, entry level sound card for general-purpose audio applications. Sound Blaster 16 PCI will compete and excel in the price/performance category.

Product Description

From the Manufacturer For value-oriented and upgrade customers and businesses who are looking for a dependable, reliable, and branded solution. The Sound Blaster 16 PCI is an easy to use, entry level sound card for general-purpose audio applications. Sound Blaster 16 PCI will compete and excel in the price/performance category. Product Description Sound Blaster 16 provides CD-quality stereo sound with low CPU utilization and great wave-table music that is ideal for home, business, and Internet applications. Sound Blaster 16 allows you to hear the difference, with better sounding music and multimedia in your Windows applications.Full Plug-and-Play support is built in, so setup is "hassle free" for any PC setup. Every signal is processed and mixed with a 16-bit digital audio engine for high quality. Sound Blaster 16 provides support for positional 3D sound technology to provide spacious sound on headphones or 2 speaker configurations. The Sound Blaster 16 is the most affordable Sound Blaster product to date. Get one and hear the difference for yourself.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to Use, Almost everything you could want, October 10, 2000

By 

Chad A. Lauterbach "chadl2" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 PCI Sound Card (Personal Computers)

This sound card doesn't reproduce MP3 or WAV files any differently than a more expensive card would. Creative Labs has always made great cards and drivers. The only thing this card doesn't give you that the more expensive card do is the 3d sound effects when playing video games, and true Dolby 5.1 for DVD playback. However, I doubt many people are setup for this situation, and many people do not watch DVD's or play games. If this is you, this card is perfect for you. If you are a gamer then this card will work perfectly fine. I personally find the 3d effects annoying, and prefer to play on a card like this. I highly recomend this card.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Be careful what is written on the box, March 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 PCI Sound Card (Personal Computers)

I purchased the Creative Sound Blaster 16 PCI card to replace my built in sound engine. The installation was simple, typical of a pci card. The inclosed directions to install the card were ample to do the job. They sell these items at Walmart so I took a look at the box before coming back to Amazon and buying at a better price. It does say on the box this card is Windows XP compatible. It will work but the drivers on the installation disk are not Microsoft "signed" which means you must force the driver installation. Again, not a big thing, Windows XP took the drivers and the card worked fine. Typical of using any software or hardware in Windows XP, it is a good idea to go online immediately for an XP compatable/updated driver. That I did, found one from Creative's website; downloaded and installed it. Here is where you must be very careful. My very latest version of Windows XP/SP1 loaded this latest driver and then the sound system promptly shutdown. No sound at all came from the speakers. I rebooted a couple of times thinking the reset would correct the problem. It didn't nor did XP indicate a problem with the hardware or driver in the system/hardware file. Fortunately XP allowed me to go back to the earlier driver and the sound was back on. So if you have Windows XP and this card, be sure not to destroy the installation cd because Creative's new driver does not work on XP, at least not on mine.

The sound from the card is just fine. I don't really see much of a difference between this card and my original onboard AC97 engine but I spent the money so I'll keep it. Maybe a new set of speaks will help.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An effective basic soundcard, June 25, 2004

By 

citan-uzuki "citan-uzuki" (Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 PCI Sound Card (Personal Computers)

I keep a lot of computer equipment at home, due to the fact that I am an A+ technician working to complete my MCSE (microsoft certified systems engineer) credentials. I bought a pre-owned computer from ebay last month in order to practice setting up computer networks at home. This particular computer is a business-class desktop, designed more for the office environment rather than the typical entertainment PC that we would normally have at home. I decided to add DVD capability to this system, in order to enjoy a movie at my work desk whenever the mood strikes me to take a break from work (which happens quite frequently). I added a Sony DVD player, this particular Soundblaster soundcard, and a pair of Cambridge Soundworks speakers. Within thirty minutes, I was watching The Lord of Rings.

Now, about the Soundblaster. This is a very good Soundcard for its intended purpose. Which is to provide basic sound functionality to a desktop computer. The sound quality is good enough to enjoy listening to stereo sounds from music CDs and DVDs. But please, do not expect this card to provide you with theatre-like surround sound quality. This is definitely the wrong price range if you need that kind of quality.

I compared the sound quality of this office system to my primary home system. My home system is a Dell Dimension 8200, with a Turtle Beach Soundcard and the Altec Lansing surround system. I switched the mode of operation of the Altec Lansings from surround to stereo for comparison purposes between the two systems. Subjectively, you can definitely tell the difference between the two.

I can recommend this Soundblaster to anyone who is simply looking to add stereo sound to his or her desktop computer. It is inexpensive and easy to install. It will require the use of one of your PCI slots. For your information, I installed this card on an IBM 300PL desktop PC. The system has a Pentium III processor and 128 MB of RAM. It is running an evaluation copy of Windows 2000 Advanced Server. The DVD player is a Sony DDU1621 and the Monitor is a KDS 17 inch flat screen CRT. If you are interested, I wrote reviews on the KDS monitor and the Sony DVD player, here at Amazon.