Customer Reviews

The Sound Blaster Live! Book: A Complete Guide to the World's Most Popular Sound Card

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

 

 

For non-audiophiles this book answers a lot of questions and clears up a few mysteries about the Live!, multi-speaker setups, surround sound, Dolby Digital and DTS, and PC sound in general. Very will written, enjoyable to read. Even though we are now in the "Audigy era", Creative's retirement of their Live! 5.1 line in lieu of a slightly inferior budget Live! 5.1 card is rather premature and clearly business driven (ie, push the Audigy series), since I am convinced that a Live! 5.1 system meets and exceeds the needs of many (possibly most) PC users, gamers, and movie watchers, and will continue to do so for several years. Its a great card with a lot of power left in it and this book really does it justice. True Audigy-brandishing audiophiles will probably find nothing new here, although they might still find it interesting to read

Although some information has become obsolete at the time of printing, much of the audio-engineering technology and concepts still applies.

The book is by as far I have seen, the best reading material for the uninitiated in exploiting the use of sound cards. It also serves as a good external reference for developers as well, as there seems to be a lack of them in this area.

Like Strict Evaluation pointed out, the book is "encyclopaedic". A topic such as EAX itself is worth writing the whole book about. The authors deserves credit for covering so much breadth and depth.

I look forward to coverage of these topics, if there's an upcoming Audigy version:
- Code samples for using EAX
- Prodikeys (that'll definitely be interesting)

The collaborative effort of website developer Lars Ahlzen and software engineer Clarence Song, The Sound Blaster Live! Book is a complete and through guide to the single most popular computer sound card on the current market. Individual chapters deftly address how to physically connect the Sound Blaster Live! hardware and peripherals, configuring the sound card to play games, creating a music library, connecting MIDI instruments, and much, much more. An accompanying CD-ROM contains music and audio files, sample sound clips, SoundFonts, and useful freeware ans shareware in this succinct and useful guide which is especially recommended for anyone with a keen interest in quality computer audio.

Good introduction to digital audio, but not much help in trouble shooting.
A good reference for the price