My local Store has the SB Live OEM for $20 bucks. Right now im using SoundMAX 6chan Integrated audio. will this improve sound quality???
I dunno about that. Onboard sound is getting better and better. what kind of speakers do you have? That's really what determines good audio quality. Pairing a a set of stereo Koss speakers with say an Audigy based card is wastful since thsoe speakers produce a low quality sound regardless of what you hook them up to. where if you got half decent speakers (quality not quanity aka 7.1) i'd go for a bit better sound card. Pretty sure the basic Audigy 2 based card is only double what you're willing to pay, and it's a good quality 6.1 card with upgradability in mind.
Well, I use the Live! 5.1 Platinum. It's the best 16-bit card on the market as far as I know. However, concider the Audigy 2 Value. It sells for $49 US OEM. The Audigy 2 ZS is even better with DTS support and it will run you $70 OEM.
And the funny thing about that is, your card and the card he's looking at have no difference hardware-wise. The el cheapo PCI 512 by Creative has the same hardware as the Live! series.
if your mobo has alc850 or alc880, then you dont really need an audigy. but with the soundmax... get and audigy instead of the live!, the audigy has more power and the live is hardware that was designed a looooong time ago
that's software. the hardware is the exact same. There's an Audigy to an Audigy 2 mod out there if I remember right and all that is is a modified driver. Pretty sure there used to be a Live Value - 5.1 mod out there too. PCI 512 -EMU10K1 Chip -16bit 48KHz Specs on 512 SB Live! Value -EMU10K1 Chip -16bit -48KHz A Live! Website Live 5.1 -EMU10K1 Chip -16bit -48KHz Live 5.1 from Creatvie
Looks like Conesta has been banned. Anyway, to correct him. The Live! 5.1 does have hardware Doldy Digital 5.1, not software. I know because I use SPDIF to connect to my DVDRW directly to the sound card. SPDIF uses hardware decoding. As for the Audigy 2 ZS, yes it is an excellent card but he said he was looking at the Lives!. The ZS offers DTS and the latest EAX support which is nice.
I had a SoundBlasterLive before upgrading to my Audigy 2 ZS and as far as i know, the SBLIVE was a fantastic card cause once you format you already have drivers installed and those work great (used them for a looooong time, not a hitch) and EAX was supported fine. Then 2 month ago i got my Audigy2 ZS and the sound quality is excellent, i install only DRIVERS and MIXER, anything else is unticked and of no use to me. my speakers are MEGAWORKS 2.1 and the Audigy2 showed the best of them unlike the SBLIVE. If you got some OK speakers then the SBLIVE is the best card ever, if you got GOOD speakers and want EAX HD then go for AUDIGY2 VALUE.
Well you won't be able to hear the audio difference between a Liva and an Audigy. Unless you have surround sound. The quality sounds the same. Using an add-in sound card free's up CPU cycles from using the integrated sound.
Sound blaster live Value or 5.1 = YES Sound blaster live 24bit = NO the reason is the 24bit version is done in software and you'll get loss of perfomance in games unlike the normal version of Sblive, don't say i didn't warn you.
