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Creative SB LIVE

19-Mar-2024

Info-line:   [synths]    [sampler]    [drumbox]    [effects]    [mixers]     [mics]     [monitors]    [pc-h/ware]    [pc-s/ware]    [plugins]    -    [links]    [tips]

Creative SB LIVE



Category:  Products / audio interfaces / soundcards (analog, adat, s/pdif)

Added: 18-Sep-01  |  Author: admin

New price: £30 quid OEM cheapest  |   S/H price: Not listed


Creative SB LIVE

The Soundblaster live is advertised as a sytem for your PC with quality in excess of the best Hollywood sound production systems (!!)... er... this may be news to Hollywood... but the cards 32 bit internal processing seems to (in Creatives opinion) lift this card to such Illustrious heights !

it's really first and foremost a gamers & multimedia card with the option to update voices with soundfonts... thus it features 4 outs as a front & rear assigned pair for the use of surround sound with DVD etc..... In thsi respect it is very similar to the Terratec EWS card which features the same type of setup....

Well, i can draw hours of thoughts about thsi card, but sadly aint got the chance to try it yet with the major composing s/w programmes like VST, Logic & Cakewalk etc....






UPDATE - UPDATE

ok... we got down to testing this, and with a cheap OEM version 'in-a-baggy' SB Live 1024 - the basic one you get for 30 quid at PC-fairs, we tried it using the APS asio driver hack, and it works giving us 8ms latency in asio on VST and working with VST & REASON using rewire etc.... see the link below this article called:

ASSOCIATED ARTICLES ON THE SYSTEM

You'll see an article in the drop-down selector called: 'SBLive & APS drivers'

This article will tell you more -

This makes the OEM SBLive the cheapest asio solution now that you can get.... although you will have to get a midi i/o cable to fit the joystick socket on the card - they never come with as OEM at PC fairs, and you can buy them seperate at cheapest £7.50 each or so from another pc-fair vendor who does parts & connectors... in the shops round Tottm CT road in London they are all about £15 quid or so...




so... comments please













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User Comments

Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Samuel C Spacey
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 17-May-00

Better s/n ratio than the awe 8 and much better latency i.e 10 ms.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: ike
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: part-timer
Date: 25-Jul-00

Had a awe64 which sonically sucked,but worked smoothly, went with an audiowork8 and conflicts up the ass, went with a turtle beach monego 2, couldn't get it to record, and returned it for a sb live. Sounds extremely better than awe64, installed easy, was recording with it first day out of box. I was skeptical about sound quality, but don't let the "soundblaster" name fool you this one is not your typical sb it's good.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Andreas Friberg
Email: Email supplied but hidden
http://cs1x.hypermart.net/
Activity: part-timer
Date: 25-Jul-00

This card sucks. First of all, like all other soundblaster cards always has, it produces an enormous amount of noise. Second, you can't get the damn card to remember how much memory you wan't to use for samples. Every time you restart your computer you have to go and change this setting and load in your user bank of samples.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Killa
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 26-Jul-00

La soundblaster live con los drivers de la EMU APS 1.6b Es la locura!!!, 10ms ASio Latensy , ademas de los buses de efectos por canal ya sea asio,midi,etc.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Dave
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 29-Jul-00

it's really not too bad - it's what is making me want to persue a career in recording engineering (the SB Live) - about the hollywood sound - well - i just dn't think it has quite that - that would require THX and that would make the card a little too expensive for alot of folks - but for people who would like to record some good sounding music and have some good software for doing that it's a good start...

by the way - it works great with Cakewalk...and soundforge...and mixman...and quake and q2 and q3 and all those games...daggerfall....many many more...

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: pant wearer
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 31-Jul-00

Yeah good card, shite drivers, get the EMU APS drivers - hot dang, damn fine slice of cherry pie.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: tb
Email: Email supplied but hidden
http://www.mp3.com/muzik4machines
Activity: Professional
Date: 31-Jul-00

nice synth, bad original drivers .APS drivers don't work on all machines.The new ASIO drivers taht come with cubase 5 for directX or something are very good...problem is the noise, but when i say noise...i hear my mouse pointer move at high volume on my amps, and the drive reads too....
it's very annoying

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: N
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 01-Aug-00

As an audio card for a sequencer like Cubase it is not brilliant as it works at 48K and not 44.1 like everything else. The latency is a bit high too.

As a sound-source it is good. For the money it is brilliant. There are 1000's of quality soundfonts available. You can make your own out of wavs making it a limited sampler. D/L some 909 sounds off the Roland site and 10 minutes later you have some 1/2 decent techno frums. A definate must have card for using as a MIDI synth in your sequencer PC. All of the big 3 support it so voice selection is a doddle.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Brad Holland
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional,part-timer
Date: 03-Aug-00

Well, This card is pretty shite, as far as the supplied drivers are concerned, but... Has anyone heard of the EMU AUDIO PRODUCTION STUDIO???
Well, its a £400 Digital I/O card that uses soundfonts and stuff and is also ASIO!!, and low and behold it uses the EMU10K1 DSP chip,
As we all know the SBlive is not ASIO hence the best latency you get in things like cubase is about 200ms(Directx)

Imagine my amazement when I used Hacked EMU APS drivers which turned my live into an APS with full ASIO support, and I got 5ms latency.PHATT!!

The software includes a wicked mixer which now opens up shit loads more effects and lets you assign them to any channels you want including midi and has external fx send and loads loads more, The live can be used as a professional card, cos i have released about 6 records on it now.

If u want help dont hesitate to contact me, all I ask in return is soundfonts or Hard-House/Trance samples etc or w.h.y

Cheers EMU ha ha ha

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Brad
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional,part-timer,Hobby-ist
Date: 03-Aug-00

by the way My email is.
bradholland@netscapeonline.co.uk

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Jim Prendergast
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: part-timer
Date: 04-Aug-00

SB Live is my first sound card but i'm sure it can't be what a sound card should be. Noise, lack of suitable i/o(would love optic, or stereo outs) and an absolutely pointless list of fx (eg. chipmunks..my god) to add over the whole output add to the many doubts i have about the card.
On the plus side, i'm absolutely sure that the next card i get will be a step upwards.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Mike
Email: Email supplied but hidden
http://members.xoom.com/visionsblend
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 09-Aug-00

Let me tell you all something. I recorded my first and only CD with this soundcard using the ANALOG in's. That's right, I used analog inputs and made a CD and I can honestly say that for an indie record, it's incredible. People that complain about noise should be looking at their equipment, not their soundcard. I had no problems whatsoever with this soundcard, and it suits all my needs.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Gerald
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 07-Sep-00

The sblive is pretty much worthless
unless you invest a lot of time
into finding the proper soundfonts.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Sonus
Email: Email supplied but hidden
http://www.mp3.com/xkraft
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 28-Dec-00

I too experienced the noise (with mouse movements, hard drive reading/writing ...) up until i muted the cd audio balance in window's 'play control'. so if you want to get rid of that noise, mute it!
:)

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Bastiaan van de Werk
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: part-timer
Date: 29-Dec-00

Great card for the price...i started out my music career with the awe32 expended it to 8 meg after a while..that card tought my all about sampling, music making, sound shaping (apart from the stuff I did on an Amiga500) etc. I then 'upgraded' to the EWS64XL, which was a great card but always seemed to cause more trouble then anything else. The biggest bitch was that the sampler-editor always crashed on me and midi-timing really sucked the balls of a malteser donkey. I remember myself sitting in front of a friends computer who still had the awe32 and this $50 keyboard, toying with some of my own old soundfonts and had soooooo much more fun. I since then upgraded my studio with a real sampler and midi-interface and bought the SBlive! Oem version for like $50 or something...real cheap, and very easy to install.. unfortunately a lot of stuff you dont want gets installed too but this cards worked almost straight from the box. GReat fun, and all my old soundfonts I can use again...for some reason these 'raw' sounds I started out with can turn into the nicest of things....

One day I'll be converting my 8-bit amiga sample collection again....you never know when they'll come in handy.. :)

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Kode
Email: Email supplied but hidden
-
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 08-Jan-01

Just started getting into software based utilities Rebirth, Vaz etc and I need to buy a Soundcard that is going to give me a quality sound in comparison to the crap sound my standard soundblaster gives. Forgive my ignorance, will a better soundcard makes these packages sound better than what i've got and is the LIVE a good option, or is it worth spending extra dough? + any advice for a beginner into producing House/D&B useful.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: bastiaan
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity:
Date: 08-Jan-01

This is a question for the forums NOT the comments page..but yeah a better cards will give you beter sounds, less latency, more bit dept, more fx, more outs, more functionalities ..dude this stuff is all over the net..

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Mika Arasola
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: part-timer
Date: 30-Jan-01

I am really in love with this card. I have a soundblaster live value, and payed about 45$ for it. Before this I had a turtle beach pinnacle, and payed about 600$. It's clear that the turtle beach had better sound, but then again it only worked for 3 weeks during the last 3 years, so that would'nt help me alot... Using the aps drivers I have latency down to 12ms in cubase, witch is fine. By muting everything extra in the mixer, all the disturbing sounds are gone. I don't really know what to say, of course if you have a 24/96 card you'll get better sound quality but at a price. I'd say this is a perfect card for a hobbyist.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: PD
Email: Email supplied but hidden
http://
Activity: Professional
Date: 01-Feb-01

Everyone seem to be fixated with how clean and free from noise everything is nowadays. And this is just sad.
Todays productions are, in my opinion, too damn clean wich almost makes the sound so dead in my ears.
Hiss, pops and clicks are parts of the production and puts a certain touch to the track. Of course no one wants this in for instance classical music and so on but for me that has been producing house and techno for years i recently started using the computer (for sequencing and other stuff) with a Sblive and i found that it works just perfect. Sound is clean.
Have produced 5 records so far using sblive for mixing down tracks etc. and never had a problem.
I like creatives products, and hey who really uses soundfonts anyway?
Use a real sampler or for instance EXS 24.
So folks thing about this clean sound business out there.....what's more alive soundwise today? The latest britney spears album or a barry white record from those funk days?

/PD

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Rude Bwoy
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 02-Feb-01

I'm pretty impressed with the Soundfonts, especially on the SBLive. And this is coming from someone with two hardware samplers. Having such huge quality files load up instantaneously is amazing compared to the shit SCSI speed of a lot of h/w stuff. Granted, the synthesis features of the Soundfont format aren't as comprehensive as some samplers, but they're not far off.

Software samplers like the EXS24 do look pretty good, but they use up CPU and add to the pile of things that could go belly up when you're asking too much from your computer. Give em a few years and they'll be shit hot no doubt.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Dieter
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 04-Feb-01

My NEW Creative SB Live! Value is doing strange things:
Quite a lot of crackles and pops. I think it's especially when I use my HD.
Not really useful while doing recordings in VST, isn't it ?
Buying a new pc or new soundcard isn't an option :o)
What am I supposed to do ?

thanx,
Dieter

dieter.vansteenwegen@yucom.be

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: jeemark
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 04-Feb-01

The 1/8 inch jacks on the SB Live Value are way too fragile. The weight of a cord with an adapter on the end stresses it badly. For the price though, it has served me well.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Mika Arasola
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 05-Feb-01

->Dieter

Try muting all the extra inputs that your not using -> cd, mike, ect. It helped with me. otherwise I would try a newsgroup, this is not really the place...

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Madjester
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 08-Mar-01

Can anyone tell me anything about how the Live works with AMD k7s? specifically the thundebirds, if possible... Im getting a new computer and I need to JUST MAKE SURE. (its the paranoia)...

well, thanks.. and smoke a joint

Madjester (yes, Im aware it sounded lame as hell)

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: sonus
Email: Email supplied but hidden
http://www.mp3.com/xkraft
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 08-Mar-01

I run a gigaherz amd with a sb live value!....works fine for me! did have to mute the cd input channel to get rid of pesky noises...not amd's fault though.

peace

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: DS
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 09-Mar-01

It's a good low end card. I have the Platinum with a LiveDrive, which is what sold me on this as a budget card. It does have alot of features that remind me of a cheap toy and some major flaws which have all been mentioned. I wouldn't want to make serious VST or Cakewalk recordings with it, but it's great if you use the system as a sequencer for external gear and record to a better deck.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Dutchwave
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: part-timer
Date: 13-Mar-01

I use a SB Live with a AMD T.bird 800 and it works quite fine for me,i use it most of the time for making music with Reason(Kicks ass!!)I have a midi output latency of 10 ms(with an Asio driver from cubase)

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Erik Hines
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: part-timer
Date: 13-Mar-01

This card is very good if you use Cakewalk Pro, Which allows you to load Soundfont banks (samples) directly from within Cake. The s/n ratio is not pro quality however, so having a cheap noise gate post card is helpful. It also has a built in effwects processor that can do stuff like voice morphing, delay, flange, etc. all in real time. If you are a home studio musician, and have been wanting an inexpensive sampler than this is a viable alternative, the sample memory is dependant on your system memory (unlike the awe 32 or 64) which gives you large amounts of sampling power. The sample edit software (vienna) is very good, and rivals gigasampler in many ways. You can control filter settinds, ADSR, LFO, and other parameters from a Cakewalk Studioware panel. And the built in effects can be applied as inserts for you midi seq. soft and then applied to your samples. One thing that would be nice, however, is the ability to change effects param. in real time via a studioware panel (maybe soon). Instead you open a second mixer window (sb Live! mixer) and create effects profiles there as presets ( a very nice feature as well though, unlimited presets!!) I have never used this card for gaming, only for semi pro home recording (this card has an EMU equivalent, almost identical, that costs $400 more!!) and have been VERY satisfied. Unless you need a lot of inputs, I would reccommend this card as an inexpensive alternative. I give this a 5 "totally awesome power" because of the price / power ratio. for less than $90 you can get the SB Live! value. And Do amazing things....

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Chris Goddard
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional,Hobby-ist
Date: 23-Mar-01

The SBLive! card would be the sweetest thing since PCI for computer sound, but Creative has some serious driver problems that make it too much of a pain to use :( It crashes your system is you have an ATI video card installed. That's my only complaint about the card; that I can't use it. When it has worked. The Instrument voices sound *GREAT*. I've used it with CubaseVST, Buzz, and Mixman studio, and the clarity of the sound coming out is sweet. I'm just waiting untill they release the next driver version!

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Dj Chris
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 23-Mar-01

I up graded to the SBLive 5.1 after having the SBLive platunim. i use this card for creating mixed CD's. There is a noticible sound qualtiy improvement over the SB LIVE Plat. This version is more refined as the card and drive bay are intregrated seamlessly. I won't use this for music production , as this card just can't cut the mustard to a dedicated midi interface and software apps. but for wave form recording and editing the card shines.

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Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: Kennetk
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Hobby-ist
Date: 21-Jun-01

I have such a card and the sound is good for the prive u pay
I've I play lets say 3 s/w prog of vst its staill doing the job even when its sending midi to hardware
I wouls say if u want to start making music whith a pc ( and not with a Mac)its a good sound card compared for the price because we all know how expensive prof. soundscards are.

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Last added comment

Product:  Creative - SB LIVE
Name: dfont
Email: Email supplied but hidden
Activity: Professional
Date: 07-Nov-03

hi every body
I have a question plz answer if u know it.
I have a sblive value card and i use it in cubase sx
I use just soundfont on it (no vst or audio) but it has dely !
and so i can't run it correctly
but it workes in cakewalk as well as.

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