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December 1999 & January 2000
Sound Blaster Live! Platinum Review Finally, I've finished the long overdue SBLive! Platinum review. The review covers the CT4760 SBLive! card with the minijack digital output, the Live!Drive, the full suite of software, the installation and ponders if existing users should upgrade.
Many of you were not satisfied with the Idiot's Guide that was in this site for some time, so I wrote another article to replace it. It contains much much more details and explanations. This new article is now called - Inside the Sound Blaster Live! Hope you'll enjoy it and find out more about the SBLive! at the same time.
My apologies to Mark over at 3DsoundSurge. He's been sending me lots of news on the cool articles and reviews that they have but I just haven't got the time to sort them out. Now that I have, check them out!
Here are some reviews for your reading:
t-break reviews the latest LAVA! 2.0 release. You can also check out and download LAVA! at the offical web site.
In their CES 2000 coverage, FiringSquad looked at many MP3 products, including those from Creative, Sony, Philips and even a MP3 server! [FiringSquad CES 2000 Coverage - Part 1 | Part 2]
A listening test by ZD Labs shows that many people prefer Microsoft's Windows Media Audio codec to MP3 and RealAudio's codecs. What is hard to believe is that Windows Media files can achieve 16-bit 44.1kHz files at half the size of MP3s (at 128kbps). Have you given it a listen? Tell us which you prefer. [Microsoft: ZD Labs Proves Windows Media Sounds More Like CD-Quality Music at Half the Size of MP3]
A beta version of the next LAVA! Player 2.0 is available for download at the LAVA! web site. It has a new interface, new scenes and other customizable features.
Creative is selling the following add-ons for the SBLive! on their Europe online store:
Just a day after I posted my blurb about MP3 players, Creative popped up a press release for 2 more MP3 players - the Nomad Jukebox with a whooping 6GB of storage space using a small notebook hard drive! If it was using flash memory, then it would cost a ga-zillion dollars! It also has a built-in DSP "for superior audio playback and customization", although I can't make out what that means. The other player from Creative is the Nomad II MG, which is housed in a silver casing similar to the Nomad I. You can check out the pictures at NomadWorld. And of course, you'll be able to add Environmental Audio to the downloaded music with the SBLive! Before I am starting to sound biased, here are more cool MP3 players from other manufacturers! The MamboX P300 is a data CD player, that reads MP3 CDs. That includes CD-Rs and even CD-RWs! I think this will be the killer device because flash memory is still too expensive, though the only disadvantage is the size and weight. This will work great in the car though! Sony has shown their Memory Stick Walkman, including a model that is the size of a pen! They have also shown a new model, NW-E3 at CES. Check out this article at ZDNet. Casio also has a MP3 watch! I wonder what's the weight of this thing? And finally, PC Magazine has a MP3 player roundup comparing many MP3 players in the market. From the outside, all of these players look cool, but some are really bad on the inside. Problems range from sound quality, to download speeds. Read the article to find out why.
Two of our readers sent me 2 methods to get 3D sound in Quake 3. The first method was sent in by Romenhal: I got Q3A latest demo release to work with A3D on my sblive value by saving the a3d.dll file to a3d.old and installing the aureal drivers from: http://www.a3d.com/newaureal/download/drivers.asp Which adds the files a3d.dll, a3d.vxd, a3dapi.dll in the system directory. This was the only way I could get it to work... My guess is that you need to have A3DAPI.DLL in the Windows\System folder before things can work. Previously I thought only A3D.DLL is sufficient. Paul McKnight sighted the 2nd method. An Aureal patch is available to enable other sound cards that support DirectSound3D (that includes the SBLive!) to position sounds in 3D when the game was written to use A3D 2.0. Another bug encountered is that Quake 3 will not save A3D as turned on in the config file. So the next time you load up the game again, it will revert back to A3D off. ID should be fixing this in a patch. Let me know if it works!
You've got to get this cool app called Sound Control Plus by Really Effective Software. It allows you to use hotkeys on the keyboard to control the master volume in the mixer as well as WinAMP! No more clicking on the taskbar to pop up the mixer, before you can make any volume changes. Now you can mute with a single hotkey!
I've updated the poll with the ultimate question - to rate everyone's satisfaction with the SBLive! in the past year. Think hard about it before making a vote! There are many factors in question - like drivers, tech support, applications, game support, sound quality, etc. The results of the previous poll show that many of us would rather download the web version of Live!Ware 3 rather than buy the CD. Creative did a smart thing by releasing the CD version weeks before the web version was made available. It was also available in the new products, but still no web version until weeks later! Some who could not wait produced ripped versions from the CDs that were made downloadable over the net. Is there enough incentive for us to purchase the web version? What do you think of Creative's method of selling Live!Ware CDs with extras, and providing a scaled down version over the web. Send in your opinions!
If you still haven't found out, Creative lost a lawsuit against Aureal. I have set up an Aureal vs Creative page with links to the various press releases and articles on the net. Of note is this article at Vortex of Sound detailing the proceedings. It reveals several interesting details on Creative's business practices and the patent was deemed to be questionable that the judge allowed the jury to rule on the validity of the patent in question. Check it out, especially the interplay of press releases between the 2 companies. Take a look and let me know your thoughts.
To address privacy concerns, I have removed all the links to the e-mail addresses of all the contributors to the wish list. In case you haven't visited the wish list, you can go to it from anywhere in the site by clicking "wish list" in the black bar at the top part of each page. It is meant for all of us SBLive! users to voice their comments and suggestions for new and wanted features in future SBLive! drivers and products. Take a look!
FPS3D has an interview with Creative that covers mainly the Nomad II. The Nomad II sounds like a cool product that will bring MP3 players one step further in its evolution. It comes with USB for fast transferring of music, a wired remote control and a flashable firmware to support file formats other than MP3s. If you like to play your music on the PC with Environmental Audio, the software easily adds these in. Time for that Concert Hall effect.
I'd like to wish every one of you a great new year and thank you for continuing to visit ALive! Let the sound from our SBLive! cards be real sweet! With the impending new Live!Ware updates and EAX 3.0, it'll be a great year! I would like to apologize for the lack of updates. I'm trying my best but I've been swamped by tons of stuff that keeps me from updating this site very regularly. Moreover, my pleas for help in the home page have gone largely unanswered. So, if you think you can help or contribute in any way to maintain this site, please drop me a mail. You can help too. If you come across any SBLive! related news and reviews, or if you have your own opinions to air, I'd really appreciate your help if you can drop me a mail.
Creative has a special millennium edition of their FPS1000 4-channel speakers in silver! Yes, you got that right. Looks really space age! The FPS1000 is now available in black as well. Black was previously only available in the more expensive (but sounds better) FPS2000 model. Also out is the recently announced Cambridge SoundWorks Digital speakers. These are similar to the FPS2000 speakers, except that they are only 2-channel and comes with a S/PDIF coaxial digital input. These works well as a stereo system but not if you want 4-channel surround from the SBLive! By the way, I saw these speakers in Singapore, so if you see them on sale at your local store, do let me know so that I can post the prices and availability to inform other SBLive! users in your country.
Creative's web store in Europe is selling the Live!Ware 3 CD for £9.
Creative has announced the next generation LAVA! software with more features and customizability. Check out the press release. News.com has news on LAVA! too.
Creative has released new drivers that fixes some bugs and problems that have cropped up in certain games, SoundFont settings and PIII 600MHz and above machines.
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