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May 2000
Wish List Updated Added some of your wishes to the wish list. Check it out! Don't forget to send in your own suggestions too. BTW, I fixed the problem with forms' submit buttons not working. They should be fine now. Thanks to all of you who informed me of this problem. Let the suggestions roll in!
Harvey Fong from Creative posted this bit in the newsgroup: Latest info that I have so far looks like around mid-June, folks. If the date changes, I'll update it. And if it looks like its going to get posted sooner, I'll try and beat you guys to posting the news.
Finally, a device that lets you move all the sockets from the back of any sound card, to a 5.25" drive bay. The FrontX CPX Multimedia Ports has a similar in concept as the Live!Drive by providing important connections right in front. Check out this review at PC Stats.
3DSS has an interview with the people who brought you LAVA! Check it out: A LAVA! MusicVideo is an environment made up of 3D objects consisting of textures, images and colors that move to the music. Using a combination of sophisticated audio analysis developed at the Creative-EMU Technology Center, the LAVA! MusicVideo Player offers a new way of experiencing Internet audio and musicians a powerful medium for promoting MP3 and Windows Media content. In this interview we will be hearing from Mike Barnes, who is is the Senior Brand Manager for LAVA! and Alan Seefeldt, who is the LAVA! Engineering Technical Lead, but should really be known as the "Grandfather" of LAVA!.
MSXBox has an article on the audio specs of the upcoming X-Box console from Microsoft. Sounds like this console is going to be great, with graphics from NVIDIA and extensive support for the latest PC-based audio standards like DirectMusic, DLS2, and AC-3, amongst others.
More information on the Live!Drive Trade-In here.
The latest and greatest version of the Cubase VST sequencer is announced. It is slated for release in June. More information is available here.
Here's an interesting post by Roddy in the SBLive! newsgroups: Obviously, the site says mid-May, > Q19. Is there going to be a "Live!Ware 3.0 for Windows 2000"? If so, when? A. Yes, Creative is working hard on "Live!Ware 3.0 for Windows 2000" . We expect it to be ready Mid-May. Why do you think it will be Mid-May 2000 ??? It can be May 2001, 2005, 2010 and so on... The parts in bold are lifted directly from the SBLive! FAQ.
A beta Win98 version of the WinAMP plugin for LAVA! 2.0 is now available at lava.com. Steve over at 3DAI reports that it doesn't work in Win2k.
In The Tech Report's E3 roundup, they have a page that mentions Creative's PlayWorks PlayStation 2 speakers looking like "some sort of goofy 3D glasses system or something", and also pictures and descriptions of the NOMAD JukeBox MP3 player (the one with a 6gig hard drive). 3DAI has pictures of the PlayWorks and the NOMAD JukeBox (this one is blurry). Yucks! The PlayWorks does look like a pair of goggles!
Roel sends news that Utopia Live! is up to version 1.2. A small 142kb fix is downloadable at their web site.
ZDNet reports that someone has instructions on his web site for building a MP3 player from scratch! Some really technical stuff there! Only Engineers need apply.
3DsoundSurge has a review of the Diamond Audio Technology Pro Media 3025 speakers, from the people who design and manufacture speakers for MidiLand. Also saw that GameCenter has a review of the Plantronics HS1 Gaming Headset.
"Upgrade your audio card and get cash from Creative!" screams the tagline in Creative's latest promotion in Europe. From 1st April until 30th September 2000, a promotional sticker on the box will allow you to get a rebate of $40 on the Platinum, $20 on the Player 1024, and $8 on the classic SB16 PCI. Check out the press release.
3DsoundSurge reports on Creative's plans to release a similar Sound Blaster Live! X-Gamer product on the Mac, as the penetration of those cool colored Macs increase. Check out the press release.
3DsoundSurge has got a review of the Optical Digital I/O 2 card from Creative that works with old and new SBLive! cards. Also PCStats has a combined review of the SBLive! Platinum and the Cambridge SoundWorks DTT2500. Thanks to those who mailed us!
Phew! I spent 2 whole days just adding all your comments/tips and reorganized much of the tech info section and the wish list! In the tech info section, there are lots of new tips that everyone has sent in. Of particular interest is the excellent General Troubleshooting guide by FireStorm, tons of Guitar Recording tips and of course the Windows 2000 Troubleshooting page. In the wish list, I added 3 new pages - General Opinions on the SBLive!, SBLive! for Professional Use and the Technical Support page to gather your opinions on Creative tech support experiences. (This would be interesting!) Check it out, and if there's something you want to be improved or changed, do send in your suggestions. There's also a sound.cfg for Quake 3 Arena to make it work with the A3D drivers. Check out the games page in the tech info section. Please keep sending them in! Like if you solved some installation problems or issues, and sent them in, your information would definitely benefit someone else.
One of our readers is looking for the exact location of the pins on the SBLive! Mini-DIN. The diagram and pin outs in the user manual are available in the tech info section. Drop me a mail if you know!
At E3, Creative introduced a brand new EAX logo with a new strategy to represent EAX not only on the Sound Blaster Live! products, not only as an API extension to DirectSound3D, but also an enhancement to the PDE (Personal Digital Entertainment) line of products like NOMAD JukeBox.
With EAX on the NOMAD JukeBox, you can add familiar effects like Concert Hall and Arena to the music that is being played back. The time-scaling feature that is available in PlayCenter is also incorporated into the NOMAD products. All these would require a DSP to be built into the devices themselves, although these do not have anything to do with the EMU10K1 or the EAX APIs that are being used by game developers to add effects to their games. A new EAX site is also launched at eax.creative.com. Here are some of the more interesting reads:
[EAX at E3 | New EAX Site | Press Release]
The 2 products are the Cambridge SoundWorks® PlayWorks™ DTT2500 Digital, which is a 5.1 Dolby Digital solution similar to the DTT2500 model for SBLive!, but also comes with optical digital inputs. It still has a Digital-DIN so that these speakers can still be used on the PC. Neat! The Cambridge SoundWorks® PlayWorks™ PS2000 is a 2.1 speaker system with digital input, similar to the Cambridge SoundWorks Digital but also come with Virtual Dolby Digital.
Creative buys a big piece of land in Malacca (a town in Malaysia) to expand their manufacturing facitlities. This site would take over much of the manufacturing that is currently being done in Singapore, including Sound Cards, PDE products and the new PlayStation 2 speakers. Expect to see "Made in Malaysia" instead of "Made in Singapore" on your Sound Blasters and 3D Blasters in future!
Sharky Extreme has an interesting article that covers mainly latency issues, and talks about the features of audio drivers like ASIO, AudioX and DirectSound.
Here's a review of the excellent Cambridge SoundWorks DTT2500 speakers at 3D Spotlight. The speakers scored 9/10!
People have been asking for this feature and someone has done it! It allows you better control over the sound on the SBLive! compared to the primitive bass and treble controls available on the mixer. Check it out! Thanks to all those who e-mailed us.
Saw over at 3DAI that the Final Fantasy SoundFont Project has released a SoundFont that works with Final Fantasy VIII on the PC, to make the music sound much better. Check it out!
In case you still don't know, Sound Control Plus has been updated to version 1.55 (beta) which has been greatly enhanced to enable control of every mixer slider through hotkeys, and also allows more buttons to be controlled with WinAMP. If you still haven't tried this program, go get it! I think its the most useful app I have for the SBLive! WinAMP is also up to version 2.62.
Tons of stuff from 3DsoundSurge. Check them out!
New driver updates for the Sound Blaster Live! on Windows 95/98 and NT platforms popped up at Creative's Singapore web site and FTP servers. These drivers add the following:
The drivers should be appearing in the other servers soon. The links to download are available in the drivers section. Sounds like this is a minor update. Do let me know if it makes any difference, or solves some bugs that weren't officially stated in the readme.
Creative seems to be doing well. Check out this news at CNET Singapore. You can also check out Creative's official press release. Meanwhile, analysts are cautious about Creative's stock, as it seems investors are over-reacting and thinking that Creative is a dot-com company. This article also highlights some of Creative's investments in some Singapore start-ups, and of course the big boys like NVIDIA, GigaPixel and 3D Labs.
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