Is Sound Blaster PCI 512 better than Live-VAlue?

[mhan80]

Do you know

 

[Mem]

I believe the Live is better(higher model)just don`t ask me what the difference is.

 

[CyruzTheGreat]

I just replaced a pci-128 with a live-1024... man can i hear a difference... i can feel the rythm in the floor right now heh.. the 128 sounded much 'flatter'...

 

[Noriaki]

The SB512 can't use LiveWare and has no digital out.

It may also not have an analog rear-output I'm not sure...the SBLive-Value is better.

 

[Mem]

CyruzTheGreat,I know what you mean, I went the same route SB128 to SBlive & yes you can notice the difference.

 

[Modus]

What you're noticing is just some cheezy "bass reflex" and "3D stereo expansion" that Creative puts into the Live drivers to make them sound better. You can get the same thing by turning on SRS TruBass and WowEffect in Windows Media Player 7.

Creative has been using some really low tricks to keep people buying their high end cards. As a near-monopoly, they're almost as worthy of scorn as Intel or, perhaps in the near future, nVidia.

Modus

 

[bluemax]

Does the PCI series use the 10k1 chip?? I'm pretty sure NONE do, so you lose out on a lot of the D3D audio channels (at ~0% CPU usage that is) and you lose the whole SoundFont engine and MIDI synthesizer, using only the crappiest software synthesizer I've come across yet.
I'm running a PCI-128 now... works great for eveything but I really miss using SoundFonts...

I think I might buy a Live X-gamer 5.1 to get the SoundFonts back as well as some great games that would cost more than the card alone.

 

[GL]

If I'm not mistaken, the 512 and SB 128 use that Ensoniq chip (in fact it was/is the same card as the Ensoniq one that was around a couple of years ago). So they don't use the EMU10k1.

-GL