Poll: Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1?!?

[BChico]

Hey, So i was reading through some news and i saw an article about the new platinum 5.1 sound card, i currently have cambridge DTT 2500 digital speakers, and the article says the sound card has the best match with these... So what the low down on this sound card, i currently have a live value, lol, should i up grade? I have heard alot about how computers dont work and you need to do a clean install when you install a sound card? And what is with that thing that goes in the front drive slote and the remote control? Overall would you recommend it, how much is it, and where is the best place to buy it? Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[BChico]

BUMP!!!

 

[Madcowz]

"i currently have cambridge DTT 2500 digital speakers, and the article says the sound card has the best match with these"

This is a big joke in order to persuade current live user's to foolishly upgrade to the same card w/ "5.1" attached to the name on the box. There is nothing this card can do for your DTT2500 that the current live! cannot do. You'll be getting dolby digital 5.1 using either cards, and no the sound quality is not an ounce better on the live 5.1 . They are both the same card except the live! 5.1 has an extra center speaker output for those who do not have decoder boxes. The digital sound still remains passthrough as in the live! card except it has emulated dolby digital sound through the drivers. This is not TRUE dolby digital and it will not sound as good as if you had a 5.1 speaker system w/ a dolby digital decoder. In that case there is no point in upgrading... In fact there is no point in upgrading either way b/c the center channel output is basically useless since there aren't any speaker systems that include 5 speakers unless it came with a dolby digital box... that is of course unless you bought home theater speakers separately in which they will be useless on the live! since they will require an amp anyways

 

[Sohcan]

Just to add to Madcowz' post....

The differences between the older SB Lives and the new 5.1s are:
- The old Lives have 4-channel analog output (front l/r, rear l/r); the new 5.1 cards have 6-channel analog output (front l/r, rear l/r, center/sub).
- The old Lives have 4-channel digital Mini-DIN output (the one that looks like a PS/2 jack), while the new 5.1s have 6-channel digital Mini-DIN output
- The new 5.1s can decode a Dolby Digital AC-3 stream (though it's mostly handled by the CPU) and send the seperate signals to the analog outputs.
- The S/PDIF functionality appears to be identical, such that they can passthrough an encoded AC-3 signal to an external Dolby Digital decoder (such as in your DTT2500s).

Thus, the Dolby Digital functionality of DVDs combined with the DTT2500s will be exactly the same regardless of the card you use. Since the DTT2500s only have four-channel analog/Mini-DIN input, the few changes in the 5.1 series are useless. The newer speaker systems (DTT2200, DTT3500) have six-channel analong/Mini-DIN input, but that would require buying new speakers as well. Since I don't know of any uses for 5.1 sound other than for Dolby Digital on DVDs (which has been handled by S/PDIF output on sound cards for a few years), I don't see the point to the new 5.1 cards.

 

[HD2GO]

All these argument about "there is no point in upgrading to Live 5.1" may be true for Win98 users, it may be a totally different story for Win2k users because we don't get AC3 passthru from DVD with the old Live. I am assuming that the new Live 5.1 does AC3 passthru from DVD under Win2k. Has anyone tried that? Does it work? If it does, I have a good reason to upgrade to the Live 5.1.