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Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live ! Digital Entertainment 5.1

Bundle

Ever since the release of the original Live and Live!Value Creative Labs has offered the best software bundle in the market. Live!DE 5.1 seems to maintain that position even though it's clearly less impressive than what comes bundled with the X-Gamer 5.1 in the North American market. It's also worth noting that if you are into watching DVDs on your computer you may be better off with a card that bundles PowerDVD 3.0 or WinDVD 2000 multichannel version. Here is a quick run through of the bundle (note: some of the information below was taken from the official web site). 

When it comes to Creative Launcher, Creative Surround Mixer, PlayCenter 2.1, and all the other applications that’s included in the downloadable version of LiveWare 3.0.

Music/MIDI apps

FutureBeat 3D
This is the full version of Future Beat 3D which is the first music studio product that extensively features 3D audio composition for non-professional music makers. Future Beat 3D's stylish interface provides simple controls for accessing a powerhouse of audio technology. Here’s some features of note ripped from the official site:

• up to 64 2D or 3D simultaneous channels.
• 32 bit Windows application.
• 32 bit (floating point) music rendering at full 16 bit 44100 Hz quality, to hard disk, even if you edit the song using a lower sound quality. The final output quality is the same, no matter what computer system you use.
• 1000+ Music samples  (studio quality) covering 20+ music styles
• 32 bit non-destructive Time-stretching, allowing you to use samples recorded at different tempos in the same song.
• 32 bit non-destructive pitch shifting, allowing you to change the pitch of a sample to suit the music you are creating.
• Looping and "one-shot" .WAV mixing, with powerful controls that allow you to create the sound you want.
• Full MIDI input control, allowing "Live" music creation.
• Powerful riff creation tools. Drum Editor, Wave Editor and Solo Composer give you the power to create.
• Fully optimised to take complete advantage of your computer system, including processor technology and Direct Sound compatible sound card support.
• Low minimum system requirements, but allows you to take full advantage of even the most state-of-the-art computer system.

You can find more information on Techland’s site.

Creative Keytar
An intuitive and highly interactive edutainment software for music beginners, with a virtual rhythm guitar console that enables you to pluck and strum any tune via the computer keyboard.

Creative Rhythmania
An interactive auto-accompaniment application that allows you to create music along with music sequencing presets.

Misc apps

PixMaker  and PixScreen (Creative Edition)
PixMaker lets you create 360° interactive PixAround scenes and web pages in 3 simple steps - Snap, Stitch and Publish.

How We Tested

Installation and Configuration

The card ships with a bunch of CDs with the drivers, applications and other software, one analog CD-cable and one digital CD-cable. You also get a printed manual covering just the basics. More details about the card can be found in the many help files, pdf files and Creative’s websites.

There is nothing unusual about the physical installation of the card. You just need a free primary PCI slot, ideally not next to the video card. Once the Live! card is into an available free PCI slot you are ready to install the software.

To install the drivers in Windows 9x/2000 you hit cancel when Windows detects new hardware and then run "setup" from the CD.

To properly configure your card you need to select the output device (headphones, 2, 4-speakers or 6-speakers) which you do from the speaker applet found in the AudioHQ. If you plan to use the Digital Output jack found on the bracket you will have to enable Digital Output only in which case all the analog outputs will be muted. One other option is if you want to have the subwoofer output to be a mix of all the other channels or just used for LFE output, the former works in all speaker modes while the latter is only available in the 5.1 output mode. This option is found by pressing the advanced button in the speaker applet where you will also find an option to have AC3 decoded by the drivers or directly sent out to an external Dolby Digital decoder.