[LAU] SB Live!

James Stone jamesmstone at gmail.com
Mon Sep 10 13:14:07 EDT 2007


On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 06:49:21PM +0200, Leslie P. Polzer wrote:
> 
> Hello again,
> 
> I've got a Creative SB Live!*.
> What are your experiences with it WRT semi-professional RT audio?
>

I'm not sure it is up to "semi-professional" standard. It is a
pretty good (and very cheap) entry level card IMHO.

It runs at 48k and this is hard-coded, which can lead to some
problems with running at 44.1k, although I have never noticed any
major problems.

Apparently the mic-in is not very clean, because of the rubbish
internal amplifier, but the line-in is OK. Running hw:0,3 in jack
exposes more line-in/line-out jack devices on the card, and also
permits running at fairly low latencies (using hw:0 will only
allow you to go down to 512 IIRC). At very low latencies, it is
quite prone to xruns, but there is a sweet spot in there
somewhere :).

I have had this card in my box since 2000, and it is the only
part of the machine (apart from the floppy drive) that has not
been replaced/upgraded. It is a lot less noisy than the on-board
sound card. In my opinion, it is probably the best value card for
music. The next significant step up would mean spending at least
100GBP on the card, which for me, at the moment, is not
necessary.

James



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