The Power of the SBLive!

[swaaye]

So I recently stuck in a SBLive! 5.1 and installed the kx drivers. I really don't like listening through headphones with Realtek audio... Even a Live! has always been better.

Installed the Live. Noticed that the front output was kinda noisy and not much better than the onboard Realtek. I figure this machine's PSU and/or mobo aren't giving it very clean power.

But, with the kx drivers, you can switch the Live!'s rear output to be the main output and that output is just crystal clear. Better DAC and apparently better noise suppression. The nifty kx drivers also let you reconfigure the Live! DSP however you like. So I have this nice 10-band EQ setup now and it's just bliss from this 8 year old sound card. Even Audigy 4 doesn't have a 10-band EQ with the Creative drivers installed. Live doesn't get an EQ at all from Creative drivers.

I just wanted to share this little experience with having a Live! in a modern PC. Don't just toss them out. They are better than onboard audio. In XP, they actually still have full hardware acceleration and I have used one with recent games like Oblivion just fine (that game has Realtek issues actually.)

 

[Tokelil]

What I like most about that EQ, is that it is easy to make sure you don't boost any signal ranges above 0 dB. Most EQ's make it way too easy to boost the sound, because people think it sounds better, but it makes clipping much worse.

 

[Davros]

its been known for ages but thanks for sharing

 

[swaaye]

its been known for ages but thanks for sharing

ya I've done this before but people like to think "it's old so it must be useless". I haven't set a Live! up like this for years so I thought I'd post about it again cuz it's just as great as ever really. I have Audigy 2, 4, and X-FI along with the latest Realtek garbage. None of the new stuff really has anything I hear as tangibly better for music, really. Well, other than X-Fi's better resampling, but I've never been able to hear the poor resampler in the older cards anyway.

 

[AlNom]

The DAC for the rear output is better than the front Why is that

 

[swaaye]

The front DAC is some AC97 DAC that's not very good quality. It's still as good as most mobo audio though. The rear output uses a I2S DAC and it's really about as good of quality as you can peceive apparently.

http://audio.rightmark.org/test/live51.html

 

[AlNom]

A strange choice.. I would have expected them to go with two of the same chips, whichever was cheaper. I can't recall, but are later products using the better DAC?

 

[swaaye]

Audigy and later fixed the front DAC, I believe. It was only the Live! and Live! 5.1 series that had the questionable front DAC. There is an EMU10K1 card from E-Mu that may have better quality all around because it is a music production card. I don't know for sure though.

It's possible that the DAC isn't even at fault. Could just be signal routing on the board. Dunno.

 

[suryad]

Never knew about this kx driver stuff. Quite interesting though I barely understand what they are for. But I guess thats just reading and checking out their website and mucking around with the drivers I guess. Thanks for this topic swaaye interesting stuff!

Just did some reading and it looks like since I have an X-fi its not going to work with me...still quite interesting.

 

[Jawed]

Woah.

My Soundblaster Live! Value is still going strong from when I bought it. It drives my Sennheiser HD650s directly on the line out quite adequately

Thing is, being a flat-earther, I've always liked the way it plays music, much more than other sound cards I've tried in my PC (newer, supposedly better Soundblasters, including an Audigy). It rocks, the others merely try to sound pretty

Indeed, I've been wondering what I'm going to do when I build a new PC hopefully later this year, and seriously considering keeping this old PC running purely as a music-playing PC, just to avoid the heartache of some crappy new sound card

I doubt this card will work under W7.

Now, these kx drivers, do they work for games?

Also, ahem, now I have to try the rear output to see if I prefer it to the front - never heard of that. I don't have the Creative stuff installed, so I'm not sure how I'll get rear working.

Jawed

 

[Skrying]

You're using an HD650 without an amp? No, it doesn't drive it adequately. What a waste of money...

 

[Jawed]

You're using an HD650 without an amp? No, it doesn't drive it adequately. What a waste of money...

I'm a hardcore hi-fi nutter - the headphones are the cheapest bit of hi-fi I've bought since 1993 (excluding the odd cable and the HD560 Ovations).

When I used to run speakers, the tweeters each had a dedicated 75W mono amp

Yes, I've heard the HD650s sound better, but that amp is stashed away for the time being.

Jawed

 

[swaaye]

Now, these kx drivers, do they work for games?

Yeah they should, but EAX support isn't there AFAIK. Although Everest reports up to EAX 3 support and 64 hardware channels, the kx website says EAX isn't complete. I haven't actually tried gaming with these drivers.

I doubt this card will work under W7.

Well I recently got a old Sound Blaster PCI64 (Ensoniq AudioPCI) working in Vista SP1. It found drivers on Windows Update. Now that's a crusty resurrection!

That card also has some good output quality, and it doesn't resample.
http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/compare/index.htm

 

[Davros]

are there kx drivers for the xfi?
would be interesting to see what people would come up with if they allow programming the dsp

 

[Skrying]

I'm a hardcore hi-fi nutter - the headphones are the cheapest bit of hi-fi I've bought since 1993 (excluding the odd cable and the HD560 Ovations).

When I used to run speakers, the tweeters each had a dedicated 75W mono amp

Yes, I've heard the HD650s sound better, but that amp is stashed away for the time being.

Jawed

You make extremely weird hardware picks then for a hi-fi person.

 

[swaaye]

You make extremely weird hardware picks then for a hi-fi person.

hi-fi people are inherently weird, aren't they?

He said he likes how the Live! sounds and has compared other hardware to it. Since half of good audio is figuring out what sounds good to your own ears, his preference seems reasonable to me.

 

[Blazkowicz]

wow
I've had a sb live, then audigy 1, then sb live again with the KX driver, and I love the sound output, noticeable even on cheap speakers. The cards usually cost either 0€ or 5€!

my problem was, where TF is the equalizer. duh! that routing app made no sense to me. Thanks!

 

[Jawed]

For what it's worth, this is how I set the equaliser in WMP

So, as well as straightening out the slighty chesty sound of the HD650s (upper-bass/lower-mid is a bit thick and slow) there's a bit of lift in the treble because my sound card is definitely a bit quiet up there...

Jawed