Rating: 
Summary: Good sound card with great bundled games
Review: I'm giving one extra star because of the 3 games bundled with this sound card (Descent 3, Need For Speed 4, and Thief: The Dark Project). They are all full retail versions, with .PDF manuals on the CDs but no printed manuals. These are 3 of the best PC games in recent years. And they also show off the capabilities of the Live! sound card.The Live! card is a four-channel sound card, with separate front and rear audio outs that allows a multiple-speaker set up. It will enhance the sound in computer games, provided that the game is designed for multiple speakers. When used with only 2 speakers, I don't notice a big difference in sound quality compared to old Sound Blaster cards. Hence, your speaker setup should be up to snuff to really take advantage of the Live! card. If you have a multiple-speaker setup and want to watch DVDs on your PC, this Live! card doesn't quite help. There is no Dolby Digital decoding ability in this Live! card. You either need to get an external DD decoder, or wait for the upcoming Live! 5.1 card which will have built-in DD decoding. The Live! card is also able to produce digital audio (which sounds cleaner than analog). Unfortunately, the Live! XGamer or MP3 card doesn't come with a digital I/O daughterboard that is needed to get digital audio. Only the more expensive Live! (the original version) and Live! Platinum come with the digital I/O card. The digital card can be bought separately, however, but you need to buy directly from Creative Labs. Also, the digital audio comes out of a DIN connector on the digital I/O card. So your speakers must also have the same DIN connector. Speakers that have it include the "FourPoint" and the "Desktop Theater" line of speakers (all are Creative Labs' products, no surprise). Another specialized feature of the Live! card is Environmental Audio (EAX). Opinions vary widely as to its merits. It's basically a way to make sound more realistic in games; for instance, EAX could make footsteps sound differently on the streets than in a tunnel, as it should in the real world. Games that use it should have the EAX logo printed on the box. My opinion is that its effectiveness depends largely on how it's used in a game. In Half Life, the EAX sound is fantastic. All the 3 bundled games support EAX, I believe, so hear it for yourself. If you think of buying a Live! card mainly to play your DOS games, keep your old Sound Blaster. My experience is the Live! card cannot always provide SB16 emulation under Windows; some games either won't run or sound funny. Even if you are able to boot to DOS 6.22 on your PC, you still can't run all of the DOS games (e.g. some of the pinball games from 21st Century); some games would crash or not recognize your sound card. To enable SB16 emulation requires you to load EMM386.EXE in CONFIG.SYS, and that may cause problems to some old DOS games. To those who look forward to replay your old DOS games, better not to throw away your old SB card just yet.
Rating:
Summary: Good sound card with great bundled games
Review: I'm giving one extra star because of the 3 games bundled with this sound card (Descent 3, Need For Speed 4, and Thief: The Dark Project). They are all full retail versions, with .PDF manuals on the CDs but no printed manuals. These are 3 of the best PC games in recent years. And they also show off the capabilities of the Live! sound card. The Live! card is a four-channel sound card, with separate front and rear audio outs that allows a multiple-speaker set up. It will enhance the sound in computer games, provided that the game is designed for multiple speakers. When used with only 2 speakers, I don't notice a big difference in sound quality compared to old Sound Blaster cards. Hence, your speaker setup should be up to snuff to really take advantage of the Live! card. If you have a multiple-speaker setup and want to watch DVDs on your PC, this Live! card doesn't quite help. There is no Dolby Digital decoding ability in this Live! card. You either need to get an external DD decoder, or wait for the upcoming Live! 5.1 card which will have built-in DD decoding. The Live! card is also able to produce digital audio (which sounds cleaner than analog). Unfortunately, the Live! XGamer or MP3 card doesn't come with a digital I/O daughterboard that is needed to get digital audio. Only the more expensive Live! (the original version) and Live! Platinum come with the digital I/O card. The digital card can be bought separately, however, but you need to buy directly from Creative Labs. Also, the digital audio comes out of a DIN connector on the digital I/O card. So your speakers must also have the same DIN connector. Speakers that have it include the "FourPoint" and the "Desktop Theater" line of speakers (all are Creative Labs' products, no surprise). Another specialized feature of the Live! card is Environmental Audio (EAX). Opinions vary widely as to its merits. It's basically a way to make sound more realistic in games; for instance, EAX could make footsteps sound differently on the streets than in a tunnel, as it should in the real world. Games that use it should have the EAX logo printed on the box. My opinion is that its effectiveness depends largely on how it's used in a game. In Half Life, the EAX sound is fantastic. All the 3 bundled games support EAX, I believe, so hear it for yourself. If you think of buying a Live! card mainly to play your DOS games, keep your old Sound Blaster. My experience is the Live! card cannot always provide SB16 emulation under Windows; some games either won't run or sound funny. Even if you are able to boot to DOS 6.22 on your PC, you still can't run all of the DOS games (e.g. some of the pinball games from 21st Century); some games would crash or not recognize your sound card. To enable SB16 emulation requires you to load EMM386.EXE in CONFIG.SYS, and that may cause problems to some old DOS games. To those who look forward to replay your old DOS games, better not to throw away your old SB card just yet.
Rating: 
Summary: Another excellent offering from Creative.
Review: I've been using Creative Labs products since the Sound Blaster Pro I bought in 1993, and still they astound me. I purchased a new chip/MB, and it had all AGP and PCI slots, so my ISA SB AWE64 had to go; I replaced it with this, and after hearing the incredible quality and effects that this card had to offer, I'm certain I made the right choice. If you are into gaming or just high-quality audio in general, this card is the way to go - it's expandable to the nth degree, with both proprietary items (FPS2000 speakers, LiveDrive) from Creative and more standard things such as DVD drives, TV cards, and multiple speaker systems. And you HAVE to hear the immersive 3D sound this can generate in games like Thief and Unreal Tournament. You could always buy a 16-bit generic PCI sound card, but this is worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Another excellent offering from Creative.
Review: I've been using Creative Labs products since the Sound Blaster Pro I bought in 1993, and still they astound me. I purchased a new chip/MB, and it had all AGP and PCI slots, so my ISA SB AWE64 had to go; I replaced it with this, and after hearing the incredible quality and effects that this card had to offer, I'm certain I made the right choice. If you are into gaming or just high-quality audio in general, this card is the way to go - it's expandable to the nth degree, with both proprietary items (FPS2000 speakers, LiveDrive) from Creative and more standard things such as DVD drives, TV cards, and multiple speaker systems. And you HAVE to hear the immersive 3D sound this can generate in games like Thief and Unreal Tournament. You could always buy a 16-bit generic PCI sound card, but this is worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Card
Review: Im a audio freak with a somewhat of a budget... This card is the bomb! Very price friendly for the range of "customablilty". Fast and easy installation, User Friendly software. I have it hooked to my Pioneer receiver/amp with two surrounds to the right and left and a 10" sub on the floor.. It rocks. Excellent for both mp3's and game playing. I cant say enough about it.. I looked at the Sound blaster platnium and really liked the "live drive" option, but I couldnt see paying an extra 100 bones for it.. Im very happy with the x-gamer!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Card
Review: Im a audio freak with a somewhat of a budget... This card is the bomb! Very price friendly for the range of "customablilty". Fast and easy installation, User Friendly software. I have it hooked to my Pioneer receiver/amp with two surrounds to the right and left and a 10" sub on the floor.. It rocks. Excellent for both mp3's and game playing. I cant say enough about it.. I looked at the Sound blaster platnium and really liked the "live drive" option, but I couldnt see paying an extra 100 bones for it.. Im very happy with the x-gamer!
Rating:
Summary: x-gamer is the best!
Review: O MY GOD! this card is the best card i have used in a long, long time! You plug it in and it works. Its that simple. The software installs fine, and it is Live!Ware compatible, which means you can add new features to your card later. The software itself is worth the price. I bought this card elseware, which means that I paid $100, and I thought it was a great deal then. This card has 2 disks of software for the card itself, and 5 for the games! There are so many features to this card I haven't even found them all and I spent an entire weekend playing with it. And it has support for 5.1 surround sound, so you can FEEL the games when you play them. BUY THIS CARD NOW! IT IS THAT SIMPLE! You wont regret it.
Rating:
Summary: x-gamer is the best!
Review: O MY GOD! this card is the best card i have used in a long, long time! You plug it in and it works. Its that simple. The software installs fine, and it is Live!Ware compatible, which means you can add new features to your card later. The software itself is worth the price. I bought this card elseware, which means that I paid $100, and I thought it was a great deal then. This card has 2 disks of software for the card itself, and 5 for the games! There are so many features to this card I haven't even found them all and I spent an entire weekend playing with it. And it has support for 5.1 surround sound, so you can FEEL the games when you play them. BUY THIS CARD NOW! IT IS THAT SIMPLE! You wont regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Great card, ok games
Review: One of my professors last semester made the comment that sound, not video, has progressed the most in the last decade. I didn't really believe him, and was happy with my SoundBlaster 16. It's nice to be wrong. The thing I like most about this card is a feature called 'Environmental Audio'. At a control panel you can select various 'audio themes', eg concert hall, country, sewer and apply this to all sounds on the computer. It's nice to pop in a Portishead CD and click on 'Stadium' and hear her voice get even more expressive. Another interesting feature is 'Lava', which is similar to the plug-ins for WinAmp and shows CGI images in time with the music. As one would expect with SoundBlaster, compatability is no problem. The games aren't really my thing, and in retrospect I probably should have saved $30 and just got the card or the MP3 version. A year and a half ago these were great games, now they're not so hot. Creative is becoming known for having wretched customer service, to which I can attest, but you'll pobably not have any difficulty installing and using the card. I'd recommend the SoundBlaster Live! to anyone. The Live! Platinum isn't worth the money unless you are into music production.
Rating:
Summary: Very good for the money...
Review: One thing I have to say about the X-Gamer is if you are agamer, you need this card! It is so much fun to play games withsounds behind you and to your sides and to hear something pass by you as you see it go by onscreen! It's a lot of fun. If you are big into MP3's, I'd go with the Live!MP3+, or if you compose on your computer, get the Live!Platinum. The Platinum edition comes with the Live! drive where you can hook up MIDI devices and keyboards and such. But, I think you can get that separately too. Helpful, if you decide suddenly that you no longer wish to be the world's greatest gamer, but rather the world's greatest game music composer. The biggest plus to these cards is the Four Point Surround speaker set, which is very, very nice! Highly enjoyable. Plus, the FPS system allows you to hook up two sets of speakers to the back of the subwoofer, freeing up the two speaker jacks on the Live! card. That equals... well, a LOT of sound, especially if you get subwoofer/speaker packages. It's a great setup. Now, hold on, you might say. You have so many great things to say about this card. Why only four stars? Well, it's this: I had quite a bit of trouble getting it to work with out Windows locking up at the start up. Here's my situation: I have a motherboard with 1 AGP, 2 PCI, and 2 ISA slots. The AGP was occupied with my Viper, the PCI slots were full with my modem and my Voodoo2 add-on (it's just an add-on!), but my ISA slots were empty. Well, this card only comes in PCI (so far as I know) so I went out and bought an ISA modem (and bounced a check). Yay, free PCI. This card seems to work in only a particular slot, so it took a trip back to Wally world (I thought, hey, maybe I broke it) three days and an email to Creative tech support (they are good though). After some shifting of cards (I really hate that)... IT LIVES! So, for lack of ease of installation (or maybe I'm just an idiot or my computer sucks, I need a new one), I knocked off a star. I love it, now that it works. So, looking for a good sound solution? Get a Sound Blaster Live! It comes in several variants (and the price varies accordinly so look out- the Platinum is EXPENSIVE) so you most likely can find the one that suits you. The X-Gamer suits me just fine... Disagree? Email me!
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