Creative Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit

[SanchoP]

I want to buy this card second hand. Will it give nicer sound on my Z-2300 speakers, compared to *** onboard/ipod?

 

[The_Techie]

I've got something similar, it sounds a lot better than any of the onboard sound that I've tried (including the Striker Extreme's audio card)

 

[SanchoP]

Cool. Will be much better than my horrible onboard then.

 

[PostmanPot]

What's the SNR of this card?

 

[SanchoP]

100dB I think.

 

[PostmanPot]

Thanks.

 

[milomak]

i quite like mine. but then again i'm no sound fundi.

 

[SanchoP]

Well neither am I, so that's perfect.

 

[Flipside]

I think I've got the same one (SB0410) , when I got a motherboard with onboard 6 channel audio I stopped using it because I couldn't hear the difference, I also had some trouble finding the correct drivers if I remember correctly.

 

[Pooky]

So will you hear the difference if you buy this card compared to an onboard one?

 

[wcoetzee]

yole talking about listening to mp3's or media in general?
how do you hear the diff in sound cards?
is'n the speakers that really makes the diff?

 

[d0b33]

yole talking about listening to mp3's or media in general?
how do you hear the diff in sound cards?
is'n the speakers that really makes the diff?

Clarity is what you'll pick up mostly, speakers do make a difference but a good sound source is very important.

When I went from my onboard sound to my current card I could make out things more clearly some words in some songs also were muffled but I heard them much better.

 

[wcoetzee]

is'nt mp3 encoding the key to best sound
360bps cmp to 128 bps ?

 

[d0b33]

is'nt mp3 encoding the key to best sound
360bps cmp to 128 bps ?

Yes that does make a difference too, 128k mp3s are very easy for me to pick up on my system, 320k is tolerable though.

If you want the best quality it's best to go lossless like flac or Apple Lossless, it's the exact quality of say a CD but a BIG file obviously.

 

[wcoetzee]

Yes that does make a difference too, 128k mp3s are very easy for me to pick up on my system, 320k is tolerable though.

If you want the best quality it's best to go lossless like flac or Apple Lossless, it's the exact quality of say a CD but a BIG file obviously.

what do you think about VBR encoding its suppose to give you best of both worlds
I have 4.1 Cambridge Soundworks pcworks speakers and can actually hear very good base on VBR file cmp to lets say 320bps and its a much smaller file too

 

[Brawler]

I've got the cheap sb audigy on my desktop, differance was massive compared to onboard realtek on my logitech 6.1 system.

 

[d0b33]

what do you think about VBR encoding its suppose to give you best of both worlds
I have 4.1 Cambridge Soundworks pcworks speakers and can actually hear very good base on VBR file cmp to lets say 320bps and its a much smaller file too

Yeah, that's the benefit of VBR but I usually just encode my stuff as CBR.

I've got the cheap sb audigy on my desktop, differance was massive compared to onboard realtek on my logitech 6.1 system.

The cheap audigy is basically the soundblaster live 24bit, it should be an improvement over the onboard audio.

 

[Brawler]

The cheap audigy is basically the soundblaster live 24bit, it's just a revamped version so it should be an improvement.

didn't pay for it so i'm smiling

 

[d0b33]

didn't pay for it so i'm smiling

Cool

*hopes it's not stolen*

 

[SanchoP]

Nearly all of my songs are encoded at 128k. Obviously I can't up-encode them to lossless or whatever...

Just out of interests sake, my current 10gb of 128k would take up how much space if encoded flac?