[IFLY2HIGH]

So, how do you like the card? Was it worth the money? Does it sound better than the built-in sound on the motherboard? I thinking of getting the Altec Speaker Set ACS56 to use with the SB's dual speaker inputs. Does this card offer the different soubnd schemes that you can chage from listning to music to player specifc games?

Thanks...

[ 09-01-2001: Message edited by: IFLY2HIGH ]

[yukon]

The card is ok

isn't worth the money, yet

sounds better, except for hissing/pops which may be fixed in a driver update

If you wan't Speakers for it, get the fps2000. they are still cheap, surround, and digital.

There are different "sets", which are eax (environmental audio) settings, which mostly just add reverb/block frequencies. They can be turned off, but without the "generic" one sound seems duller. There are only settings to match places (like "room", "concert hall", "sewer pipe" or "drugged". most change almost nothing). the pc has settings for each different type of music, and many other sets.

Games will use their own sets, or yours depending on if the game has eax or openAL programmed into it.


I really want to say go out and buy the card, but I can't. There have been no driver updates for a long time, and they say that most issues have been fixed in beta drivers. Creative won't talk about osx support. There are NO games which support the card, except for deus es (great game, no replay value and needs >256mb ram, >300mb disk space) and monkey island or something. Sound is nicer in surround and positional audio.

The drivers take a few extra secons to load, and take more memory. You can disable "soundfonts" which take a long time at startup to load into ram, but you lose a main attraction of midi support. There are problems with the sound input not working. My system crashes more and is slightly slower. I can no longer put the computer into deep sleep. The main game attraction, unreal tournament in openal, hasn't been released (and don't expect quake3 to ever have eax).

I like having it, but the "features" just aren't used, as they are buggy or unimplemented. If creative and developers fix these issues, then the card will have more appeal. I'd say wait until its fixed and cheap. If creative releases the "audigy" or whatever, get the Live! because it lacks copyright enforcement.

The rumor was "driver update at mwny!" and I believe one of the people from creative hinted at it. It never happened. The rumor (or maybe just hope) is that it will be out in the next expo.

You can read issues, and creative's support at xlr8yourmac.com's forums under "audio". There are two guys "creativeone" and some other one. They are nice and helpful, but have no help for the major problems of the card. I just hope that creative begins fixing the issues before the mac community abandons it as will creative.

I would highly recommend staying away from Creative. They can't even write new drivers for their PC soundblaster cards to properly work under Windows 2000. They will never fix the bugs on the mac version if they treat these issues the same as they treat PC bugs. Im sorry to say that they just don't care once they have sold the card, which is old technology, I believe like 3 years old now. There software is bloatware. Crap Crap Crap. I mean the mac version of the card is probably almost the exact same as the PC version, so all they needed to do is write Mac drivers, andit seems they couldnt even do that right.

[yukon]

well, I kinda agree. The card though took what, two years after announcement? This is a long time, but there are major differences with the mac and pc card.

I really don't know about pc drivers. I do know that these drivers are functional, but have major issues.

I personally, would highly recommend this card over the >500$ cards or no card at all, if the issues are fixed and suport is seen in games etc.

the replies from the "unofficial" reps was that most of the problems were fixed, they just wanted to ensure 9.2 compatability. it should be released withing 2 weeks at the most. If not, call in bomb threats.

I highly recommend the card. It works great and will work great with the speakers you are using, or the digital ones that you can get from Creative. Creative makes great stuff as far as the sound cards are concerned.

[yukon]

ooh, time to call in bomb threats =)

really, i'm not serious. But I am serious that they better keep supporting this card, along with it's software!