PC Peripherals Sb Live! or Audigy Gamer

Haste

Proxy Warrior
Adept
I'm upgrading from my onboard sound card to dedicated one soon. I had narrowed down on buying Creative Sb Live! 5.1 but i may also be able to get used Creative Audigy Gamer for the same price from America.

Here are its specs(Audigy Gamer's)
32-bit Professional Quality Effects Engine
Creative''s Audigyâ„¢ patented effects processor
Support for real-time digital effects like reverb, chorus, normalizer, pitch shifter, or distortion across any audio source
Capable of processing, mixing, and positioning audio streams using up to 131 available hardware channels
Full 32-bit digital mixer maintains all sound mixing in the digital domain, eliminating noise from the signal
Customizable Plug-In Effects Architecture allows new audio effects to be downloaded from the Web via CreativeWare

High-Definition Audio Quality
Playback of 64 audio channels, each with its own independent sample rate
24-bit Analog-to-Digital conversion of analog inputs at 48kHz sample rate
24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion of digital sources at 48kHz to analog 5.1 speaker output
16-bit recording with sampling rates of 8, 11.025, 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, and 48kHz
Supports Sony® / Philips® Digital Interface (SPDIF) format input signal of up to 24-bit/96kHz quality
SPDIF output up to 24-bit resolution at selectable sampling rate of 44.1, 48, or 96kHz
Low latency multi-track recording with ASIOâ„¢ support

EAX®, ADVANCED HD™, Advanced Audio and 3D Audio Technology
Hardware acceleration of EAX ADVANCED HD for games
User-selectable EAX ADVANCED HD music presets, pre-configurable DSP modes simulating various acoustic environments
Advanced time-scaling
Audio Cleanup
Upgradeable 3D audio architecture for future improvements
Dolby® Digital audio decoding to 5.1 speaker channels in both analog and digital modes
Optimized, user-selectable settings for two, four, or six speakers, headphones, and external A/V amplifiers
Creative Multi Speaker Surround™ (CMSS) technology places any monaural or stereo source in a 360° audio space

SB1394/FireWire® Connectivity
High speed connection to IEEE® 1394 enabled devices with up to 400Mbps transfer rate
Hot-plug support for ease of connecting or disconnecting external devices
Interconnection of up to 63 devices for peer-to-peer communication

Realistic Wave-Table Synthesis
Creative''s Audigy music synthesis engine
64-voice hardware polyphony with E-mu® Systems, Inc.''s patented 8-point interpolation technology that reduces distortion to inaudible levels
Uses SoundFont® technology for user-definable wave-table sample sets
Unlimited sample size can be loaded into host memory for professional music reproduction (limited to available system memory size)
Scalable PCI wave-table synthesis architecture with multi-timbre capability
48 MIDI channels with 128 GM & GS compatible instruments and 10 drum kits

MIDI Interface / Joystick Port
Support for analog and digital or DirectInputâ„¢ game devices
Support for two simultaneous MIDI devices with Sound Blaster Audigy drive (upgrade option)

Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer On-Board Connectors
Analog / Digital Out (Analog Center & Subwoofer / 6-channel SPDIF Output)
Line in
Microphone in
Line level out (Front) / Headphone out
Line level out (Rear)
SB1394/FireWire port
Telephone Answering Device in
Analog CD Audio in
Digital CD Audio in
Expansion header to an external 15-pin MIDI / Joystick port
Internal SB1394/FireWire header to Sound Blaster Audigy drive (upgrade option)
Expansion header to the Sound Blaster Audigy drive (upgrade option)

Works with the Following Standards

PCI 2.1 compliant
AC ''97 compliant
Dolby® Digital
ASIOâ„¢

Sound Blaster Audigy Audio Performance
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (A-Weighted) = 100 dB
Crosstalk (Left/Right and vice versa) = -100 dB
Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise at 1kHz (A-Weighted) = 0.004 %
Frequency Response at -3 dBr = <10 Hz to 22 kHz
So what do you guys think, is the risk buying a used card justified by the feaures and sound quality i get on this card, or i should buy new Sb Live! 5.1 from here as i may not experience much of the difference.
And one more thing, i mostly be doing gaming, so i'm sticking to creative sound card's only.
 
Chaos said:
Both are crap in sound quality compared to a Live 24bit. Get a used Audigy2 ZS if you want a used card.

You mean the 7.1 live! card ?
Yeah i can get that, not much of the price difference between the 5.1 and 7.1 live!

@Anish The x-fi is $100+ card.Am on a tight budget m8, only of about $50
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Guys, from where, i'm buying(ie in US) Audigy 2 value is not available :(
So i guess i should buy live 24Bit, but i've got a one last doubt about it, the live 24Bit doesn't mention h/w accelerated EAX in its specs, while audigy gamer does.
So would the live be like onboard audio, which do EAX by driver and consume lots of CPU cycles in process.I need to take this in consideration, 'cause my CPU is kinda old (AthlonXP).
And from the specs. i see both are 24Bit cards with both having same SNR and frequency response, so would there be much of the sound quality difference ?
 
The CPU load will be less than 5% and the difference in performance while gaming or so will be less than 2%. Its no big deal if the saved money is worth for you.

Raghu.
 
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