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by rektide 1266 days ago
Known in the US as Creative Labs.

Mercy, those Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live PCI cards (CT4830) were like the default go-to option for everyone for years & years. Every system build got one! They were reasonably priced & considered pretty decent! Motherboards had pretty bad onboard sound if any at all, up until an Nvidia chipset started sometimes having some good implementations (the nForce chipset with integrated SoundStorm, the same DSP-based chipset as on the Xbox, and boasting a very rare Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding capability), so in went a Live! (Value) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_Live!

I kept my computers in closets & ran extended HDMI & USB extension cable runs to workstations for about a decade, and the Creative Labs X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro (SB1090) and latter X-Fi HD (SB1095) were my go to card for a long long time. Again, cheap-enough, and acceptable DACs.
3 comments
dylan604 1266 days ago
The one thing about PC sound cards include SBL was in comparison to other cards they were super noisy. The hiss that came off them was much more noticeable. At the time, every Mac was much more quiet than PCs. There were a couple of PC sound cards that were much more quiet (Turtle Beach cards come to mind), but the typical Creative card sounded like it had an air leak.
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nullify88 1265 days ago
Creative were also pushing Environmental Audio eXtensions (EAX) on to many games and there were several versions of the techonology requiring upgrades of the soundcard until it was killed off by the release of Windows Vista when Microsoft discontinued DirectSound3D.

I believe Creative would be a very different company if EAX were still around. Their business was killed overnight.

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saiya-jin 1265 days ago
As a kid from a poor family, Sound Blasters were too pricey and I ended up with something called AdLib in early 90s. Used to just beeps and screeches till then, suddenly hearing X-Wing music (not much speech, that was weakness of it) playing actual music from loudspeakers was shocking.
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rektide 1265 days ago
I remember the SB Live Value being like $65, although it's beem around for a couple years when I was in my system-building-for-friends years.
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