I'm not blowing creatives trumpet here, but their support of
24 bits 96k is truly groundbreaking. Ground breaking in that whilst i have had this feature for a while with my pulsar card,
the adoption of this feature by the masses at a significant price reduction has great appeal.
Most of the VSTIs (if all except Reaktor) are the old 16bit 44k
format. Yet with cubase and logic we are now able to record and mix in 24/96. I think a lot of vstis internally process at a higher rate and then ditherdown to 16/44, so it shouldnt be too hard to modify most vstis for a higher rate. So where is the limitation here ? In the VST2.0 standard ?

I'm sure pretty soon we will be mixing down vsti based tracks in 24/96 that can be delivered to a large audience. All we need now is some further mass compression technique also like mp3 or wma to support these bit rates. I believe however that Ogg Vorbis will support or has plans to support 24/96 anyway.

So who is going to offer the first 24/96 vsti ? Come on Muon, Emagic !

Here is a quote from a thread on the cubase.net forum
"S*it!
I just read now:
Digital Audio Features:
Duplex Type Full
Max. Recording Depth 16-bit, NOOO!!!
Max. Recording Rate 48kHz
Max. Playback Depth 24-bit
Max. Playback Rate 96kHz
Signal-to-Noise Ratio 100dB
Soundfont Support Yes, including Soundfont 2.1
Built-in Amplifier No
Why on earth Is the max recording depth set to 16bit, when you can play back 24bit? "

and why is max record rate set to 48khz when you can
playback at 96khz ?
and do quality of the cards ADC/DAC relate to the above
specs ?

NEVER MIND " their support of 24 bits 96k " What about their
support of existing sound blaster users, where are the
ASIO drivers that we have been waiting over a year for ?

I for one would never buy another Creative product
and I'm sure there are many more who feel the same way
p****d o*f

Hi bluey,

most VST-instruments are not stuck to a certain sampling frequency but use what they get from the host. In fact all use 32 bit inside with a few exceptions which use 64 bit resolution inside.
A few VSTi's have several problems with changing sampling rate like changing the pitch, LFO speed and the like.

Most VSTi's do sound better when used at 88 or 96 kHz.


bajongo

quote:

---

Originally posted by Raven:
Here is a quote from a thread on the cubase.net forum
[...]
Signal-to-Noise Ratio 100dB

---

He he, what a good joke. Even the more expensive "professional" cards only have a S/N ratio of about 90dB.

Yeah, that's Creative VapourWare!!!

quote:

---

Originally posted by Raven:

I for one would never buy another Creative product
and I'm sure there are many more who feel the same way

p****d o*f

[/QB]

---

Me I bought myself a SBLive!Player and together with the
APSLive v1.84-Driver and Cubase5 (P3-600MHz, 256MB, WinME) I get a powerful "Homestudio" for almost nothing (abt. 48$ for the card is not much), a latence of 8ms and no system breakdowns.

I´m fully satisfied with this Creative-Product .

I think you will not find many VSTi's with NOT support 24/96 because the most will use floats for calculation (32 bit depth) and supporting different samplerates is part of the VSTi specs (there is no limitation for the samplerate and the depth that can be streamed to the host is always 32 bit). Just switch Cubase or Logic to 96k and your will get your 24/96 VSTi's.

Bye,
Steffen Fuerst (Native Instruments)

Hi Dstyle
I to use the APS drivers on a live platinum
yes they do give good low latency, but I should't
have to use cracked drivers when creative can bring out
2 new cards live 5.1 and Audigy and not honour their
pledge to previous customers.
It says this on their website>>>

Your Investment Is Protected as your sound card will not be obsolete after purchase. Live!Ware introduces the latest features and applications, thus extending the life of your card.

The Value and Experience Improves Over Time as Live!Ware continues to deliver new capabilities and enhancements. Each upgrade will 'rejuvenate' your sound card and provides new-found functionality.

Your Card Is Always Up To Date because the latest Live!Ware upgrades are only a download away. When new standards and capabilities emerge, your hardware will be ready for it!

BULL****!!!
I've been waiting for ASIO drivers for over a year now

On the box that my card came in it says this>>>>

"The soundblaster live is Live!ware upgradable so you
don't need to replace your soundcard to keep up with
the latest standards. Liveware is the easiest way to
get the "LATEST IN SOUND TECHNOLOGY" just download the
software to your re-programmable Emu10k1 processor to get
the "LATEST" features and functions."

again BULL****

Im still waiting

sorry if this is a bit of topic
but my point is made

Hi Raven,

calm down a bit. The new Audigy drivers use a unified driver model. That means you can officialy install them on the Live! too and you will have the same functionality (with ASIO support) but with less quality (no 24bit/96kHz, since the hardware simply can't do that). It has taken a lot longer than promised, but it has happenend. If you want to try these new drivers, go to Reactor Critical and download them

Hi Michael
Thanks for your post and the link ! I am calm now
I have already tried the Audigy drivers a couple of days
ago to no avail and I have heard alot of people have
had problems with them and I have seen a thread on another
forum that says they have a trojon horse dated 4-1-2001
(April fools day) I don't know if to beleave that but the game
port driver does indeed have that date on it.
And I don't see Creative releasing official drivers on
their web site at least for a while, I may be wrong but
would it not be good marketing stratergy to hold them
back for a while to encorage soundblaster users to
upgrade to Audigy.?

Below is a quote from my post on the Audigy!!! thread giving
my experiance of installing the Audigy drivers which
I have done 3 times now >>>

"I spent hours yesterday doing a "clean install" of WIN98 SE &
all my apps & progs . WIN was a snip but what a pain doing
challenge keys, serial numbers, and updates for everything
else. I installed everything except for any drivers for
SB live . I then backed this clean install up to some CD-Rs
using Drive Image ( a godsend that prog !!) .
Then I installed Audigy drivers (full pack) , clicking skip whenever installation said file not found on WIN CD
I,m sure I did everthing right as in the readme, though
it was late in the night and I had just about had enough.
After rebooting I looked in the device manager and the new
driver and game port driver were there and registerd as working
correctly so I tried to boot some of my audio apps , none of
them would boot and each attempt would cause a screen freeze
I then had a look if aything else had installed from
the Audigy pack. There was nothing anywhere , no folders, no
volume cont , no soundfont manager , taskmanager, mixer, vienna, and it had put nothing in add/remove programs."


Regards
Raven

Raven,

You poor soul.

I went through that kind of hell getting rid of my sblive drivers.

Much sympathy.

When my platinum gets replaced sometime this year (when things might be a bit quieter), MIA seems to look a good choice. Any thoughts?

I´m only glad that these APSdrivers, if they come from Creative or not, works excellent on my station after 1hour installing them. That´s most important ( http://come.to/SBLIVE ). But the card they made, is with the right (and cracked) drivers a powerful weapon anyway!

Regarding the support of such fundamental (!) drivers like ASIO, Creative will never be my first choice (if I have the money). In this case you are right .

quote:

---

Originally posted by Michael Kleps from reFX:
The new Audigy drivers use a unified driver model. That means you can officialy install them on the Live! too and you will have the same functionality (with ASIO support) but with less quality (no 24bit/96kHz, since the hardware simply can't do that).

---

Well, Michael, that's not true - at least not "official".

Last Friday you could read a statement of Harvey Fong at the Creative Labs newsgroups:

These drivers are not intended for use with Live! products. Early testing revealed instabilities when used with products from the Live! series. As such, it was decided that this set of drivers would not be the much rumored UDA drivers, nor do we recommend the use of these drivers with Live! series products.

That's really bad news!

Hi guys

This discussion reminds me a bit of the people who buy the best TV, the best VCR, the best DVD... and the cheapest speakers/boxes. In fact there are many people here, who (still) can't afford a 1 GHz CPU with a pro soundcard or something like that, I know. But, follow my advice and in a first step buy a really good card (let's say a RME Digi96, you can't go wrong with it. I got one ) even if it's expensive, and you'll think: "Problems, what problems?". Then buy the rest.

Pepe

totally agree. soundblasters may be okay, but they definetly not the ideal card for audio. spend $50 more and you get a card with real (and supported) low latency asio drivers and stuff.

ok, that one may not have soundfont support and all. but thats what we got VSTIs for these days, isnt it?

I did not find any statement in the press release nor in any forum whether the Audigy still runs fixed at 48 kHz internally or not, I tend to believe it does. If this would be true that would mean the only "96 kHz support" is that you *are able* to play back 96 kHz files, realtime converted to 48 kHz (in a decent quality and without CPU use).

Regarding the unified drivers and ASIO support for the Live, if Creative did not add ASIO support to their Live drivers in the past for what reason would they do that right now when they start selling a new line of cards ?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pepe:
Hi guys

This discussion reminds me a bit of the people who buy the best TV, the best VCR, the best DVD... and the cheapest speakers/boxes. In fact there are many people here, who (still) can't afford a 1 GHz CPU with a pro soundcard or something like that, I know. But, follow my advice and in a first step buy a really good card (let's say a RME Digi96, you can't go wrong with it. I got one

) even if it's expensive, and you'll think: "Problems, what problems?". Then buy the rest.

Pepe

---

Well a Terratec EWX 24/96 isn't bad either, i think. And cheep too.
I rhinking about buying that one... I'm tired of that SBLive! Retail...

i have bought i ewx24/96 and replaced my old sb live and this was a good choice!
with the newest wdm drivers 4ms@48khz solid stable!

have fun
tom

Is this whole 24/96 thing really worth it? I mean for me, my end product is a cd format which is 44khz/16bit anyway. And if you dither it down from 24bits and 96khz you get artifacts and such. So should I also jump on this bandwagon?-)

when i said "solid stable" i mean no realy no dropout's.
i can walk throug menues or browse my disk and there are NO dropout!!! sblive is just a childsTOY it is never realy stable!!!

have fun
tom