Creative Technology Sound Blaster® Live! 24-bit External

This external soundcard is great if you aren't happy with the onboard sound from your laptop or PC. It self-installs under XP which is handy, but I'm not sure about Vista compatability; there may be drivers on the Creative website. It seems to be "hot-swappable" too so you can disconnect/reconnect it without having to turn off the computer. It includes a remote control which is useful, especially if combined with a Media Center PC.

There's a multitude of ports available on the device: Mic in, line in and line out (headphones) as regular 3.5mm jacks; three 3.5mm line outs for analog connection to 5.1 speakers (Creative's own range of speakers tend to use this) as well as S/PDIF out and Optical out. The inclusion of both these digital ports allow you to connect to a huge range of speaker systems in surround sound.

The device can up-mix stereo channels to surround sound by CMSS (Creative MultiSpeaker Surround) which is good for mp3s etc. EAX is also available for games which support it, giving a more realistic surround sound experience.

My only hesitation in buying this product would be that it is still a Sound Blaster model. It'd be nice to see an Audigy or X-Fi external card in the future.

To conclude: the device performs extremely well and definitely worth the money.

In Simple terms its worth the cost. It's cheap and external and provides really good quality output. I needed this for my laptop and to connect to an external 5.1 system and take the video into my plasma and make it a media centre. This fit the deal and creative are just the best for it. It comes with its own remote and gets you all the functions of even controlling other applications in your system with it. Could even be tuned for your pc-tv. with just remote i can use my comp literally from anywhere in the room for my media centre.

Problems- the three output on its back isnt too specific cause the one named centre tries to play music through my sub connection. Not always does the sound gets synchronised. But its a lame problem apart from that the sound card is really nice and sweet

This Sound Card from Creative provides fantastic 5.1 surround sound quality, as well as utilising the EAX sound effects by creative which enhance the sound substantially. The remote control is useful, although the only downside is that you have to use it with creative's own media program and it cannot be used with iTunes / Windows Media Player. Connection-wise, the sound card has the 3 channels used by 5.1, line in, spdif out, DIN, Optical out, mic in and phones. It also has volume controls for sound and microphone input on the front. All in all a very good piece of kit, and if you are lucky you can pick a new one up on ebay for about £20-25.

Does exactly what it says on the box
Damn good external sound card
WARNING!
Regardless of what any sellers may claim when selling this unit without the installation cd, you can NOT get the drivers free from the creative website. You can ONLY get updates.