Creative Technology Sound Blaster Live! 5.1

The early sound blaster range which i bought for a friend second hand. Very cheap(£5.00) but still worked great. Full digital 5.1 surround. Some Products never lose their quality. Would highly recommend this product...

I've bought a few of these because they are currently quite cheap for what they do. I like the fact that they ( at least all the ones I've used ) have a handy trait of automatically limiting signal peaks that might otherwise cause digital distortion.

I don't DO surround sound so I've no advice or comments about that. I've recently bought a better sound card for my more 'serious' recording. The SB LIVE is restricted to 16 bit 48k. Audiophiles often criticise it's internal bit rate convertion as producing artefacts but for general mid-fi recording duties it does very well.

Be careful of cards being adevtised as 5.1. Some SB Live! cards in particular are not 5.1 as they don't appear to support center-speaker/subwoofer connection, so what you have is 4.0
Check the model numbers. As a brief guide, models starting with SB are true 5.1 the ones with CT are not.

see this for details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w​iki/Sound_Blaster_Live%21

its old now as soundcards go but still good for basic systems only got it for the extra out puts on the add on card and also wanted cheap as its only to be used as a second unit outputting mp3 only to an amp

there is one of the best sound card you can buy , easy to install and with very good suport. I had one in my old computer but it sounds like a home cinema system.