Creative Labs 70SB049000000 USB SoundBlaster Live 24-Bit External Sound Card

It's now about six months that I am using it, and I really like it!

There has been much griping about the lack of Vista drivers for this product and deservedly so. Keep in mind, this is an older product from Creative Labs, but they have finally provided updated drivers for Vista that lets you take full advantage of what this little box has to offer.

My main use of our laptop is watching online movies through Netflix hooked up to our big screen HDTV, and the included sound card has an analog out jack that also comes with some low-level noise (yuck). I was straining to understand the words. Luckily, this box has not one, but TWO SPDIF out jacks, optical or coaxial which I can hook into our stereo and get some very nice surround sound. No more hum.

Being quite familiar with Creative Labs products, I was happy to see the basic same interface included that comes with my X-Fi Platinum card. It is a little bit more simplified, but most of the software is there and it serves the job quite nicely.

The line-in jack works decently enough, but be warned that you need to pre-amp some things to get any decent kind of sound. But the line-in jack is not the reason I got this box.

It's a great upgrade of sound from the usual notebook cards, especially with the digital outputs. It's especially economical if you have a low-end notebook and get annoyed with the tinny sound they tend to produce.

I had a very specific use for this card, and it failed miserably.

I am a musician and I wanted to be able to record music from my synth to my laptop. (My laptop, needless to say, doesn't have a line-in, which was the whole point of my purchasing the USB Soundblaster Live!) My synth was plugged into the line-in of the sound card, but guess what? No sound. After much frustration from trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, and installing, uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers found both on the CD and from the support site, a quick search online revealed a common issue with the USB Soundblaster Live!: the line-in requires the use of a pre-amp.

Admittedly, most people will want this card for better sound for their games and music, so this issue probably won't matter to them. But if you have any intention of using the line-in, please save yourself a terrible headache and avoid this card.

Personally, I'm returning mine tomorrow.

I bought this product to process sound for my laptop (desktop replacement). It does the job admirably. However, I have an old audiophile amp and speakers and wanted to use it as a media ampliphier for the main side channels, but I couldn't find a dolby processor. This little box fills that need too. So I am now working on integrating it into my home media plans. If testing works as well as I anticipate, I will be using another one for the media processor.

It can create 'crackling and popping' noise when used with some nVidia boards. That is a known problem extensively discussed on Creative website, but I didn't know until I bought this..