Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum

Lights, Camera, Action! was the cry of the

Garage band formed by three employees, from Creative Technologies, as they put on their

first show using their latest sound card–the Sound Blaster Live! Platinum. Within

minutes, they created their own album using the card’s bundled software. This

included the audio file in MP3 format, and a 3D visual animation created by a hot new

feature called Lava! (Live Audio Visual Animation).

The new card is packed with a lot of new

features. This includes the Creative Live! Drive, which can be inserted into a 5.25”

drive bay. It has connectors for microphone, headphones, MIDI, digital input/output, etc,

in front of your PC. Jacks for speakers are still on the sound card itself. The card

supports environmental audio just like its sibling, the Sound Blaster Live! This lets you

add a lot of realistic sound effects, such as concert hall, tunnel, etc.

The bundled software is quite impressive, and

includes the Creative Digital Audio Center to handle all your audio files. You can use

this to encode, decode, and archive MP3 files. Another software, Creative Media Ring Talk,

lets you chat with anyone on the Internet, or over the telephone. You can also change your

voice in real time.

LAVA! is basically a utility that associate 3D

animations to your MP3 music. It has a number of in-built animation sequences. You can

import images such as your band logo, album art and band members’ photograph to form

a 3D video collage rendered in real-time.



The card’s yet to be launched in India and so its price has not yet been fixed.
However, an estimated street price of $199.99 has been tagged. For details go to href="http://www.creative.com">www.creative.com.