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.