Sound Blaster Digital Music

Bored with the on board sound of your PC or notebook? Just get this external sound blaster. It connects via USB and has truckloads of features. It can be strapped to your PC using the Velcro stick-on or carried around easily with your notebook using a clip since it is very light at 115

gms. 

It is the entry-level cousin of the Sound Blaster Extigy. This is not a professional quality device, and can suffice most peoples' everyday music needs combined with the software-controlled features. 

It gave good results in all tests, with low noise levels and virtually no stereo cross-talk. The Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) was about 0.0041%, which is acceptable. T

We tested it with the recommended Creative I-Trigue 2.1 speaker system, and it sounded quite good in subjective listening tests. It supports bit-accurate recording from digital audio players like mini-disk or DAT players through the SPDIF input. This basically means that it can record from a digital device without any loss of information. 

The device is not a 5.1 channel decoder in itself, but can be used to connect to an external 5.1 channel decoder through the SPDIF connector while playing DVDs .

Software-controlled features include bass boost, 10-band graphic equalizer, virtual surround sound and effects with 16 audio environment presets. 

S N   A   P   S   H O   T
Price	:	Rs 3,999
Key Specs	:	SPDIF connect, light and handy
Contact	:	Creative, Mumbai.
Tel	:	9820357713.
E-mail	:	rajshekhar_bhatt@ctl.creative.com

There's also smart volume management for giving constant volume from MP3s encoded at different levels. Another interesting feature is that it removes unwanted clicks and pops from the music . If you want to play around with your music, it comes with a time scaling feature that makes the music play a little slower or faster without the change in pitch . All these features are offered through software. 

Geetaj Channana