The Platinum's powerful EMU10K1 digital signal processor (DSP) chip provides hardware acceleration for DirectSound and DirectSound 3D games, programs that use Creative's EAX 3D-audio technology, and a broad range of real-time effects that include reverb, chorus, pitch shifting and ring modulation. The DSP also serves as a powerful MIDI synthesizer chip that offers 64 hardware and 1,024 software voices, 128 GM/GS-compatible instruments, 48 MIDI channels and 32MB of rewriteable wavetable sample memory. It had no problem playing complex orchestral MIDI files arranged with more than 48 voices, and the board's bundled Creative PlayCenter 2 application ripped MP3 and WMA files at speeds far greater than real-time and at sampling rates as high as 320Kbps.
Our one beef was the board's limited hardcopy documentation. Despite a robust online Help facility, the printed manual covers little more than setup procedures and hardware specifications. Figuring out how to use some of the handheld remote's less intuitive features or how to configure the board for multi-channel output sometimes required a trial-and-error effort.
In addition to a generous selection of accessories, that includes a microphone, audio and data cables, batteries for the handheld remote, and even a power-cable splitter for the Live! Drive, the Platinum 5.1 ships with a huge array of Creative application software, control panels and toolbars, media players, demos, utilities, and games. The package includes offerings as diverse as an onscreen virtual guitar, Internet telephony software, a music-visualisation program, a MiniDisc/DAT recorder, graphical mixers, karaoke software, a text reader, and several voice-navigation applications. More robust applications include Steinberg's powerful Cubasis VST MIDI/audio sequencer, ReCycle rhythm composer and WaveLab soundfile editor, as well as the latest version of Creative's Vienna SoundFont Studio, which lets you create your own MIDI wavetable instruments and organise them into downloadable banks. If all this is not enough, Creative also throws in tens of megabytes of pre-defined MIDI instruments, as well as popular games like Infogrames' Unreal Tournament and Eidos' Thief II and Deus Ex.
If all this isn't enough, Creative also supports the Platinum 5.1 with the company's Live!Ware continuous upgrade program, which lets you download free driver and DSP upgrades that add features and support for new standards.
We were knocked out by the Platinum 5.1. It is one of the most powerful and flexible sound cards ever released for the Windows platform. Learning to take full advantage of all its features may require a bit of effort. Nevertheless, it is nice to know that they are there.
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1
Product Information:Creative Labs
Company: Harvey Norman
Ph: 02 96629830
Price: AU$499
16%
7%
Great under Windows, hopeless under Linux. You can't capture ANY of the front panel inputs, only rear panel, and neither panel will record. Yeah, I know, I should have investigated it before I bought it, but at least I can warn others.