OK, this is getting ridiculous, iMic points out this shit like it's obvious (and it should be). I have been working with these cards since the ISA versions and I cannot believe I was too stupid to try this out with an original PCI PC Sound Blaster in the past. This would have saved the day when I was selling extremely low end DAWs to poor musicians that could not afford any of our stock configurations. Again, iMic, this is so logical, so awesome, and so absolutely obvious, that I am at a loss for words... I guess,
Long Live King iMic should cover it.
It will be interesting to test the many various flavors of the "Sound Blaster Live"
The Dell Sound Blaster live did not have the full capabilities of the retail versions. It used a different audio chip, not EMU10K1 but EMU10K1X, that is noticeably smaller with fewer pins. The chip does not accelerate DirectSound in hardware, nor EAX. The sale of this board by Dell created some controversy because it was not obviously marketed as an inferior or cheaper product. The card can be identified by its part number (SB0200/0203).
So as iMic pointed out with his post, I would avoid the Dell version and there are tons of them around so be careful, Make sure the card you get does not have SB0200 or SB0203 on it
The Live! Value (also known as Live! 1024) is identical to the full Live! with the exception that it has color-coded plastic connectors instead of gold and does not include the extended digital I/O card. The original Sound Blaster Live! had a proprietary 9-pin mini-DIN connector for digital output that Creative referred to as the "Mini Din." This connector allowed the use of a microphone and digital speakers at the same time. This cannot be done with the value and base models of all subsequent Creative sound cards, as they share a single port for S/PDIF digital in/output and microphone connectivity. The Mini-DIN connection was not included in any subsequent Sound Blaster product, however owners of speaker systems that use this as the only digital input may buy an adapter from Creative.
Plastic connectors, just plain suck (and break), so even though the Value line will work according to iMic... the original is so dirt cheap, maybe even free in some cases, that I would recommend tracking down an original.
