3DsoundSurge: LiveWare 2.0 Overview

Live!Ware 2.0 Overview - Last revised on: 3/6/ 99

Table of Contents

On May 13th with great fanfare Creative Labs launched Live!Ware 2.0. According to Creative, the Live!Ware Upgrade Program is designed to offer new features, enhancements and software to Sound Blaster Live! and Sound Blaster Live! Value owners and is possible in part due to the re-programmable nature of the EMU10K1 audio processing chip used in the Sound Blaster Live! family of cards. Before I unwillingly restart an old battle, let me clarify that the 10K1 is not a general purpose DSP. It is a highly specialized audio DSP that is very good at what it does and that's process sound. As we mentioned in a past edition of the Week in Review, the release did not go off very well. This was nothing to do with the quality of the new drivers. It was a result of the Creative Labs severs being swamped with downloads directly as a result of Creative not setting up official mirrors in a similar manner to other software companies such as id for the Quake3Test and other big releases. This led to many frustrated users. We set up a download links page on 3DsoundSurge and in just a couple of days over 6,000 people tried to access the files in that manner.

This is not intended to be an editorial on Live!Ware but I do feel that it's important to point out one more thing before we get into the meat of what makes up Live!Ware 2.0. The point is much of what's on the official Live!Ware 2.0 site appears to be more like marketing targeted at users that haven't bought a Live card yet rather than good info for current LiveWare 1.0 users wondering what they get in the upgrade. Why do I say this? Well if you take a look at Creative's LiveWare 2.0 at a glance you will see that the following features are shown as not available "without Live!Ware 2.0:

32 Accelerated 3D Voices

Front/Back Balance Slider

512 voice software MIDI synth

Environment/Speaker setup import/export feature.

Live! Surround

Effects Auditioning

Frequency Shifter Effect

over 1000 new instruments

Vienna SoundFont Studio 2.3

Dual processor support in NT 4.0

The fact is all of these features have been available for some time through prior web-updates. It's not that Creative is trying to say otherwise as the Readme file that comes with the Live!Ware 2.0 release has a very nice breakdown of what was added when. The point is that Live!Ware 2.0 is a cumulative release that rolls up all the upgrades since the release of the Live! and adds some new features and the Live!Ware 2.0 at a glance page will certainly confuse many current Live owners that already use LiveWare 1.0.

In this review we are going to focus on the new features. Note that this is not to take anything away from the many nice upgrades listed above that have occurred in various driver releases since the launch of the SB Live. So what's really new in Live!Ware 2.0? I am going to work through the feature list, saving the gaming features for last. For each new feature, I will offer a brief opinion on the value added of the feature. When we get to the subjective 3D audio tests I tag team with Mikael Hagen so we can offer a broader perspective. So with no further adieu, we present the real new features of Live!Ware 2.0.

Live!Ware 2.0 Overview - Last revised on: 3/6/ 99