De mannen van t-break hebben een review in elkaar gezet over de nieuwe Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital Entertainment. Deze geluidskaart heeft alle features van de normale Sound Blaster Live!, maar voegt hier ook nog eens een 6 kanaalsuitgang aan toe. Hiermee is het dus mogelijk om te genieten van Dolby Digital 5.1 geluid zonder daarvoor een dure Dolby Digital decoder voor aan te schaffen. Deze kaart heeft dus al het goede van de SB Live! en nog een beetje meer, en is volgens de reviewer bijna een perfecte geluidskaart:
The newest member to the Live family has just made me respect Creative all the more. Everything about the Live 5.1 DE the package- from the card to the software is great. I had no problems whatsoever installing it and the new features worked very well. The Dolby Decoding and 5.1 output was excellent. While none of the included games make use of AC-3, they did sound a lot better on my home theatre system with EAX than they did on my standard 4.1 speakers. This was not even possible before because I simply couldn’t hook up the older Live! to my home theatre set. In the future when games do make use of AC3 the Live 5.1 will truly excel. The included manual is very detailed and will make it very easy for novice users to setup and enjoy their new hardware. A microphone is also included in this package so you can actually use Mediaring or mess around with sound recording and EAX. While a speaker set addition to the package would be nice it would probably put up the price a good bit.
The original Live series was the king of the hill and the newest editions take it a step further. Your investment is further protected since Creative frequently updates their driver. EAX as an audio API is also doing great. Creative has been updating EAX and anything new will be available to Live owners, again, in the form of a driver update. If you want the absolute best with a remote control and the Live Drive look to the Live Platinum 5.1 (review coming soon). However if you don’t need Live Drive and want the next best thing the Live 5.1 DE is your card.