Image credit: Kronach Fotos via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
The Sound Blaster Live! isn’t the neatest answer to any one retro-audio problem, but it’s hard to ignore. It was everywhere in late-90s and early-2000s Windows PCs, it still turns up for pocket change, and it keeps becoming relevant again whenever a later PCI system gets pushed into DOS territory.
What it is
A late-1990s PCI sound card from Creative, built around the EMU10K1. It was one of the most common Windows gaming upgrades of its day. Today it’s interesting in two roles: a period-correct Windows 98/XP card, and a target device for SBEMU on machines too modern for real DOS audio.
My take
For Windows 98 and XP it’s an easy pick — common, cheap, well supported. For DOS it depends what you’re doing:
- for straightforward native DOS audio I’d reach for a Yamaha YMF724 instead — it’s cleaner and more predictable across a range of hardware
SBINIT.COMcan coax the Live! into working in DOS, but the result varies a lot with the host platform- on a machine that’s simply too new for native DOS sound, SBEMU can emulate Sound Blaster audio through the Live! and get a lot of DOS games running anyway — which is the main reason to keep one around now
Pros
- everywhere, and cheap
- a strong Windows 98 and XP card
- works as an SBEMU target on modern PCI machines
Cons
- not a first choice for clean native DOS audio
- DOS behaviour depends heavily on the host platform
