questions regarding to SB Live !

G

gilwe

New member
I was checking for buying the SB Live Value, cuse I need some way to play sound fonts.

I noticed it can use only a maximum of 32Mb for each font-set loaded into it (is it right?)

Will this be a big limitation ? Are there more than 32Mb of RAM needed for playing most of hi-quality sound fonts ?

I don't was to compensate of the sound font qualiy and be able to play the highest quality of avaliable sound fonts (mostly to get from the web).

Additionally , if you got any other comments regarding to this product I will be happy to hear.

Thanks in advance !
 
I believe the newer drivers allow the use of system memory for soundfonts and therefore bypass the internal limitation of the card; there are some large high-quality soundfonts out there on the web (hope you have a high-speed connection!)

Besides, most high-end synths have less than half this amount of sample memory; the quality will only be limited by the output quality of the card itself.
 
That 32MB is your system RAM. The SBLive! has no onboard RAM, unlike the older AWE64Gold, which I use.

Well, it might have two or four megs. I'm not positive about that. The Audigy may be able to address more of your system memory, but as far as I know, SoundFont is a proprietary sample format - so Creative cards are all you're going to be able to use for it.
 
I believe you can use half of your total RAM for soundfonts......anyone?....anyone?......Bueler?....
 
Okay, I looked it up.

The Audigy Platinum EX can address up to 1 GB (Wow) of your RAM. But, the Live! Platinum can only address up to 32MB.
 
Oh, and will the 32MB be a limitation? It might be. But on the other hand, I'm able to do pretty well with only 4MB. It depends on how you manage your soundfonts.
 
I believe you can use half of your total RAM for soundfonts......anyone?....anyone?......Bueler?....

With SB Live that is the correct answer!!

Hippo
 
I'm not a heavy digital playback user, I'm using analog recorders and need the SF capability only to be able to play only very few tracks at the same time, but need to be able to use the highest sample quality of SFs.

Will that 32Mb be enough or should I get another SB card with which I can use more RAM ?

Secondly, are the Creative cards the only that support sound fonts ?
 
I'm pretty sure that the soundfont format was invented by either Creatlve Labs or E-mu (which Creative now owns).

Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that one, but as far as I know you're going to need a Sound Blaster.

The Sound Blaster Live!, which can address up to 32MB of RAM, can be had for as low as $25.

Wow, but I'm seeing OEM Audigy cards at Pricewatch for $59. On the other hand, Creative wants $199 for the Audigy Platinum or $249.99 for the Audigy Platinum EX, if you buy direct. I wonder what the differences are, other than the breakout box. I have a distrust of OEM components, I have to admit.

In my opinion, it's going to be tough for you to run up against the 32MB limit of the Live!. That being said, it's the Audigy that I'm lusting after...
 
Well, can the (standard, 59$) Audigy use more than 32 Mb RAM ?
What other features does it have that the "Live" doesn''t ?
 
Many software synths can open SoundFont files. There's a DXi (DirectX instrument) one called LiveSynth, a demo version of which comes with SONAR, the only app that currently supports DXi.

Otherwise it's gotta be a Creative card... I thought Terratec supported SoundFonts too but maybe that was short-lived...

Also, are you sure about the 32 MB limit? I thought the limit was 1/2 of available RAM. I have several Sound Fonts that are well over 32 MB and they play just fine.

32MB was the limit when the AWE cards were out - that was the max. physical memory those cards could hold. The limit went away with the Live card and use of system RAM, I thought...
 
I've personally had 64 Meg of sound fonts loaded on an SB Live. That was half the system memory (at the time). This was while loading full GM banks for just a couple of the samples from each. You can trim this down significantly by just pulling the samples out of the bank (Vienna Studio?) and then just loading the sound font that you like.

And don't make the mistake of thinking that a larger sample is going to guarantee the best sound. Crap recorded at a higher sample and frequency rate... still sounds like crap. Don't get me wrong... a good, multi-layered sample is going to take some space, but I've found the samples that are average in size are generally better than the extremes (humongous or tiny). There's a real art to building these fonts, and the masters know how to maximize the sonic quality while minimizing the memory footprint.

What attracts me to the Audigy is the 24 bit internal sample rate, although you can't move out of the card (Analog or SPDIF) at anything better than 16 bit (Not quite sure about that bit, specs are a bit gray in that area) , I think it will support 24 bit sound fonts through the bus (to the hard drive) then you can use a true 24/48 card to send it out of the machine.

Thanks,

Steve
 
Great points, MOFO Pro...

On my system I have 256 MB of RAM so I have set my static RAM cache for the Live to be about 96 MB or so -- it can easily hold my largest Sound Font and a couple of smaller ones that way... and some of my favorites are small as hell.
 
So, is the Live capable of using more than 32Mb RAM or not ?...


Another thing -

I noticed that when auditioning SFs with AWAVE (software), the result is then times better sounding than when playing them with using SFs with "Virtual Sampler" for example... Will the SBLive play the SFs in their best quality ??
 
gilwe said:
So, is the Live capable of using more than 32Mb RAM or not ?...
Click to expand...

Yes, it can address some amount of RAM to a limit I haven't reached yet. Currently, I've got 63M in my SoundFont cache, and it works like a champ.
 
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