Audigy 2 ZS v Sound Blaster Live DE 5.1

I thought the problem was mainly with the SBLive 4.1
and not with the SBLive 5.1.

I'm not the only guy who hangs out there, but I'm probably the guy you're
thinking of.

I'm always ready and willing to go look at evidence, but whenever I have,
it has always turned out to be based on misunderstanding and such. That
the SBLive hogs the bus is a webrumour fueled in large part by:

1. More trouble reports for the SBLive because there are so many more
CL cards than other brands out there.
2. Blame based on where the symptom comes from with no causal understanding.
3. Blame based on the assumption that if one has a problem it's universal.

At least that's what I've always found.

[Confusion of symptom and cause right here]

If bus-related, there would be some other device in the system that was
the hog.

The CL cards are more sensitive than the others because they also use the
bus for synth data and delay loops. Such symptoms are a knee-of-the-curve
thing, where they only start after some threshhold is reached. If the
SBLive is over the edge of the cliff on the same system, the others may
only be teetering on the brink. It is unlikely your system was identical
except for the SBLive and SBAudigy2; symptoms due to bus hogging are due
to some other device in the system being a hog, keeping the soundcard
from getting the data it needs in time. I've certainly heard reports
of other soundcards being so affected, including the SC.

I still have a Live! in a system with an Ultra160 SCSI controller running
2 15,000 RPM disks and other stuff on it. No such audio problems. What
is your diagnosis?

-Dave

Aren't you the guy that usually hangs out on the Creative news server?
I can find all kinds of info on the web about the Live! hogging the
PCI bus bit I've got better things to do. But I will tell you this, I
had a Live! and it caused stuttering in a number of games during
certain situations. I have since owned a Santa Cruz, FortissimoII and
Audigy2, none of them exhibited this problem. What is your diagnosis?

The SBLive does not hog the PCI bus.

-Dave

Yes, the Audigy2 is the lowest CPU resource hungry soundcard on the
market. The SB Live! hogs the PCI bus so I would definitely dump it.
If you want a stellar card for music then consider the M-Audio
Revolution. All reviews say it is slightly better for music listening
than the Audigy2, but it has no directsound hardware acceleration so
for games it eats up more cpu resources. Anywhere from a few FPS up to
about ten fps, depending on the game and how it does sound.