In Conclusion

When using the SB Live! over the AWE32 and when working with files recorded into    your computer, you have an improvement of around 8.40dB of usable dynamic range to a very respectable background noise level of -86.40dB.

The maximum difference in performance is in the levels of noise generated by the MIDI synths and this is also the most dramatic improvement of the new EMU 10K1 chip over the old 8000 series.  The Live plays Soundfonts on a background hiss-level of -93.40dB.   The AWE32 on the other hand belts out the white noise as if it were part of the font at -76.90dB..... a difference of 16.50dB.

How does it sound?

I set Cakewalk in motion  playing a variety of MIDI files and then proceeded to change ports between all of the devices installed on my system. 

The ports are

• SB Live! with 2MB, 4MB and 8MB Fonts
• Awe32 with ROM sounds and also the old 8MB EMU
  and a couple of 8MB GM fonts of the web.
• Yamaha DB50XG
• Creative PCI Wavesynth on the SB Live!
• Creative FM synth on the Awe

I've heard dozens of pianos now and pretty much all of those are perfectly decent.  Only the Awe ROM falls down badly when playing outside of the centre four octaves.  I have yet to find a better dance piano than the Electric Grand of the XG.   There are stereo Pianos in the new fonts for the SB Live! that are also nice.

I will attempt to rate each port in relation to the others and then on its own merits.

The XG has fantastic acoustic drums.  The best of this lot for sure.  I'm a bit tired of the 808 kit though it's all tuneable in the XG so you can really mess with the sounds.  Most of the other GM presets are overly saturated with reverb and chorus from the otherwise Excellent internal effects units.  This makes for nice sounding presets when played on their own, but when you set it up to play an entire orchestra, it becomes far too rich and mushy.  Again, all of this can be changed manually, but then again, you probably won't bother.

The SB Live! has much drier presets in the new GM fonts, though they are a nice improvement on the old EMU banks.   The drums are vastly better than the Awe32's and only let down by clicky, wooden kicks.  Almost all of the other presets have been tweaked and improved to the point where the 8MB Live sounds like a completely different unit from the Awe with the old 8MB EMU GM font.  This is in no small part also due to the rather excellent new effects built in to the SB Live!.
Some of the demo wrk files on the Demo CD sound bloody marvellous on the Live! and only pretty good on the XG and the Awe32.  I notice however that if I hit the All Effects Off button on the SB Live! controller, it immediately sounds thin and dry again.   The effects units of these cards have a lot to answer for as the XG also loses a lot of its depth when they are removed.

The Awe ROM sounds are completely dry and thin sounding.  It is however surprising  how usable these sounds are for solo instruments in dance tracks though.  Some of the simplest instruments can cut straight through a rich mix and take on a whole new quality when compared with how they sound on their own.

With the 8MB EMU GM font, the Awe vastly improves the upper and lower ranges of most presets as well as adding better drums and new sound effects.  Very usable, but a little boring and the XG tends to win out in the battle especially when it comes to reverberated and chorused sounds.

The Creative PCI Wavetable synth is a strange thing indeed.  It doesn't offer any editable sounds at all and it seems to load sounds on the fly into system RAM when they are needed.  It offers 192 note polyphony and Creative has said they will be increasing this to over 500 or so.  It wouldn't be news if the sounds are going to be crap, but they aren't.  If anything, they sound quite rich like the XG, yet don't have quite the range or the punch.  They are set a bit quiet when compared to the GM fonts on the Live!  This may be improved upon in later drivers.   It's a strange feeling to be flipping through over a hundred sounds and not even know where they are or what's actually playing them.
Unlike a conventional softsynth in the vein of the Awe64's Wavesynth, this one doesn't place a fixed load on the CPU.  That's why I'm guessing that it loads presets on the fly when it needs them.  Where are they held until needed?  I have no idea.
Presumably they are part of the Audio HQ installation process.  I'll have a look around my drive and see if I can spot them somewhere.

The FM synth on the Awe32 is a lot of fun.  For about five minutes anyway.... or as long as it takes you to remember playing Doom for the first time on a PC with a SoundBlaster.  I'm sure someone will flame me, but I really have little use for this small corner of backward compatibility.   It sounds thin and dry and buzzy.  Just as it should.  Good then.

And What do I think about the card?

This card has some very desirable features for musicians. 

• The ability to output digital data at 48KHz to a DAT for mastering
  your CD is as good as it gets.
• A very large and very quiet sampler and sample player.  (It can
  use up to half of your system RAM to store Soundfonts, but it can
  only play up to 32MB of the data at a given point in time.)
• I think Soundfonts are one of the best sample formats around.
• It has real hardware MIDI ports
• It has a top notch Reverb and Chorus unit built-in
• It can handle full duplex in hardware at up to 48KHz
• It's very very cheap for what it can do

It does have some shortcomings too.

• It's a SoundBlaster.
• It won't hold your Yamaha DB50XG daughterboard
• It won't do 96KHz (there will be complaints about this on the Usenet
  .... wait for it.)

There are also some things that are not clear as yet.

• Will we be able to directly address the hardware audio streams
  from applications like Cakewalk and Cubase?
• What range do the filters have?
• Can we address the extra effects via SYSEX or MIDI Controllers?
• When do I get my top-ten hit album?
• When do we get an ASIO driver for VST? (we never got one for the AWE)
• How about Studioware layouts for Cakewalk?
• And an Environment for Logic
• And Mixermaps for VST again.

Most of these things took years to happen or never did eventuate at all for the Awe series cards.  There's a good chance we'll have to wait a long time again for similar products for the Live.  Yamaha have done the right thing and are releasing a full set of maps and panels for VST and Cakewalk with the new XG1000 and the DSP Factory.   Creative seem more concerned with 3D sound than anything else.

Other good bits about the card that don't matter to musicians.

• It's a PCI card and in theory doesn't slow your system as much as the AWE
• It's a SoundBlaster and is thus the do-it-all sound-centre of your PC.
• The Environmental sound has huge potential for games
• It has true 3D sound with 4 speakers as opposed to surround sound which is no such thing at all. (see comment below)

And finally, what problems are people having with the card?

• Crackles and pops largely relating to overzealous video card drivers.
• Crackles and pops relating to hard disk busmastering.
• Some exsisting Fonts are not loading or sound slightly different.
• Mixer applet defaults to a different setting on power up.

On the subject of true 3D sound, I have a few things to say.

I have set up the card to use four speakers and am very happy with the results, but as far as I can tell, there's nothing 3D about it at all.  The four speakers are able to make a sound come from any point around you as long as it is on the plane that the speakers lie on. 
That plane, however,  is two dimensional.  A three dimensional system would place sound sources all around you including above and below you.  I realised this while standing on a wall in Unreal and watching someone walk past below me.  His footsteps still sounded like they were on a plane next to me, not below me.

All this makes perfect sense of course, but I'm surprised that manufacturers persist with the 3D misnomer when it is clearly and audibly not representing a 3D space.

Would I recommend you buy this card?

Yes, if you want high quality sound but don't need a large number of balanced inputs and outputs.  Yes, if you can't afford to buy a Yamaha DSP plus the matching XG1000 synth.  And yes, if you need digital I/O for musical purposes like mastering.   Yes, if you like Soundfonts. Yes, if you are starting off in PC music. Can't really think of any reason not to.

Yes, if you have lots and lots and lots of money.  Get something real fun instead like a Mac with Pro-Tools and then still buy one of these for your PC to play games on.

Read about the other EMU10K1 based soundcard.

Yes folks, the EMU Audio Production Studio is out and is a somewhat more expensive version of a card based around the EMU10K1 chip targeted at the musician end of the soundcard market.  Seeing as that's supposed to be us, check out this Usenet post by an early purchaser of the card.

Hope you found this write-up helpful and informative. 

Any comments to me.

I don't vouch for the accuracy of anything I've written here.
It is entirely my own opinion and may be fraught with mistakes and misinformation.