Sound Card: Creative Labs Audigy Review :: Introduction

The "Sound Blaster" by Creative Labs was the first ever serious sound solution.

It is still there and kicking and has been for decades now. About 8 years ago to have a nice soundcard was very exciting but now it is ridiculous if you do not have one in your system. At that time, playing "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" with sound was something to hear. Now we can't think of playing any game without sound, including "Minesweeper" a Windows basic game.

It was first the shift from 8 bit soundcards to 16 bit soundcards. Of course they were not PCI cards because that was a new thing at that time. Other good old ISA Sound Blaster cards followed. There was the AWE32 and then the more popular AWE64.

The acquisition of well-known musical instrument company E-mu empowered Creative with its sound processors at 1993. In 1998 Creative swallowed its well-known competitor Ensoniq. In August 1998 they came up with Live! series of products! The product was not ready or stable when originally released as we mentioned but it was ahead of its time. The Creative Liveware 3.0 software made the Live! Soundcard more stable and armed it with many additional features.