When I listen to them side by side, the S/PDIF rip sounds like its missing a little something. But it sounds cleaner to my ears and I prefer it over the straight up rip. I know I shouldn't like it more (if I understand the argument made against the Live!), but I do. It seems to favor highs a wee bit more and to my ears that is a good thing. Or my ears are just not picking up on its lows as much as the straight rip, which leaves the S/PDIF recording a bit less muddled to my hearing.
Back in the day I hated Creative for how they killed Aureal off via lawsuits without merit. I didnt have much of a choice though and ended up replacing my Aureal SQ2500 with a SB Live! on a new build. I learned to like it for gaming, as I bought the version with the yellow digital out jack and a set of Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 speakers to go with it. I still have them and the card (though they are tucked away right now). I even liked the setup for watching DVD's at the rig while I was working. Wasn't the best virtual surround, but it was pretty clean sounding, and was small enough to stay out of the way. I guess for serious audio work or a real HTPC, the Live! is pretty lame and for those who bought it based on adds for those reasons, I would agree they have a right to be angry with the card. But for late era Win 9X and early XP games, its not a bad card (at least with the right speakers).
I've been debating what hardware to use on a new PIII Win 9X build and I keep coming back to the Live! and FPS2000 combo as lead contender. The other two options are:
1. My Diamond MX300 (with a quality GM DB of course), paired with a decent modern 2.1 speaker set and quality headset for surround.
2. My Gullimot MaxiSound with optical TOS-LINK out to an old Pioneer 500 watt receiver driving a pair of monitors.
The MaxiSound has a real OPL3 for FM in DOS, and XG. It also has the ability to run EAX 1.0 and A3D 1.0 via software (on a PIII-S 1.4 GHz, thats not much of a drain). I just don't have the room to have the receiver, the studio monitors, the 2.1 speakers, and the headset for running multiple cards. So its needs to be paired down to one card. I already have way to many rigs running way to many screens and speaker setups as well as classic consoles. Slowly my x86 PC collection is pushing out my other computers and consoles from the 70's and 80's. I have to start trimming it down a bit.
Sorry to ask this in your thread Phil, but since Cloudschatze brought up the Live! quality I had to see what his opinion on the matter would be. I know you have played around with some of the stuff I mentioned above and others have too. I'd be happy to hear any thoughts on the matter. Rebuilding multiple times to to comparisons on all three setups is a bit of a pain and well educated opinions on the hardware could save me time and effort.