The UrbanWire

The little, unassuming orange-blue box fixes you with its steady gaze, trying to evoke a Pandora’s Box yearning within you to open it and “Just Plug and Play!” it.

But unfortunately, just like the mythological Grecian antiquity, it’s a box of disappointments.

A Versatile Pandora’s Box

For a USB (Universal Serial Bus) sound card touting the latest in Creative’s audio technology -the Creative EAX (Environmental Audio Extensions) Advanced HD, the Sound Blaster Play! is riddled with compatibility problems and pure mediocrity.

Compatibility issues plague the user right from the start. The inability of the Sound Blaster Play! software to detect its own hardware on both the Windows XP and Windows Vista OS (Operating System) doesn’t add much to its credit rating by way of user-friendliness.

The USB sound card has 2 jacks, one for headphones and another for a microphone, so users can use the sound card for VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) chat by just plugging in their headsets and mic out line and then sticking the device directly into their computer’s USB port.

Users can even use stereo speakers in place of their headphones.

The package comes with an installation CD containing 3 applications:
1. The Sound Blaster Play! drivers and easy-access control panels that allow you to customise your volume and give you better audio fidelity and more sound effects
2. Creative MediaSource, which allows the user to rip music and clean up unwanted noise and flaws in existing audio files with the Audio Clean-up technology and
3. Creative ALchemy, a program that optimises sound effects like surround sound and produces crisper environmental effects in over 400 games that support the Creative EAX Advanced HD audio technology.

A suite like that is a hard act to follow.

Unfortunately, competitors don’t have much to worry about, because it’s an act Creative hasn’t quite mastered. The software demands 600MB of hard disk space to sit on. Not exactly unreasonable if it weren’t for the negligible difference in audio fidelity between listening to CDs without the Creative Sound Blaster Play! sound card and with it. This display of mediocrity was all the more ironic because UrbanWire reviewed the set on a PC with a bottom-rung 3-year-old integrated audio sound card.

Also, the Creative ALchemy gaming audio software can’t run on Windows XP, making its benefits exclusive to Windows Vista users. UrbanWire predicts that many Windows XP aficionados will be left fuming at this outrage. The lengthy installation and registration process also don’t earn it any brownie points either.

One merit of the Creative Soundblaster Play! that we did find was the wide range of PC game titles that the device supports with its Creative EAX technology. Thankfully, in this aspect, Creative doesn’t discriminate. From old favourites like Illusion Softworks’s 2002 classic Mafia, to the Creative Assembly’s most recent work, Medieval II: Kingdoms they’re listed in the diverse mix of old and new games that Creative EAX supports.

Verdict

Considering all the other innovative and cutting-edge product lines that Creative has released through the years, Creative’s Sound Blaster Play! USB sound card certainly doesn’t warrant the $29 price tag.

Gaming audiophiles and music lovers might want to invest their moolah in a more powerful internal sound card, or simply a better pair of earphones.