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Egotomb: Any sound card which was made in the last 15 years will utilize DMA therefore not needing to tax the CPU, BUT the sound hardware is only half of the equation the other side is Windows scheduling and drivers, if either of those don't pull their weight then your going to have problems
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Miaghstir: And any software using DirectSound under Vista or 7 will completely disregard the audio hardware, again laying all work on the CPU. But that's a completely different problem, "easily" solved through developers using other audio APIs instead (like OpenAL).
Most of the functionality is still there is direct audio only the sound card manufacturer has to do a little software bridging(driver) at the end to instruct it's hardware, it makes sense that competing manufacturers deal with this rather than Microsoft. It's intention is not for sound to be CPU driven, but you are correct in that still creates a little more overhead.
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KingofGnG: So I came to a conclusion: Sound Blaster Live! is a shitty, flawed card. Indeed, I think every damn sound board made by Creative after the Sound Blaster 16 isn't worth the money, jeez....
I wouldn’t be so harsh for Creative…They can do fine hardware – it’s their support/drivers/marketing what is poor.. Examples:
- Live!, Audigy, X-Fi – are good cards…but with Creative you can never be sure if you buy “real” Live!/Audigy/X-Fi just because it has Live!/Audigy/X-Fi in it's name (like Audigy LS)
- if you try to find Win98 drivers for Audigy 2 ZS – you will get no results on their site – of course such drivers exist on installation disc – but you will not find such CDs on their site as well
- Daniel_K case is just ridiculous

All in all.. to my case: I’ll mark your post as solution. Thanks for your help.(especially for link to your site with Creative boot disc)