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| Summary | ||||
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| Parameter | My Opinion |
Mode of Operation | ||
| Full Duplex
Loop Back |
Analog > Digital | Digital > Analog | ||
| Frequency Response | Good | 30-15 KHz +/-0.5 dB | 30-20 KHz +/-0.2 dB | 30-15 KHz +0.1/- 1.1 dB |
| 1 KHz Total Harmonic Distortion | Very Good | 0.01% @ -0.6 dB | 0.002% @ -0.5 dB | 0.002% @ -0.2 dB |
| Signal to Noise Ratio | Very Good | 75 dB | 73 dB | 69 dB |
| 19 & 20 KHz Intermodulation Distortion | Very Good | 0.003% @-3.7 dB | 0.002% @ -0.8 dB | 0.007% @-0.25 dB |
| Dynamic Range | Very Good | 84 dB | 74 dB | 73 dB |
| Jitter Distortion | Very Good | <-90 dB | <-90 dB | <-90 dB |
| Software Used: | Windows95 950B; Driver Release: 4.05.1017 | |||
Technical Tests of Sound Blaster Live! CT4260
Discussion of Results
The analog technical performance of this card in both record and playback modes is quite good, with two areas of concern. There is a slight roll-off of high frequencies, and a fairly strong set of non-jitter spurious responses (the largest was at -38 dB) in playback mode during the jitter tests.
Spurious responses at frequencies that represent jitter distortion were quite low, but these other spurious responses that showed up during the playback jitter tests are high enough to be of some concern if the card is to be used for critical recording applications.
Tests of the digital input of this card have been pretty disturbing. The digital input would not respond to test tones with the in-box drivers. Updating to the .1021 drivers on CL's web site fixed this problem. However, the digital input still seems to get unneeded DSP processing and corrupts sound quality by adding fairly broad 1 dB high peaks around 4 kHz, 10-12 kHz, and 16-20 Khz, with 44 kHz sampling.
The digital output measures 1 dB down at 13.5 KHz, an -3dB at 17 khz, and -15 dB at 20 kHz.
This is atypically bad performance for sound card digital I/O. Please see the 44 and the 48 kHz reports for this card for more information about these situations.
Unlike higher priced cards 24 bit digital I/O is not supported for Windows MCI applications.
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