Marvel G200 and Soundblaster Live! 1024

[Gary Beaman]

I've just got myself a soundblaster live! 1024 sound card for use with my marvel. It replaces the Yamaha waveforce WF192XG sound card I previously had but I have a problem.
Can anybody tell be how I can duplicate sound coming from the front speakers into the back speakers aswell. On the Yamaha I had speaker out and line out so I could plug the speakers into the speaker connector and the Marvel into the line out. How do other Soundblaster/Marvel users connect their speakers and Marvel to this rather nice soundcard? Please help, thanks

[J1NG]

Hi Gary,

I'm not too sure I follow you here. Your post said you would like to duplicate sound from your front speakers to your back ones? Well, if you're using a speaker setup like the Creative Four Point speaker system, just don't plug in the rear speaker input in the bass unit. That'll duplicate every sound on the front channels to the back two as well.

If you are attempting to follow what is written in the Matrox Marvel manual for setting up with your sound card, then get a Y splitter cable (available in most electronics and audio stores) make sure that they're 3.5mm stereo jacks and sockets. Now, plug in the "Line Out" from the Marvel cable into your "Line In" on your Live! 1024. Now, plug the Y splitter cable into the "Line Out, Front" on the sound card and plug in both the "Line In" from the Marvel cable and your speaker into the Y cable sockets. You can now plug in your rear speakers into the "Line Out, Rear" of your sound card too, for a Four Point speaker setup. This method is what most Sound Blaster Live! and Matrox Marvel owners use.

[Brian Ellis]

Gary

I have the original Live! and I guess it's the same. I have one pair of speakers, so these are connected to the Front speaker jack and the Marvel is connected to the Rear speaker jack. This way, I don't have to crawl behind the computer. I have set up two custom positions in the Live! software, one of which is for recording the sound from the camera, while playing it to the speakers. The other is for playing MJPEG video back from the Marvel to TV and/or VHS, in which it is set up with the Front/Rear volume control set to full rear: that way, the sound goes only to TV. This works fine.

I hope you have disabled SB16 emulation.

------------------
Brian (the terrible)

[Gary Beaman]

Thanks for the advice guys. What I was hoping to do was plug my speakers into the front output and plug the marvel into the rear output. I've fiddled about with the settings but on the rear output I get a reverb effect which I can't seem to switch off. I only have one pair of speakers so have no need for rear ones. I just wondered if there was an easy way to duplicate the front to the rear exactly. I suppose I will have to get a Y-splitter which is a shame as I have a perfectly good output port on the back of the card which will never be used!
Maybe I'm missing something!

Thanks again, Gary

[CarterTG]

The Soundblaster Live Value ($50 usd) I built into the editing machine worked great, but since I couldn't resist occasionally playing games with it's tremendous four-speaker support, there was a lot of computer-case reach-around going on. (unplug Rear Speaker output and replace with feed to video equipment)

I've since moved the Value version to another machine and substituted the <A HREF="http://www.sblive.com/" TARGET="_top">Soundblaster Live X-Gamer</A> ($75 usd). This is the identical hardware to Creative's MP3+ version — Only the software bundle changes. The MP3+ version bundles a juicy <A HREF="http://www.sonicfoundry.com/" TARGET="_top">Sonic Foundry SoundForge XP 4.0</A> and Cakewalk 8.0 lite.

The $25 over the Value version is well spent as the latter two feature an extra jack on the card — digital speaker outputs. (Value only has LineIn, MicIn, FrontOut, RearOut) I plan to replace my analog FourPoint speakers with the digital FourPoint2000 ($100usd). This would leave the analog front & rear jacks free for video equipment.

As for the rear-speaker reverb, go into Environmental Audio and make sure that the No Effects setting truly has the Reverb customized slider set to zero. If that doesn't do the trick, perhaps something got messed up in the advanced Parameters area. I'm using the <A HREF="http://scripts.soundblaster.com/registereddownload/download2.asp" TARGET="_top">LiveWare 3.0</A> drivers.


------------------
Carter
------
Abit BH6 v1.02 ATX motherboard
Celeron 433mhz Slot1
256mb PC100 SDRAM
[C:] IBM 10.1gig 7200rpm UDMA33
[D:] IBM 10.1gig 7200rpm UDMA33
[E:] FastTrak66 RAIDed 2x13.5 7200rpm UDMA66
[F:] 52x CD-ROM
[G:] SanDisk USB CompactFlash reader
Matrox Marvel G200 TV AGP
Canopus DVRaptor PCI
SBLive MP3+ PCI
SohoWare Fast Ethernet PCI
SupraExpress 56k USB
Win98, MSP 5.2
IntelliEye IntelliMouse
Canon L2
Canon XL1