The unassuming little orange-blue box fixes you with its steady gaze, endeavouring to incite a kind of Pandoric longing within you to open it and to, as it proclaims proudly on its back, “Just Plug and Play!”

But unfortunately, just like the melancholic tale from Grecian antiquity, it is a box of disappointments.

A Versatile Pandora’s Box

A portable, USB sound card touting one of 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 mediocrity. Compatibility issues plague the user right from the start and 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 do any favours for its user-friendliness.

The USB (United Serial Bus) sound card has two jacks, one for a 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 USB card directly into their PC or laptop’s USB port. Stereo Speakers can also be used, by just plugging the line out into the headphone jack of the audio card.

The package includes an installation CD containing three programs, the Sound Blaster Play! drivers and easy-access control panels for customisation of your volume and gives better audio fidelity and other sound effects, Creative MediaSource, and Creative ALchemy, a program that optimises sound effects like surround sound and crisper environmental effects in over 400 games that support the Creative EAX Advanced HD audio technology.

That’s quite a lot of bread to chew.

For one, the software demands a total of 600MB (MegaBytes) of hard disk space to settle in. 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. Also, the Creative ALchemy gaming audio software doesn’t support the Windows XP, giving only its exclusive benefits to Windows Vista users only instead. This is sure-fire way to get Windows XP aficionados fuming at this outrage. The lengthy installation and registration process also doesn’t help matters

One merit that UrbanWire did find out the wide range of pc game titles that the device supports with its Creative EAX technology, in this respect, Creative does not discriminate. Old favourites like Illusion Softworks’s 2002 game, Mafia to the Creative Assembly’s most recent work, Medieval II: Kingdoms, the list consists of a diverse mix of the old and new.

Verdict

For all the other innovative and cutting-edge products lines that Creative has released through the years, Creative’s Sound Blaster Play! USB soundcard certainly doesn’t cut the S$29.00 price tag.

True Gaming audiophiles and music lovers might just want to invest the moolah into a more powerful internal sound card, or simply a better pair of ear phones.