Sound Blaster

[corso64]

I'd like to add my 2 cents, for what it's worth.  I also have been a loyal customer since ISA days, and still work with large companies who ask 'Will this multimedia product work with our systems?'.  This is the last Creative product I will ever purchase and have stopped recommending your products period.  I just registered so you could be aware of my concerns and post my comments. 

Vista has been out for over a year now, Vista SP1 is out, XP SP3 is around the corner, and Creative?  You're *STILL* whining about your agreements with other companies?  You guys are the ones who rolled over for Mickeysoft, and anyone else with an ax to grind - not us.  Threatened ligitigation may make the board and your retainer fees seem worth it, but at the risk of alienating your customer base?

Your products still stink under Vista and you are attacking your own loyal customer base in response to your own inability to write drivers worth anything.  You might still carry the Creative name, but you are 'Creative' in only a few things:  justifying mediocrity, maintaining the status quo, lowering the lowest common denominator, managing expectations, shooting the messengers, and blaming your customers.  Yeah, that's how you secure future revenue - lowering the bar - on everyone.  Good bye Creative - Good Luck.

[flxstr]

Thanks Slashdot for the heads up.  Since I'm just designing a new theatre system, this is a fantastic heads up on which sound card company to avoid!!!  Their policy is the same as HP's printer policy, which is anti-user, forced obsolecense.

Creative -> your VP of 'Corporate Communications' needs to be hit in the head with a shovel.  If that's the 'best' your Corporate Communications VP can do, you're in serious trouble.  Damage control is needed, and this bloke isn't up to the job.  A classic example of 'how not' to talk to your customers.

Users -> Can we start a list of good 'alternatives' to the Creative product, for users who need to avoid 'pain'? 

[Vincois]

Bye bye CREATIVE.. All the products I own of yours are going into the trash. I was a long time user and your performance over the last few years has been in decline IMO. 

To Daniel_K, I hope you get your do. I applaud your efforts and wish you the best of luck. 

[shambolic]

Just dropped by to add my bit. after what I've read here I'm dumping my X-fi and doubt very much whether I will return to creative's product anytime in the near future. If they are this incompetent in terms of driver design AND publicity, best to keep well clear!

[shadowmatt]

My mail filter just defined the registration email from creative as Junk...

Anyways remember the days of old, pre Win 95 (or around that time) when Creative was the best option for sound cards. Every game struggled with sound, dos setups etc... but the Creative cards always worked and usually were more supported than any other card on the consumer market.

Indy4 and the fate of atlantis with speech, still puts a smile on my face.

What went wrong? Surly if Daniel_K and fix the drivers then Creative can. If not, why dont you Americans start a class action for badly supported products that dont work as advertised.

[pcguru]

I just registered to say that I lost faith in Creative back in the SB Live 5.1-era where I couldn't install your drivers without the original CD, which I obviously didn't keep track of. Why would I want to install the drivers if I didn't have the soundcard. What was the purpose of that annoying CD check? Here's the deal for you: drivers, drivers, drivers, support, support, support. When will you learn?

And about EAX. It's one of the worst technologies available. If you continue to try to dominate the market with obsolete technology you will soon find out that it is no longer in use and that noone buys your products. Actually that might not be such a bad outcome anyway.

Let me remind you of some other mistakes:

Creative Pressures id Software With Patents 

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/28/1529222 

Creative sues Aureal Semiconductor and it's superior A3D sound engine

http://www.answers.com/topic/a3d

A3D was doing more interesting things to game sound libraries in 1998 than you were doing until EAX Advanced HD in 2001. They had wavetracing - the generation of realistic sound through direct sound, indirect sound etc. But no you had to sue them, force them into bankruptcy and then incorporate the technology so you could continue pushing out the inferior closed EAX stuff you were working on so that all consumers of the world would have to buy your cards. Smart move then, silly move in hindsight. Consumers like competition.

Googeling "creative soundcard sue" gives some 10'000 pages and it's quite clear that Creative is successful in the IP-market. Well here's a newsflash for you. I despise companies that rely on legal battles to conquer smaller opponents and companies that lie to me about their products capabilities. And I'm not alone.  Do something about your attitude Creative. Work with open standards for more impressive sound libraries. Create soundcard drivers that can do impressive room corrections in realtime on all channels to give us better sound. Software is cheap. Processor power is abundant. Improve the state of the soundcard business instead of trying to squash your competition and dominate the market. If you make the best products we will buy. If you don't, continuing to defend your positions be legal force will continue to give dwindling results. Just my five cents.

[Durzel]

I don't usually bother posting rants on forums because usually when people say "I will never buy from company X again!" it's just a hollow threat.  I also haven't got any time for online petitions as they never achieve anything.

The above said - I'm not going to be buying another Creative sound card again.

I bought an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum a few years ago, along with a Cambridge Soundworks DTT3500 5.1 speaker system, both of these have served me well to date.  I don't believe in replacing hardware "just cos" when there is no justification for it.

When the X-Fi came out I was hugely disappointed to find out that Creative had effectively obsoleted the DTT3500 speakers by changing the protocol for the digital DIN port.  There was apparently no logical reason for Creative to do this, and the net result simply was that the DTT3500 speaker set would not work with X-Fi cards, if I wanted 5.1+ sound I would have to buy a newer set of speakers (Gigaworks no doubt).  This change annoyed a lot of DTT3500 owners as it seemed like Creative had changed the digital DIN output for no other reason than to deliberately obsolete the older speaker system and force users to upgrade.

Since I had no intention of paying £hundreds for a new speaker system when my DTT3500 set worked perfectly fine (not to mention that my Audigy card did everything I needed it to) I carried on using my Audigy card when I switched to Vista.  Like most people I soon found out that the Creative Vista drivers were buggy, and it wasn't long before Creative stopped providing Vista driver updates completely.

Then I found Daniel_K's drivers, which fixed a whole host of problems for me and also provided features that were apparently impossible to provide on Audigy soundcards.  Let's not forget - Daniel_K isn't even a Creative employee, he's hasn't got access to the source driver code, etc.  The fact he was able to achieve what he did is hugely impressive.

I had assumed that Creative turned a blind eye to this, maybe they figured that they didn't want to commit resources to developing drivers for older cards anymore.  I can live with that, I wouldn't expect Microsoft to be providing updates for XP in 2015.  What doesn't sit well with me is threads like this because they show categorically that the problem Creative has with Daniel_K is not that he is infringing copyright (which he isn't), it's that he is providing functionality that Creative has deliberately omitted from their Audigy Vista drivers, or has flat out lied about whether features were even possible on the Audigy cards.

This single thread proves that Creative just cares about their bottom line - they want people to upgrade their hardware simply because they want to milk more money from their consumers.  They could provide the functionality Daniel_K has enabled in his modded drivers themselves, and probably more besides (since they have direct access to the source), but they choose not to because they don't want users to be able to carry on using "old" hardware like Audigy cards.

I am disgusted by Creatives attitude to their consumer base.  There is NOTHING wrong with my Audigy soundcard, and there is NOTHING wrong with my DTT3500 speaker system.  I will be damned if I am going to pay Creative £hundreds to upgrade to whatever their current "supported" gen is simply because they refuse to provide functionality, or worse still - will only provide deliberately crippled or buggy drivers to older cards.  This is a disgusting business practice.

Creative will never seen a penny from me again, and that's not a hollow threat believe me.

Message Edited by Durzel on 03-29-2008 07:58 AM

[KimberKlr]

My feelings exactly.

I've been buying creative products since i started building my own pc's back in the sb16 days.

I've also used them in most my customer builds.

Well after this little stunt i can clearly say i won't be using your products anymore.

So i guess I'll add you to my boycott list right next to Sony and HP. I use to be a Sony fanboy also, but after the "rootkits" scandel i haven't bought a single product from them.

But lets face it, Creative hasn't released anything "creative" in years anyway.

Good bye, my money will be spent elsewhere.

Message Edited by KimberKlr on 03-29-2008 08:02 AM

[romhaus]

Thanks for clearing this up. That attitude is exactly what will influence my business decision and that of many others: not to do business with you any more and to recommend to my friends and business partners to not do business with you either. I am thankful to Daniel_K for his help and thankful to you to help me make my decision and put your products where I should have put them some time ago: the trash.

Thank you and good day. 

[Asmarak]

So long Creative.  Another customer lost.