Creative audio cards - shady business model?

[imported_Com80787]

Is anyone else reading all the tech news site articles about creative labs demanding that a person who released working drivers for Creative cards under Vista stop at once?

I am honestly surprised at the amount of outrage over this.... just because I am surprised people are just figuring this out. It has seemed to me that ever since the Audigy (and possibly even the Live cards) Creatives entire business model has been to release essentially the *same* hardware, but with modified drivers that enable/disable certain features based on what hardware is detected.

Anyone remember the CD check to install Live audio drivers? You had to actually have an original CD to install them. I always suspected this was because should the drivers been installed on a related, but not the same card, all the features of that card would be available on the lower end creative card.

I was convinced that this was the case back when the Audigy cards were around. Once creative released

Audigy 1
Audigy 2
Audigy 4
Audigy 1 gamer edition
Audigy 2 super elite edition
Audigy 4 Pro edition
Audigy 4 your sound card can cook food for you edition

(you get the idea)

I figured something was up. Then on some audiophile sites guess what started popping up? Amazingly DRIVERS that enabled ALL the features of Audigy 4 GODS $500 EDITION suddenly worked on Audigy ONE $50 BASIC edition.

Basically ALL (or perhaps the vast majority) the features that seperated the different cards were SOFTWARE based. You basically paid X dollars more for the better drivers.

Kind of shady right? But you not totally wrong. You know what? If they want to set things up like that fine.

But what REALLY is annoying comes when the flagship CURRENTLY PRODUCED X-fi edition (marketed as being Vista compatible) some how IS NOT vista compatible... and now you need to buy the no doubt up and coming X-fi VISTA Compatible edition.

But surprise what happens? A creative user discovers that amazingly with a few driver tweaks not only can X-fi cards be made to work fine under Vista, but even AUDIGY cards. Funny how that works?

As someone with a comp running Vista with an X-fi card in it, and another comp with an Audigy card in it this annoys me. My hardware is perfectly fine, but creative wants to force me to buy NEW hardware because they intentionally cripple the drivers.

I can understand creatives reason for this. I mean come on? It's a SOUND CARD. You can only evolve it so much before you have to ask as a consumer "Damn, isn't it good enough already? Do I really need X-fi Elite edition when my Audigy 4 does damn near everything?"

No of course not. So creative, no doubt knowing that, must have thought "Gosh maybe if we crippled the drivers and BSed that the hardware just wasn't compatible anymore we could get some more sales".

We are not talking video cards here. There is not a need to upgrade every 1-2 generations. Unfortunately creative is in a rough position because they need the sales but really have no motivation to keep people buying hardware because what they already have should do everything they want.

All I can say is - my opinion - creative needs to get a NEW business model. Stop crippling drivers as a way to get people to upgrade. Instead INNOVATE. Make something NEW that truly I NEED to buy more hardware for and will find worth my money to have. Don't tell me suddenly my perfectly fine hardware doesn't work anymore because all of a sudden the drivers aren't compatible!

 

[Roguestar]

Full article on the register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...eveloper_legal_action/

It's pretty shitty of Creative, if you ask me. I understand they need to avoid setting a precedent of not challenging unauthorised use and distribution of their code, but the least they could do would be to thank the guy, send him a brand new graphics card and send his code back to their own developers to have them take a look at it. If they cared, that is. It just seems from here that they could care less about Vista users as long as they're getting your $$$/£££.

 

[PliotronX]

I wish NVIDIA would buy them out already.

 

[imported_Com80787]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
Full article on the register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...eveloper_legal_action/

It's pretty shitty of Creative, if you ask me. I understand they need to avoid setting a precedent of not challenging unauthorised use and distribution of their code, but the least they could do would be to thank the guy, send him a brand new graphics card and send his code back to their own developers to have them take a look at it. If they cared, that is. It just seems from here that they could care less about Vista users as long as they're getting your $$$/£££.

I think the point is, however, that they wouldn't WANT his code. If you read through his response letter he says that he found evidence they actually WROTE CODE to DISABLE features intentionally. The fact is creative has been intentionally disabling features on vista drivers in order to force people to upgrade to upcoming products. THAT is what freaked Creative out. He found out they were intentionally disabling features to force people to upgrade.

The fact that with a few modifications X-fi XP drivers can work fine on Audigy, or even sound blaster Live hardware on Vista says it all....

 

[Blain]

Intel has actually disabled things on their CPU's... so?
It's their product, they can sell it as they wish. Consumers can either buy it or choose a different option.
Creative isn't the only game in town.

If daniel_k feels that he has a legitimate right to alter drivers for Creative products, he should hire an attorney at march into battle with them.
Maybe a geek-type attorney would take his case Pro Bono for a chance to stick it to the man. :laugh:

 

[imported_Com80787]

Originally posted by: Blain
Intel has actually disabled things on their CPU's... so?
It's their product, they can sell it as they wish. Consumers can either buy it or choose a different option.
Creative isn't the only game in town.

If daniel_k feels that he has a legitimate right to alter drivers for Creative products, he should hire an attorney at march into battle with them.
Maybe geek-type attorney would take his case Pro Bono for a chance to stick it to the man. :laugh:

So you are saying even though *the actual box* SAYS it has these features and even has a sticker ON THE BOX saying "Vista compatible" it is OK for the drivers to intentionally be written to break Vista compaitiblity and disable the features Creative advertises it supports? Features that people PAY good money for that creative SAYS are going to be there and then aren't?

Some people would call that fraud. Consumer protection laws will likely result in a class action suit for this.

 

[Blain]

I'm sure if Creative lost a class action suit against them, they would appeal it.
Then if they lost they would pay any judgement against them.

Creative is in the business of producing and selling products while making a profit.
The last thing that they want to do is alienate their customers.
If they make their customers mad enough to leave, they lose market share as well as profits and maybe even the business itself.
The main issue I see is that customers may not be mad enough to actually leave Creative.
Sure, they will gripe and complain. But at the end of the day they are "hooked" on Creative cards.
If reviewers get fed up with Creative and act accordingly, then the sheep will follow them.
Until that time, the sheep will stay with Creative.

 

[bigsnyder]

I believe a lot of this is blown out of proportion. The modded X-Fi drivers from my findings only enable Dolby Digital live encoding. If there is more to it than that for the X-fi, please post a link.

 

[JackMDS]

I think that what you guys do not understand is that Creative is in the same situation as Iomega was when Drives flash started to get to market.

For few years IOmega was at the top by making top money from the ZIP Drives and overpriced 100MB ZIP disks. Then it was over cause the Flash Drives are bigger, better, and cheaper.

The market for Audio cards get smaller and smaller 96% of End-Users have No use anymore for Audio cards, and frankly most of you do Not have functionally use to it either.

If you need to spend money to be cool what does it matter what exactly a dying product is providing you, get your Coolness anyway. So stop raising your blood pressure in the long run it shortens life.
In the near future the whole thing would disappear the way ZIP drives did, and some small entrepreneur would sell home made cards for even more money targeting the Spend and be Cool crowd (may be the guys from the Killer NIC can be pick up the line ).

 

[imported_Com80787]

Originally posted by: bigsnyder
I believe a lot of this is blown out of proportion. The modded X-Fi drivers from my findings only enable Dolby Digital live encoding. If there is more to it than that for the X-fi, please post a link.

It enables WAY more than that... read this letter from the guy who modded the drivers:

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/...4/daniel_k-who-fi.html

 

[imported_Com80787]

Also this article from X-bit labs on the matter is also interesting

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/m...ows_Vista_Drivers.html

 

[AnitaPeterson]

So... my question is - does anyone here happen to have the full drivers? I'm especially interested in the possibility to use the Crystallizer on a SBLive 5.1... and having DDlive on my X-Fi cards would also be great!

 

[imported_Com80787]

Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson
So... my question is - does anyone here happen to have the full drivers? I'm especially interested in the possibility to use the Crystallizer on a SBLive 5.1... and having DDlive on my X-Fi cards would also be great!

I would do a search on the guys handle from the creative forum.... should eventually pull up some links. According to his letter the crystallizer is in fact 100% SOFTWARE based - he said he even got it to work on non creative cards so you shouldn't have any problem on sblive 5.1 if you manage to find a link to his drivers. Creative is after them though so I wouldn't be surprised if they are deleted from most places.

 

[spikespiegal]

All I can say is - my opinion - creative needs to get a NEW business model

Uh, no. We need more competition in that market segment. End of problem.

Creative cards have always been absurdly over-priced to begin with.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: spikespiegal
Creative cards have always been absurdly over-priced to begin with.

I remember trying like crazy to avoid buying a Creative Soundblaster card. The first "standard" PC gaming sound card was the AdLib, made by a Canadian company. It worked fine.

Creative then brought out their "SoundBlaster", with some nice features, but a $100-more price tag over the AdLib. I tried avoiding this by buying a Thunderboard, which was a SoundBlaster clone. It was much cheaper, but had mono sound (rather than stereo), and had a LOT of noise.

Ever tried playing DOOM in mono? It sucks when you hear a monster, but can't tell which direction it's coming from. I put up with it for a couple of years, but finally sucumbed to Creative's rising monopoly on sound cards.

Frankly, I've always found Creative's cards functional and of good quality. And EVERYTHING had drivers for it. I never got into EAX and such, so I stuck mostly with a bunch of SoundBlaster Live 5.1 cards that I bought several years ago. And, since then, I've gone completely to onboard sound.

From my limited X-Fi exposure, it appears to be a hardware and driver disaster, and now with Vista, I think I'll wait......Maybe I'll pick up a new sound card next decade.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: RebateMongerMaybe I'll pick up a new sound card next decade.

I doubt that there will be any in less than a decade.

 

[Rankor]

B/c I use notebooks w/their on-board sound exclusively, add-in sound cards have gone the way of the dodo for me. My last (sb) was the Audigy 2; my very first one was an sb value 16 with proprietary ide header for a panasonic 2x cd-rom drive (circa 1994). I've had sb cards in all my (desktop) systems since.

Not really missing them, though.

 

[olmer]

Old news. I remember Dell charging Mr Consumer Simpleton £17 for a Creative Sound Blaster HD (software) for their Dimension 5-910/50 lineup where the same drivers enabling the same functionality were available to download for free on their support site section. I was thinking of making a few £££s then ?selling? the mod but thought better of it ? was not worth my clear conscience.

I personally do not use Audigy in my main pc to save energy (24/7 as well as to improve airflow in a pretty cramped case) as frankly I can hear no difference with both Beyers DT 250 80 Ohm or Logitech?s Z2300 whatever i choose to listen to with the onboard. But as mentioned above the step up from mono beeper to SB 16 WE edition (with expandable memory up to 64MB i think) was freking huge then easily warranting £70 - so well done, creative, for pioneering and shame for the current low attempts to sell not needed old hw still making that kind of ridiculous profit.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: olmer
Old news. I remember Dell charging Mr Consumer Simpleton £17 for a Creative Sound Blaster HD (software) for their Dimension 5-910/50 lineup where the same drivers enabling the same functionality were available to download for free on their support site section. I was thinking of making a few £££s then ?selling? the mod but thought better of it ? was not worth my clear conscience.

that download was demo and it wouldn't work without activation and SN# that you get from Creative.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

Originally posted by: Com80787

Originally posted by: Blain
Intel has actually disabled things on their CPU's... so?
It's their product, they can sell it as they wish. Consumers can either buy it or choose a different option.
Creative isn't the only game in town.

If daniel_k feels that he has a legitimate right to alter drivers for Creative products, he should hire an attorney at march into battle with them.
Maybe geek-type attorney would take his case Pro Bono for a chance to stick it to the man. :laugh:

So you are saying even though *the actual box* SAYS it has these features and even has a sticker ON THE BOX saying "Vista compatible" it is OK for the drivers to intentionally be written to break Vista compaitiblity and disable the features Creative advertises it supports? Features that people PAY good money for that creative SAYS are going to be there and then aren't?

Some people would call that fraud. Consumer protection laws will likely result in a class action suit for this.

so what youre saying is x-fi cards do not work in vista at all, as in no sound comes out when its installed?

Creative can do whatever they want with their drivers and/or cards, its still up to the people to buy them or not. if you're an angry customer, then maybe u should look into other audio solutions.. Creative isn't the only one out there ya know:roll:

motherboard companies do the same thing...
" Memory Supported: 8gb, Memory Standard: DDR2 1066"
pretty sure less than 10% of the people with this board can get 4 x 2gb of DDR2 1066 ram running at that speed. so should Gigabyte be sued herehere too?

 

[Nathelion]

I've never bought a sound card in my life and even I know that Creative is a company to stay away from.

Seriously, who buys these things???

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: Nathelion
I've never bought a sound card in my life and even I know that Creative is a company to stay away from.

Seriously, who buys these things???

That's like saying...
"With onboard video, why would people spend $200+ on a single card, much less two in SLI?"

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: Blain

Originally posted by: Nathelion
I've never bought a sound card in my life and even I know that Creative is a company to stay away from.

Seriously, who buys these things???

That's like saying...
"With onboard video, why would people spend $200+ on a single card, much less two in SLI?"

The Visual perception part of the nervous system works differently than the Auditory part.

While a None text the Visual Stimulus enhancement suitable to enhance human Visual perception most of the Auditory stimuli to do not really gain from the extra provided by the ad-ons.

In many cases it is just a Volume gain that can be achieved easily by other less expensive means.

Wasting money does not change the laws of physics and NeuroCognition.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Nathelion
I've never bought a sound card in my life and even I know that Creative is a company to stay away from.

Seriously, who buys these things???

Folks that play more than MP3s.

Mobo audio has been notorious for not having enough guts to do heavy lifting. Onboard 5.1 could not meet the requirements of my video editor and would rapidly get out of sync with video during capture operations. The Audigy 2 ZS Gamer can do it and has a firewire port that is TI based.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: gsellis The Audigy 2 ZS Gamer can do it and has a firewire port that is TI based.

It perfectly OK, you have a specific need and you are using a piece of hardware to help you.

But this is Not the case with all the ?Yahoos and Hurrahs? crowd.