Creative not very innovative...They should get the boot!!!

[CaptAce]

--Warning Begining Rant--
I've never been too impressed with Creative's lack of customer respect, and this article makes me think that they aren't doing anything to change that image...
How new is the Sound Blaster Audigy?
The article basically states that the EMU 10K2 chip that powers the Audigy might(emphasis on the might) be nothing more than a SB Live! chip with IEEE 1394 support!!!

If this is the case, what are they doing selling the Audigy cards for so much $$$???? Furthermore what are us enthusiasts doing supporting them and their poor driver/tech support by buying it??? (Myself included ) I'm frustrated by the lack of innovation Creative has demonstrated in their Audigy....Sure the IEEE 1394 port is GREAT, and it certainly is a higher quality card than the SB Live!, but with 3 years in between the two I am starting to wonder whether they have lost focus on us consumers?

Remember 3dfx? They made great stuff too, but that same attitude toward consumers eventually got them entrenched in their own arrogance and they went under...At the risk of being a pessimist, I hope Creative has a similar fate!!

Maybe I am whiner and a complainer but I would like to suggest that some other company, ie nVidia, ATI, VIA, or those already in the sound cound industry like Phillips or Turtle Beach really take a stab at producing a sound product that is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest... I mean I want a super tricked out sound processing chip with a built in two way radio or somethin!!!...Thats just an example but it would be cool cause then I could call up buzz my dorm buddies when I want to go eat with them!! Maybe the competition would inspire Creative to do something more than beat around the bush for 3 years while milking consumers for every dime they have...

Yeah I know Im a crybaby but I look at the strength of the vid card industry and I see healthy competition and innovation from both ATI and nVidia, some of their products can get expensive, but they continue to support the customer AFTER the purchase. The same could probably be said for AMD and Intel. The bottom line is those companies have earned my trust....Sorry Creative but if the rumors are true, you have lost mine!
--End Rant--

 

[jwo7777777]

Mark my words....

hardware voice recognition and computer speech

It will herald a breakthrough in the way we work, be an evolutionary step in the way we play, and will frustrate the bejeesus out of us for some time.

 

[nortexoid]

what's new? - do they need to be innovative? - doesn't seem like it.

they're raking in the bucks....also, they sell MORE than soundcards.

 

[Passions]

you're a chump if you think voice recognition is going to change the world. HAH! that's what other chumps like you have been saying for decades. don't worry, there are others who believe the same thing, they are hollywood producers. :disgust:

 

[rickn]

it definitely is not the same silicon as the emu10k1. The silicon is certainly bigger (read: more transistors). The Firewire chip is not even on the emu10k2, it is a separate TI chip. Just sounds like more creative bashing to me. I've never had a problem with creative products since the original Sound Blaster Pro. I've owned the SB16 + roland daughterboard, then the Live, and now the Audigy

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

They can afford not to be innovative. They litigate their competition into the ground and buy up whatever's left.

 

[Snoop]

<< what's new? - do they need to be innovative? - doesn't seem like it.
they're raking in the bucks....also, they sell MORE than soundcards.
>>


Exactly, Creative has maintained a stranglehold on the consumer level soundcard market ever since they sued Aureal out of bussiness.

It really makes me sick that almost THREE years ago, aureal was about to release the SQ-3500 with A3d 3.0 support, which would kick the she!t out of everthing Creative offered then and now.

 

[rickn]

Aureal went out of bizness because they were run by a bunch of crooks, the same crooks that ran MediaVision into the ground. Creative just bought up the left-overs.

 

[nortexoid]

rick, partially true...aureal had some extremely poor management, but what was the point of creative suing them again?...

they knew the situation aureal woudl be in if they did sue them - namely, a very bad one, so they sued them, then bought the leftover...

dirty - would u do it?...i wouldn't...bastards.

terratec is coming out w/ some sick soundcards now tho...even ones far better than the audigy platinum series for roughly the same price.

the Herc. GTXP is ok, but it's nto really a consumer/prosumer recording card and from what i've heard, its got some flaky driver support.

 

[Snoop]

I really hope someone in the near future can push creative, and get a foothold in the soundcard market. Nvidia comes to mind, but they just seem to be stalling out with their integrated nforce chipset and sound solution. Just look at what competition has done for the videocard market. In three years we went from voodoo banshee's and ati xpert's to Geforce 4's and Radeon 8500's, yet in the same time, Creative has given us, well..... live->audigy (not much of a jump IMO) and no real replacement to the ancient, but far superior, A3D postional sound.

 

[The Sauce]

I agree, they last time they did anything somewhat innovative was EAX, which really was just a half-assed response to Aureal's truly innovative A3D technology...something they only implemented to keep market-share and show that they actually could keep up. Otherwise Creative is just a slug, content to keep technology stagnant as long as they monopolize the market.

 

[human2k]

I don't know about you guys, but the onboard AC-97 audio on my shuttle Ak31A sounds really tight with apps such as Word XP( the beeps sound so realistic) and excel xp!

 

[Dennis Travis]

Like Rickn I have been using Sound Blasters since the very first SB Mono card came out followed by the Pro and 16 and AWE32/64 and PCI 128 and the Live. I have not had a problem with any of them including 100's that I have installed in other peoples systems. So as far as their cards being reliable I have had no problems what so ever. Sure today there are other sound cards with as good or maybe even better performance but overall the Creative Sound Blaster still is a very good soundcard.

I'm sure I will be bashed for sticking up for the Sound Blaster but that is the breaks.

 

[sandorski]

Yup, I agree. I replaced my Aureal SQ2500 with an Audigy Gamer and all seemed fine with a noticeable sound quality improvement. Then I decided to dump Win98SE for WinXP. Suddenly the audio in one of my games(Viper Racing) is all messed up and I get popping and fuzziness now and again. This has been an issue for 3-4 years now and it's still not fixed?! CLs will not get anymore money from me.

 

[CaptAce]

Don't get me wrong folks, even though I am critical of Creative, I didn't say I didn't like my Audigy, quite the contrary, I just feel like for the investment that people like yourselves and I have made in their products time and time again we deserve a little more than one half ass product every 3 years...just my opinion

 

[Mem]

<< This is a juicy but totally unsubstantiated rumor I'm about to share with you, so beware >>




That says it all,I`ve had a SB sound cards since the old DOS days anyway never had any problems with their cards even in gaming which include the SB Audigy.At the end of the day it`s still a rumour until it`s confirmed so no point debating this.I heard a rumour I`m going to win the lottery this weekend .

 

[HaVoC]

There's no doubt the soundcard consumer market was harmed when Aureal went under. The new Audigy! does not offer me enough functionality to warrant upgrading.

I'd like to see more features such as hardware DD 5.1 encoding (so you can use a digital connection to an external decoder), hardware MP3 decoding AND encoding, and more advanced HTRF functionality. I remember Half-Life sounded so good with A3D 2.0. Still haven't found a modern FPS that matches that sound experience.

 

[ssanches]

I really hate Creative for their shoddy support and lack of driver updates. Folks have to wait months on end for newer drivers. What's the point of cutting edge Hardware if it's not properly supported with good drivers??

 

[HendrixFan]

Ive never quite understood the heat Creative gets from so many people here. Unlike Microsoft, for example, there is nothing that keeps competitors out of the sound card market. The reason Creative has maintained such a stranglehold on the market since the Live! came out is because they put out the best cards. Its that simple.

As far as comparing the "innovation" to Nvidia, that is a poor choice. Whenever I help build a computer for someone, I tell them up front, "you dont need a big powerful computer unless you are one of two people: a gamer, or a person using it as a workstation". People are buying games (and therefore video cards) to get the next and greatest. Games have advanced far, from the graphics of Quake to the upcoming Unreal II. There has been alot of room for improvement, more realistic 3D fields and better lighting/visual quality. When Quake came out, computers could play CD audio, which for all intents and purposes is about all most anyone would ever need. From there you really hit the point of diminishing returns with each improvement.

Lets look further at that. Right now 16 bit 44.1khz uncompressed CD audio is a standard, as is MP3, a compressed form of the same audio. 24 bit 96khz uncompressed, or compressed audio is the next step, if DVD audio ever comes out. Ive heard 24 bit audio (under my system specs you can see I have the Audiophile 2496), and it does help with clarity and accuracy, but the gains are very minimal. Youd need good speakers to be able to tell the difference. By good I dont mean $30 sets, but Im not saying you need a $2000 HT setup either. Just something "good".

The other way in which soundcards can improve would be through multiple speakers. Surround sound gaming and movies have been around since the Live! cards. The new EAX2 is supposed to be good, and Im sure much of the improvements found in it are from Creative finally starting to integrate Aureal's technology into theirs. But how much of that depends on game developers supporting the new formats? Personally, I think the 4 channel gaming is much more immersive than the 5.1 DD on DVDs. But what is wrong with EAX2? Sound quality, seperation?

With DVDs, they can start to support DD6.1, but that offers little gain over 5.1. I mean, if you mix the audio well, there is no need for a center channel. Most consumers still dont have a 5.1 setup anyway, even if they decide to add more speaker support (which as I said is kind of meaningless).

Then you get to hardware MP3 encoding and decoding, DD hardware decoding and encoding. Personally, with the different MP3 codecs out there, Id hate to have to use Creative's. I use LAME for encoding, and I use the MAD MP3 plugin for winamp. They do offer hardware MP3 though, for those that want to use it. I do see the advantage of having a hardware DD encoder, like the Nforce does. At the same time, that encourages people to move away from the computer for their audio needs, instead of moving towards it. I see that as a form of regression really.

Bottom line is, there isnt too much more headroom for innovation in the sound card arena. Most consumers dont even utilize everything in front of them right now. Creative puts out quality cards, thats why people continue to buy them. And when you have a near monopoly level of market share, of course problems will be amplified, there are more opportunities for that. There are other choices out there, use them if you like.

 

[kgraeme]

<< Ive never quite understood the heat Creative gets from so many people here. Unlike Microsoft, for example, there is nothing that keeps competitors out of the sound card market. The reason Creative has maintained such a stranglehold on the market since the Live! came out is because they put out the best cards. Its that simple. >>



So where's Aureal? Oh yeah, bought up by Creative who has shelved their superior technology.

Creative makes okay sound cards. But they aren't any better than, say, Turtle Beach. The difference is marketing. Creative has it, Turtle Beach doesn't. That is why Creative is successful.

And the reason why a lot of people aren't pleased with Creative is because they really do have pretty crappy drivers that they don't update for over three years. And then there was the 686B/Soundblaster issue. Not Creative's fault, but many of us who own motherboards with a 686B southbridge simply can't run a Live! card. Fortunately, there are superior alternatives.

 

[AA0]

Creative made the Live! card, which was amazing for its time, the 5.1 was not innovative, and the Audigy has less improvements then the 5.1. I have completely switched off of live cards because of their extremely poor drivers, the fact that they don't offer decent web support, their customer service stinks, and they are expensive.

The only reason they have a hold on the market is the Live! series, much like intel and the P1s. Many vendors I talk to don't even know something other then Creative exists, when I want a Santa Cruz, they just say "a what?".

 

[HendrixFan]

I find it strange that on one hand you have people blaming Creative for the VIA issue, and on the other you have people blaming VIA. Since the problem (AFAIK) doesnt exist with Creative and any other chipset, and the Live cards came before the VIA chipset, I think the blame would have to lie with VIA. Im not sure what Creative could do to solve the situation.

It doesnt matter if Creative bought up Aureal, somebody else would have. They were about to go out of business because of poor management. I wouldnt say the superior technology has been shelved either. It would make no sense for Creative to do so, the best way to make use of the expense of purchasing the company would be to infuse the technology with theirs. Much like Nvidia is in the process of doing with 3Dfx.

The live 5.1 cards only offered a center channel over the regular live cards, hardly more improvements than you see with the Audigy. The Audigy's strengths are the improved sound quality and lower CPU utilization. The best reason to buy Creative cards is the price, you can get a live card for around $25, which is good enough for just about anyone. The Audigy is the next step up for only $60. Then you start getting into prosumer level cards, then pro cards.

If any other company was to put out a card that would show itself to be clearly superior to the Audigy in anyway, it would sell well. No one has delivered. At best you can call some other manufacturer a "subjective" winner. Thats just not good enough.

 

[zzzz]

I am hoping nvidia will go into retail audio card business.

 

[FuManStan]

First, the rumors about the Audigy being little more than a Live are totally wrong. The chinese site that started the rumor came to the conclusion because they were able to install Audigy drivers on a Livecard and make it work. Before the Audigy was released, we heard rumors of Creative trying to create unified drivers that would work on both sound cards, and there was even a release floating around the net that could do it. Therefore i think the rumors is little more than this. Especially since reviewers have talked about the Audigy sounding better than the Live.

As far as Creative in general, i've had no problems with them at all, and even dropped my MX300 for the Live Value for the drivers. I've had no issues with Windows XP since XP was in betas and release candidates. I think there's definatly an issue with driver support, but is it that much worse than the Voodoo 5 being too long to fit with some motherboards, the Nvidia infinite loop bug, Geforce4 boards in Epox motherboards? The sound card market isn't much like the video card market where's its incredibly difficult to come out with a card that can compete with Nvidia, considering even a large company like ATI has its troubles. It seems like a strong sound card can make a big splash with better marketing

 

[AA0]

the rumors were not started by a chinese site, its started by just seeing the card features and improvements.

The problems that happen with VIA chipsets and Live cards are not limited to only VIA chipsets, thats just a misconception. All but one problem happens on other chipsets, the HD problem is with VIA. It is a creative driver problem, VIA had to rewrite theirs because creative is too stuborn to change theirs, just look at their record for driver updates.