What's wrong with CREATIVE?

[Brian48]

Originally posted by: PerfeK
They don't make great sound cards. They just pressure those in the game industry to include "Creative exclusive features" like EAX. Chaintech has a much better DAC.

The wolfsen WM8728 DAC used by the Chaintech only applies to two channels. The Via VT1616 used for the surround channels is certainly not anything to write home about. Your audio quality takes dip when you have more than 2 speakers.

Also, if you ignore the crappy VIA DACs and just took the Wolfsen into consideration, it's true that it is superior to the DACs used by most lower end Creative cards, but it is not superior to the Cirrus Logic 4832 used by the original A2 and A2 ZS on up. They're both very comparable.

 

[biostud]

Unified non bloated drivers?

It shouldn't be that hard when all the cards are so similar.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Compare the features of a Live with an Audigy 2 ZS, supposedly "3 generations" newer. Pretty much the same except for newer drivers.

That's just plain wrong. A quick snippet from Creative's website:

The design of Audigy was a major improvement over the Live! with a 2x increase in the dedicated effects processing unit, major optimization of the overall effects processing architecture and added 24-bit ADVANCED HD? capabilities. The 2x increase in the dedicated effects and tank processing unit and the major optimization in the architecture yielded a 4x improvement in overall effects processing capabilities without a huge increase in required MIPs processing. These changes provided the ability to run 4 simultaneous effects (3 high quality reverbs and 1 other high quality effect) that delivered the EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0 standard versus just 1 effect on the Live! (1 high quality reverb) that delivered the EAX 2.0 standard. The other addition of the 24-bit ADVANCED HD engine allowed 24-bit playback and recording versus 16-bit with the Live!.

Just because your MP3s don't magically sound better it doesn't mean the cards haven't changed.

Wasn't the supposed 24-bitness of the Audigy1 just the internal precision?
Correct me if I'm wrong, which I may very well be since I never owned an Audigy1.

 

[StormRider]

My main complaint is their drivers for their sound cards. They require you to have the original CD and it's very combersome and confusing to try to make sure you have the latest set of drivers. I go on their site and they have lots of patches and files. And it looks like you have to install the earlier stuff before you install the later stuff. Why can't they have 1 file to download and just double click it to install the newest drivers?

 

[jpeyton]

Other things to ponder:

Doom 3 had a software sound encoding scheme that would make the game sound similar through all sound cards (a cheap $20 card, or a $200 Audigy4). Creative wouldn't stand for this so they made a licensing deal with iD so the next Doom-Engine based game contains a EAX profile so they could claim the game would sound better with their sound cards.

And who the hell needs 200MB drivers nowadays? VIA Envy sound cards have 20MB drivers and they sound great.

 

[Markfw]

Well, I sent in a $20 rebate, all properly documented and everything with the original UPC. Denied by Creative since (if you read the fine print, never seen this before) you had to send in the ENTIRE box flap that wouldn't even fit in a letter.

B.S. Never buying from those a$$holes again for any reason.

 

[Praytus]

Not to mention Creative's CEO is an American hating pig.

 

[StormRider]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
Well, I sent in a $20 rebate, all properly documented and everything with the original UPC. Denied by Creative since (if you read the fine print, never seen this before) you had to send in the ENTIRE box flap that wouldn't even fit in a letter.

B.S. Never buying from those a$$holes again for any reason.

Heh, I remember that. I bought the Creative Digital VCR card and I was shocked you had to send in the entire box top in order to get the rebate. They are one weird company.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Brian48

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: Brian48

I'm not going to argue that Aureal was a company that wasn't in a good position regardless of their suit with Creative, but I beg to differ on the impact of things. First and foremost, their legal problems most certainly were not over, Creative went for an appeal which of course would generate continuous legal costs. Additionally, when they did acquire Aureal, they had this little snippet to say:

"We're pleased that the court has entered the order approving the sale to Creative," said Craig McHugh, president of Creative Labs, Inc. "Since Creative would not be able to recover significant damages given Aureal's bankruptcy, there was no upside in continuing this protracted litigation. As a result, we believe that this outcome is the best we could have expected.

Buying Aureal after the fact is a separate issue altogether that has nothing to do with the company going out of business in the first place. They simply made the highest bid.

With that in mind, I submit that regardless of Aureal's financial condition, Creative was attempting to use the legal system as a means to worsen it in an anti-competitive fashion, and as such falls under the list of despicable things they have done.

Being that as it may, that was STILL not the reason why the company TANKed. Re-read the financials, the disclosures, investor reports, etc.. The company would have folded with or without Creative. Their investors were not worried about the litegations. They cared about making a profit and clearly, this company didn't know how to do that.

Now just so we're clear here, I am not claiming that Creative was the sole cause of Aureal's financial problems, what I am claiming is that they filled their suit to intentionally hurt Aureal's finances further, knowing that they would lose the case(i.e. the lawsuit was filed as a way to force Aureal to spend money, not because Creative honestly thought Aureal was infringing according to legal definitions). Their end goal in all of this was to in turn make sure Aureal went bankrupt, so that they could purchase Aureal's technology as a way to ensure that there was no one else that could could compete with Creative's gaming products. In short, they filed bogus legal claims to drive their competition out of business and prevent further competition.

 

[tbooth]

I would just like to add to the voices that dislike creatives drivers. I hate their bloated software and having to have the CD everytime I do a fresh install.

 

[Pariah]

That's pure speculation on your part with no factual evidence to back it up. It is an undeniable fact that Aureal was in financial distress without Creative even in the picture. Creative has to pay their legal team as well. Letting Aureal die on it's own as it was going to do anyway, probably would have been cheaper for Creative than filing a lawsuit at a point when Aureal was longer a viable competitor or any threat to Creative's market share.

We'll see what Creative's next line of cards brings to the table. Looks like the first generational jump in features/quality since the original Live!.

Creative's drivers aren't 200MB either. Blindly installing all the extra applications that Creative bundles do not count as drivers. There is a drivers only option during the installation routine. If Creative didn't include all the applications, then we would hear people bitching how Creative is too cheap and lazy to include the applications necessary to use all the features on their $100 cards. They lose either way.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Yet another thread today from someone fooled by Creative placing 5.1 / 7.1 everywhere in their marketing into thinking they can send 5.1 game audio over their coax digital cable. We get several of these in GH every month.

 

[Continuity27]

Originally posted by: Pariah
We'll see what Creative's next line of cards brings to the table. Looks like the first generational jump in features/quality since the original Live!.

I'm actually quite surprised Creative is actually moving up in quality. They have no competition, why not just sell the same product they have been for more money and claim that an innovation? Hopefully... the new series won't be what I just described...

I really want them to innovate, but part of me says no monopoly ever will.

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Yet another thread today from someone fooled by Creative placing 5.1 / 7.1 everywhere in their marketing into thinking they can send 5.1 game audio over their coax digital cable. We get several of these in GH every month.

That's because they can. It's just too bad the HT audio industry didn't like the idea of supporting 5.1 uncompressed digital audio without copy protection.

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
Other things to ponder:

Doom 3 had a software sound encoding scheme that would make the game sound similar through all sound cards (a cheap $20 card, or a $200 Audigy4).

Yes, as it happens it does suck on every soundcard.

Creative wouldn't stand for this so they made a licensing deal with iD so the next Doom-Engine based game contains a EAX profile so they could claim the game would sound better with their sound cards..

Nothing wrong with that, what about Nvidia's and ATI's programs with game developers? At least Creative isn't doing shader replacements and trylinear schemes...

 

[BenSkywalker]

Letting Aureal die on it's own as it was going to do anyway, probably would have been cheaper for Creative than filing a lawsuit at a point when Aureal was longer a viable competitor or any threat to Creative's market share.

Aureal was still an enormous threat to CreativeLabs- their IP was enough to easily kill the completely inferior(to this day) technology. If nVidia, to use a single example, had picked up the A3D technology and rolled that into a product with DD encoding and put out a card based on it CL would be dead by now. Don't think for a moment that they didn't know this either.

The technology behind A3D 1.0 was about on par with EAX 4, A3D 2.0 was vastly superior and 3.0 made EAX look like the antiquated relic it is. That level of innovation was rapid fire when Aureal was around- and CL despised the fact that they may have to work in order to compete.

The lawsuit not being settled was certainly a large factor in the eventual closing of Aureal also. If they had had the resources to finish the case off CL would have been responisble to reimburse them for all of the millions they spent in defending themselves from a case that never had a shred of merit. Given it wasn't the only element that led to the demise of the company, but it was a sizeable portion of the losses they took on their way out of business.

I think even using that disgustingly poor tactic to help push Aureal under most consumers still wouldn't have minded as much if they had taken the time to implement the vastly superior technology that Aureal had into their own products. That, of course, would have cost money which is something CL most certainly doesn't want to spend.

I don't really care if a company is a monopoly if they are providing a level of service I'm happy with. I tried the Linux route and ran MacOS for years and am currently a very happy MS customer- I shop at BB regularly and am most pleased with them overall as a company too. CL utilizes every underhanded technique they can to kill innovation and prevent progress- that I have an issue with.

 

[jpeyton]

And why can't we freely download Creative's drivers off their website? nVidia, ATi, every motherboard manufacturer I can think of, etc, etc, offers drivers on their website.

I understand if Creative doesn't want to offer the full 200MB download on their website, but at least the basic drivers, right? Wrong. You have to request a CD from them, which they charge you for.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
And why can't we freely download Creative's drivers off their website? nVidia, ATi, every motherboard manufacturer I can think of, etc, etc, offers drivers on their website.

I understand if Creative doesn't want to offer the full 200MB download on their website, but at least the basic drivers, right? Wrong. You have to request a CD from them, which they charge you for.

?

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: jpeyton
And why can't we freely download Creative's drivers off their website? nVidia, ATi, every motherboard manufacturer I can think of, etc, etc, offers drivers on their website.

I understand if Creative doesn't want to offer the full 200MB download on their website, but at least the basic drivers, right? Wrong. You have to request a CD from them, which they charge you for.

?

Those are driver updates. You need to have the original drivers installed first for those to be installed.

 

[Continuity27]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
And why can't we freely download Creative's drivers off their website? nVidia, ATi, every motherboard manufacturer I can think of, etc, etc, offers drivers on their website.

I understand if Creative doesn't want to offer the full 200MB download on their website, but at least the basic drivers, right? Wrong. You have to request a CD from them, which they charge you for.

I believe it has something to do with audigy 4 drivers on an audigy 2 zs system giving the exact same features/performance as on an audigy 4 system. Not sure on that though. I heard somewhere if you use Audigy 4 drivers, or make a little modification, your Audigy 2 ZS can turn into an Audigy 4.

 

[Maximilian]

Creative sold me an 8x CD-ROM drive a while ago. It didnt work. I hold a grudge :frown:

 

[ShadowBlade]

well, ATM i hate them b/c the drivers are not on any windows 95 or 98 disc we have at work

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: Brian48

Originally posted by: ViRGE

1b) They also bought out Sensaura's tech(which the nForce APU was based on). Both of these actions are anti-competitive.

Sensaura put itself up for sale. The price was dirtcheap (only 6+ million). Nobody else picked it (including nVidia), so Creative went a head and plunked down the bucks. So what? It's called BUSINESS, ever hear of that? It was a smart move that anyone here with a lick of sense would have done as well.

I never said that it wasn't a same business decision, only that it's anti-competitive. Creative didn't need the technology for their own stuff, it was a pure IP pickup. Frankly this should have been investigated by the FTC.

Anti-competitive? FTC investigation? :roll: That seems rather grandiose and delusional for a simple IP sale with virtually no impact on the marketplace. Ooh, witness the sinister Creative at work:

3 December 2003
Dr Rudolph Burger, Chief Executive Officer of Scipher said: "The sale of Sensaura demonstrates Scipher's ability to create value from commercialising IP, either through licensing or the development of IP-protected businesses which are then spun out or sold."

 

[albumleaf]

Originally posted by: concernedsophist
Yes, I think so. It seems that many people are saying "I hate creative" when they post on this and other forums with respect to creative's sound cards. I get the feeling this is a reaction to creative's market dominace. I was just wondering if there are any legit beefs about their hardware/drivers/support per say.

You're a fool, ever try recording on a creative card? Horrrible, horrible driver support

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Auric

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: ViRGE

1b) They also bought out Sensaura's tech(which the nForce APU was based on). Both of these actions are anti-competitive.

Sensaura put itself up for sale. The price was dirtcheap (only 6+ million). Nobody else picked it (including nVidia), so Creative went a head and plunked down the bucks. So what? It's called BUSINESS, ever hear of that? It was a smart move that anyone here with a lick of sense would have done as well.

I never said that it wasn't a same business decision, only that it's anti-competitive. Creative didn't need the technology for their own stuff, it was a pure IP pickup. Frankly this should have been investigated by the FTC.

Anti-competitive? FTC investigation? :roll: That seems rather grandiose and delusional for a simple IP sale with virtually no impact on the marketplace. Ooh, witness the sinister Creative at work:

3 December 2003
Dr Rudolph Burger, Chief Executive Officer of Scipher said: "The sale of Sensaura demonstrates Scipher's ability to create value from commercialising IP, either through licensing or the development of IP-protected businesses which are then spun out or sold."

On the contrary, Creative's acquisition gave it a technological/patented monopoly on the marketplace. Whenever an acquisition is going to put someone in that position, it should be reviewed by the FTC since it is an unnatural creation of a monopoly. Remember, this is a company who at one point was proud to point out that it could keep the same product on shelves for 3 Christmas seasons.