What's wrong with CREATIVE?

[BFG10K]

BFG10K, first, what in the world made you think that you could cite text on Creative's website as some kind of evidence?

What part of that text is a lie? People ask for what the diffferences are and then when they get them they claim it's marketing.

Second, the Audigy 2 WILL "magically" make mp3s sound better.

You are missing the point of my comment.

They require you to have the original CD

You have to request a CD from them, which they charge you for.

Nonsense.

You need to have the original drivers installed first for those to be installed.

The original drivers are on the website.

 

[Sniper82]

Don't really have anything bad to say about them. But I have owned a SB Live,Audigy,Audigy Platinum and 2 Audigy 2 ZS's and have always went back to onboard sound. Yeah all of them seemed to have little better sound quality but not enough to justify the price tag. Some of them I wanted some of them I got as part of a trade.

 

[SlitheryDee]

They require you to have the original CD

You have to request a CD from them, which they charge you for.

I no longer have my audigy disk and I got my drivers from the website a month ago. Maybe you guys didn't look hard enough.

 

[BFG10K]

My Audigy disc has never even entered my CD drive yet I've been enjoying driver updates for the last two years I've owned the card.

 

[imported_g33k]

I've gone through about 4 Audgiy 2zs and everyone of them has had random pops and hisses. Sometimes it gets better by moving it over a PCI slot, but the problem has never gone away. Note this has happened and continues to happen on all four card installed on different machines.

As far as Creative's other products, I have no complaints. Their creative muvo is a good mp3 player and the gigaworks 7.1 speakers sound great.

 

[BujinZero]

I know you need the original CD for the original Audigy 2, but I don't know about other variants.

Creative has a history of putting out some real crap, but I haven't had much trouble with them. My first Creative products were the SoundBlaster 16 w/IDE connector and a 4x CD-ROM drive. These worked fine on my 486. My AWE32 (which I LOVED) also worked fairly well on my P200. Drivers were a touch flakier for that card (which I still have somewhere). The midi music for TIE Fighter Collector's CD-ROM and Dark Forces was brilliant on that thing.

Next was a Live! and a slew of optical drives for various computers (I think they were a 12x CD-RW, a 12x DVD, and a few 52x CD-ROMs). All of these products caused severe frustration. The Live! played hell with the VIA KT133A chipset, but after enough futzing and driver updates it eventually worked. That card is still operational in my dad's Slackware machine. ALL of the optical drives failed after less than a year. Their Lite-on/TDK replacements continue to function or were cycled out for newer drives.

I talk about all that old stuff because I think that the majority of posters on this forum started to truly encounter Creative products at about the time of the Live! series, and Creative deserves the hate they get for that generation of equipment. I hope it burns forever in computer hell.

Surprisingly, my next Creative card, an Audigy 2, has been very good. The actual drivers were nowhere near as crappy as the Live!'s, but their controls are awful. C'mon, ENABLING CMSS 1 by default? Why would they intentionally make things sound wimpy? That should have been turned off and left off.

In my opinion, the drivers that produce the best sound from the Audigy 2 are the ALSA drivers. If you ever install a Linux variant, check it out. Sound just seems cleaner, and some things, particularly stereo seperation, are considerably better. Plus, installation is a total no-brainer.

 

[Pariah]

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.

Hardly. This is simply ignorance on the part of the users, not market trickery by Creative. Where has Creative ever advertised 5.1 digital through a single coax? Creative DOES support multichannel surround unencoded through digital out, but since no one else does, it only works with their speakers. That certainly isn't Creative's fault.

Aureal was still an enormous threat to CreativeLabs- their IP was enough to easily kill the completely inferior(to this day) technology.

Completely irrelevant. Which technology was better means nothing at all (Aureals A3D 2.0 undeniable was), from a business standpoint, Aureal was already on it's deathbed by the time the Creative lawsuit hit. Aureal chose to make their A3D standard closed charging a licensing fee for anyone that want to use it, Creative made EAX available to everyone and part of DirectX. That's what ruined Aureal. There's no point in responding to the rest of your post since it is based on a false assumption, and mostly just bitter ramblings.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Pariah

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.

Hardly. This is simply ignorance on the part of the users, not market trickery by Creative. Where has Creative ever advertised 5.1 digital through a single coax? Creative DOES support multichannel surround unencoded through digital out, but since no one else does, it only works with their speakers. That certainly isn't Creative's fault.

You must admit that they are at a minimum taking advantage of user ignorance.

A user knows they have a Dolby Digital home theater setup, they know they used a digital cable to connect their DVD and got 5.1 surround.

They see a Creative card (in a box or as an option at Dell) and see that it has 5.1 surround and a digital out connector. Maybe they even spend the extra for a Platinum with live drive to get optical out.

Isn't it reasonable for a non-technical buyer to assume that 5.1 surround support plus a digital output is going to work the same for their soundcard as for their DVD player or console game?

Creative has been fooling such buyers since the days of the SB Live.

 

[Sunner]

I can't seem to remember ever using my Audigy2 CD either, I tend never to do that with any hardware since the drivers on the CD are pretty much always obsolete.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: kazeakuma
Drivers mostly. I still find it hard to swallow that an Audigy install can swallow 300mb of hard drive space.

Forgive me if this has already been covered in the thread. I have not read the entire thread yet!

I have an Audigy2 ZS gamer edition. I have never used the drivers on the CD. I have installed XP over 5 times since I got my Audigy. I only use the download from the Creative web site, which is only 16MB by the way.

I do not need the software packages that are on the CD. I only want the drivers so that I get sound (5.1) and EAX. The download from Creative, even though titled as an update, has always worked for me.

 

[vanderStoep]

Audigy 1 (retail) and DTT 3500 DD soundworks 5.1 speakers here. (since 2003 resp. 2002) (and somewhere a SB 16 and a sb 64 Gold not really being used).

Audigy:
* I don`t like the supplied drivers with the soundcard. Installs a lot of crap if you keep the default options for the installation as most people do.
* I do recognize the "CD required problems" Had those to. Could be that that has changed nowadays. I use some hacked A2 drivers which are still on my HDD lying around if needed.
* No drivers updates. I expect better of the marketleader.
* Don`t like their website.

Speakers:
*No complaints but the wires for the rear speakers could definately be a couple of metres longer.

Positieve:
*Everything is working and keeps working


But nowadays the onboard audio is pretty good and on the seakers most people use you really have to ask yourselve "what is the benifit of buying a sperate (creative) soundcard?".

 

[Tiamat]

if it hasnt been stated earlier (im too lazy to go through all 5 pages) my main quam with creative is their cruddy online drivers methodology. They put you on queue and if you get up to do stuff (since you have a life and all) and you are not there to click "ok" they reset your spot and you have to get back on the queue.

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: Pariah

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.

Hardly. This is simply ignorance on the part of the users, not market trickery by Creative. Where has Creative ever advertised 5.1 digital through a single coax? Creative DOES support multichannel surround unencoded through digital out, but since no one else does, it only works with their speakers. That certainly isn't Creative's fault.

You must admit that they are at a minimum taking advantage of user ignorance.

A user knows they have a Dolby Digital home theater setup, they know they used a digital cable to connect their DVD and got 5.1 surround.

They see a Creative card (in a box or as an option at Dell) and see that it has 5.1 surround and a digital out connector. Maybe they even spend the extra for a Platinum with live drive to get optical out.

Isn't it reasonable for a non-technical buyer to assume that 5.1 surround support plus a digital output is going to work the same for their soundcard as for their DVD player or console game?

Creative has been fooling such buyers since the days of the SB Live.

No, I don't. So I will ask you again to name a specific example of where Creative is fooling the consumer here. I have an Audigy 2 Platinum box here, and no where on it does it make any reference to digital surround sound output beyond specific movie only references (Dolby Digital). What is Creative doing differently from any other company with SPDIF capable sound cards to trick customers?

 

[DaveSimmons]

From the Creative Audigy 2 ZS feautres page: Creative

"Complete Cinematic Surround Sound with DTS-ES and Dolby Digital® EX Movies
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro features built-in DTS-ES and Dolby Digital® EX decoding to deliver captivating audio playback in 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 surround with DVD movies.

Comprehensive Multi-Channel Surround with 3D Games Enjoy up to 7.1 surround in existing 3D games with no special upgrades required. "

They're misleading buyers by omission rather than outright lying, by "neglecting" to mention the game surround is only for analog and Creative speakers.

(Yes, other card makers have followed Creative's lead on this, but that's a feeble excuse for misleading consumers)

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
From the Creative Audigy 2 ZS feautres page: Creative

"Complete Cinematic Surround Sound with DTS-ES and Dolby Digital® EX Movies
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro features built-in DTS-ES and Dolby Digital® EX decoding to deliver captivating audio playback in 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 surround with DVD movies.

Comprehensive Multi-Channel Surround with 3D Games Enjoy up to 7.1 surround in existing 3D games with no special upgrades required. "

They're misleading buyers by omission rather than outright lying, by "neglecting" to mention the game surround is only for analog and Creative speakers.

No, you're pretty much wrong here. Look at the bolded part you quoted. Since when are decoded DD/DTS streams digital? Creative isn't even implying digital out/SPDIF out for movies, so how are you interpreting the gaming comment as Creative misleadingly advertising digital surround sound with gaming?

Creative is assuming (and rightfully so) that your typical PC user is using PC speakers for their computer which are almost all analog. There is practically no promotion of digital anywhere in their material.

If you are far enough up the home audio tree to own a home theater with digital in capabilities and don't understand how those work, that's not Creative's fault, as they don't mention or even imply that capability on their products.

(Yes, other card makers have followed Creative's lead on this, but that's a feeble excuse for misleading consumers)

How did Creative take the lead here, when they aren't even guilty of what you are claiming? Even if they were, who said they started this trend? Or was that you just making up stuff to make your argument sound better?

 

[BenSkywalker]

Completely irrelevant. Which technology was better means nothing at all (Aureals A3D 2.0 undeniable was), from a business standpoint, Aureal was already on it's deathbed by the time the Creative lawsuit hit. Aureal chose to make their A3D standard closed charging a licensing fee for anyone that want to use it, Creative made EAX available to everyone and part of DirectX. That's what ruined Aureal. There's no point in responding to the rest of your post since it is based on a false assumption, and mostly just bitter ramblings.

Good dodge, didn't directly address any of the issues at hand and instead focused on an element which was already acknowledged. If only CL's PR team was a good as you are at defending their brand there may be a bit less hostility

 

[ViRGE]

4) Creative has shady marketing. Look at this page advertising the X-Fi, the graph they use cuts off at 66fps in order to exaggerate the performance difference between the products, and the percentage graph baseline is 100%, but measured at 0%, allowing a huge graph for only a 12% performance improvement. It's not just making the statistics pretty like ATI/NV do, but straight up lying with statistics.

 

[Pariah]

Shady marketing? Like that's an exclusive trait of Creative. There is no company on the planet that hasn't used shady marketing at some point. That doesn't excuse Creative from doing it. But you also can't say you hate Creative because they use shady marketing, but it's OK if everyone else to use them including their competitors, you'll still like them. That's a BS double-standard.

It's not just making the statistics pretty like ATI/NV do, but straight up lying with statistics.

Ironic you should pick these two pillars of honesty and integrity of the industry. I'm not going to waste my time wading through all their marketing junk to find an unscrupulous chart like you did for Creative. I don't really have to, because I can remember BOTH companies getting caught outright cheating on benchmarks with driver hacks. But I understand, they aren't Creative, so literally cheating on benchmarks is not nearly as bad as Creative posting a factually accurate chart that uses a nonstandard scale.

There are legitmate reasons to dislike Creative's sound cards. The whole 24 bit audio thing is a legit complaint which I'm surprised no one has brought up. The issues that some people have with their drivers and incompatibilities is a real complaint. However, the garbage that some of you people are coming up with is just childish sour grapes whining with no real basis in reality or blindly taking shots at Creative for things that everyone else does as well.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Pariah
Shady marketing? Like that's an exclusive trait of Creative. There is no company on the planet that hasn't used shady marketing at some point. That doesn't excuse Creative from doing it. But you also can't say you hate Creative because they use shady marketing, but it's OK if everyone else to use them including their competitors, you'll still like them. That's a BS double-standard.

It's not just making the statistics pretty like ATI/NV do, but straight up lying with statistics.

Ironic you should pick these two pillars of honesty and integrity of the industry. I'm not going to waste my time wading through all their marketing junk to find an unscrupulous chart like you did for Creative. I don't really have to, because I can remember BOTH companies getting caught outright cheating on benchmarks with driver hacks. But I understand, they aren't Creative, so literally cheating on benchmarks is not nearly as bad as Creative posting a factually accurate chart that uses a nonstandard scale.

There are legitimate reasons to dislike Creative's sound cards. The whole 24 bit audio thing is a legit complaint which I'm surprised no one has brought up. The issues that some people have with their drivers and incompatibilities is a real complaint. However, the garbage that some of you people are coming up with is just childish sour grapes whining with no real basis in reality or blindly taking shots at Creative for things that everyone else does as well.

I picked those two because even in their own private PDFs they don't attempt crap like this; they may set up a benchmark to favor themselves(pick an opponent's weaker card to test against, etc), but they never use the chart itself to lie. Messing with a chart to win is just pathetic, there are so many smarter ways to go about it that aren't effectively preying on human stupidity. And please, the days of cheating for both ATI and NV are long over, this is something Creative is still doing to this day.

As for the 24bit audio thing and poor drivers, I'm not going to bring them up because they're behind us now, Creative has since then repented and payed up their class action suit and improved their drivers respectively. Creative's current problem is that they're a morally bankrupt company that still has not shown that they are the least bit concerned with their monopolistic actions, or that they're above publishing horribly misleading data just to make themselves look better.

 

[Auric]

Aureal failed because developers chose not to use their technology. It was too time-intensive (costly) compared to Creative's. Just because Creative has been successful does not make them e-vil and it most certainly does not make a failure like like Aureal a martyr.

Scipher chose to sell Sensaura since that is what they do... develop IP to sell. If anyone, then, it is they who should be seen as e-vil by the end-user who gets "suckered" into buying products with their technology only to have it purposefully obsoleted.

The suppos-ed incompatability with el-cheapo chipsets can hardly be blamed soley on Creative, nor can a user's inability to correctly install hardware and software.

It seems there is a vocal minority of bitter users... bitter because out of some queer spite they repeatedly eschew popular Creative soundcards for some shoddy obscure hardware that quickly becomes obsolete -which just compounds their bitterness

So, what is wrong with Creative? I haven't heard anything convincing yet.

 

[BenSkywalker]

It seems there is a vocal minority of bitter users... bitter because out of some queer spite they repeatedly eschew popular Creative soundcards for some shoddy obscure hardware that quickly becomes obsolete -which just compounds their bitterness

Speaking for myself I've been running an Audigy2 ZS for quite a while now, was running a SBLive! prior to that- doesn't change the fact that CL sucks as a technology company.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Speaking for myself, I too have an Audigy 2S in my current desktop and have been using Creative cards since my ISA 8-bit Soundblaster Pro (great card for Wing Commander 2).

I just get tired of seeing users here and in other forums who are used to coax and optical digital offering surround sound in AV gear and game consoles, being mislead by "7.1 surround in games" and "Dolby 5.1" into thinking their soundcard will work the same way.

It's deception by omission rather than actively lying, but still not very ethical. They have monopoly power, and have used that dominance as an excuse not to make the effort to have soundcards work the way they should.

Now that others offer Dolby Live, Creative may finally start offering this feature years late, just like Microsoft has been stung into finally making an effort to update IE beyond fixing the scores of security exploits.

 

[Slammy1]

I think Creative's an all right company, though not stellar. They always at least try to help on tech issues, I wouldn't fault their tech support compared to some very popular companies I've dealt with. I'd really like to see them come out with an audiophile card, I guess if I had a beef it'd be that. Yes, driver problems but I'd still say far less than, say, any major video card. I've gone from Awe32 to SBLive 5.1 to my current Audigy2, it seems whenever I'm upgrading my sound I always come back to Creative. I wouldn't call it loyalty, more bang for the buck and lack of better cards for what I'd like in a similar price range.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

It seems there is a vocal minority of bitter users... bitter because out of some queer spite they repeatedly eschew popular Creative soundcards for some shoddy obscure hardware that quickly becomes obsolete -which just compounds their bitterness

Speaking for myself I've been running an Audigy2 ZS for quite a while now, was running a SBLive! prior to that- doesn't change the fact that CL sucks as a technology company.

Well, I'm not sure "Sucks" is the term I'd use, but they're certainly not in the same league as nVidia, Intel, etc.
I went from an original Soundblaster(whatever it was called), so an SB16, SB32 PnP, Live!, took a tour with a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, and now an Audigy2.
And I must say, the Santa Cruz and SoundBlaster 16 are the ones I've been happiest with.

 

[LED]

It would be a waste of bytes for my reasons to be listed cause I really don't believe they care nor would try to improve their position...Sh8y CS and out right lies are my reason. I've always been one who believes to treat Customers with respect as they are what makes who you are in the Biz world so suffice to say that IMO Monopolizing, strong arm tactics, lies and arrogance are @ the top of my list as to:

What's wrong with CREATIVE?

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