What's wrong with CREATIVE?

[xtknight]

They can f**cking blow me as far as my situation is concerned. They sent back my rebate with some bullcrap saying the number is invalid when I sent them the exact number they asked for. (Up until recently) they didn't offer drivers for download. Not only that, but they list features like S/PDIF-in that don't even exist on your Audigy 2 ZS (Gamer) without an unpurchasable external overpriced I/O box. They lie about their sound quality, it's actually upsampled. They buy out other companies, they are like the EA of sound cards. Bloated control panels. Horrific documentation. Overpriced. Their high-end X-fi card costs $400 (or is it $500?) Video cards will give you so much more benefit and have 6 times the transistors than the overpriced piece of crap "consumer-geared" sound cards. It's just sad. There is not one thing I can think of that is good about this company.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

I have an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum. I don't mind the fact they are a big company, I work for a very big company myself.

My complaints are:

The card does not perform as advertised, with respect to resolution and SNR. This was proven in court.

They still offer no product with SPDIF ins/outs built into the card.

The drivers are terrible, with many installation issues, and TONS of bloat. They recently made driver updates available as a separate download, but the factory disc is still required. Auto-update works on IE only.

The bundled software is equally pathetic.

The prices have taken the express elevator up, up, up.

While we're at it, Cambridge Soundworks has really gone to Hell since being bought out by Creative.

 

[yankeesfan]

Creative only allows update downloads, but:

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/yankeesfan/explan.JPG

No software installation needed.

 

[Arcanedeath]

Personaly I'll never buy another creative sound card product again, the last creative card I bought was an audigy 1 (I had an Sb live! before that and an ISA AWE64 Gold before that (fyi best and last good creative card )) creatives drivers are just so bloated and awful it makes me sick I can't tell you the amount of man hours I wasted w/ SBlive and Audigy driver issues and then they crippled the audigy 1 when the released the a2, for people looking for good sound I would suggest the HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1 Gold its based on the Cmedia 8768+ chipset and supports dolby ditial encodeing on the fly the Soundstorm from the Nforce 2 did, so far its one of the only PCI cards that can do this and it's dac's are very high quality.

 

[Dantoo]

I have audigys gathering dust on a shelf. Let them rot. They have caused nothing but problems (drivers) each time I tried to install them under different OS's and different chipsets. An SBLive! is back in this machine and won't be replaced when the mobo gets tossed in a month or so.

Support? ROFL! Web updates are cumbersome, large, and the stupidity of having to insert a driver cd to use the just downloaded driver is breathtaking. What donkey thinks that you would bother to download a driver if you didn't have the blasted product?

Alternatives - plenty. Onboard solutions are now more than good enough for the average user. ASUS was offering an truly exceptional onboard solution (soundstorm) with the A7N9X-Deluxe series (think they have dropped it now). If it's an indication of what can be done then bring it on.

Creative are now operating in a shrinking market and they have responded with high priced overhyped and buggy products. I started buying Creative back in the days when you bought a 1Xcd player and ISA Soundblaster package for the 486. I splurged on AWE 32's when they came out and kept on buying new offerings as they hit the market.

No more. I am lodging my complaint with my wallet. I'm guessing they haven't the capacity or vision to win me back. Let them fade.

 

[d2arcturus]

Originally posted by: sniperruff

Originally posted by: Matt2

Originally posted by: sniperruff
same thing as apple, dell and bestbuy.

I thought they didn't suck??

they don't at all. some people just like to hate on big companies.

oh add microsoft to that list.

Yeah I think people like to "fight the power". I still don't know why so many people hate EA. I don't care.

 

[bulbasuar]

Originally posted by: concernedsophist
J I have noticed that they do not make their drivers available for download.


Im fairly certain they do thou, becuase i lost my audigy cd months ago and i use the webupdate to install the drivers (The drivers are included in it but the extra envoirmental surround sound mixxing techno beat sound control app isnt). It's worked everytime. Maybe no one notices them there?