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A Creative Finger

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well i wouldnt mind giving nvidia the finger for their driver BS and SLI crap with their drivers but they still have the best cards as far as I am concerned.

I like my xtreme music and I have never had issues with it in xp or vista and I am very happy with its gaming performance. There's nothing for me to upgrade to cuz there's nothing better for gaming and I have better music solutions than any computer sound card is ever going to give me anyway....
 
The question, Rattle, is are Creative cards "the best". If they have poor driver support that downgrades the other "features". Generally speaking, the average user won't hear that much of a difference between them and , say, a decent onboard solution. As you stated, any audiophile won't be turning to a PC for his sounds anyway. The better question is the one Ed brought up...should manufacturers be held to a certain level of accountability for their practices and products. I know that my answer is an emphatic yes. I do not believe that regulation is the answer, however. I still think that "vote with your wallet" is the best way to deal with companies that have wandered off the path.
 
the problem is every company to do with a PC has wandered off the path at least once...

its all very trivial. so i am not gonan use a XFI for gaming because creative are scumbags when there really is no better alternative? I could turn to auzentech but i gotta drop $150 on a better card than I have to make even a difference. Auzentech will wander off the path next week then I will have to use another card. LOL who cares.

The pc industry is the most corrupt and most BS there is...
 
well i wouldnt mind giving nvidia the finger for their driver BS and SLI crap with their drivers but they still have the best cards as far as I am concerned.

I like my xtreme music and I have never had issues with it in xp or vista and I am very happy with its gaming performance. There's nothing for me to upgrade to cuz there's nothing better for gaming and I have better music solutions than any computer sound card is ever going to give me anyway....

Oh, really? And what do you play?

I think they should just put a patent on every line of code they write, which would be unnecessary and EXTREMELY stingy. If they want to be so selfish, then I say they can have their cards and they can just sell that cheap crap in Asia. Let me once again remind everyone that they create sound cards, their main objective should be quality sound cards, NOT software. They should be lower priority on their software and a little more flexible to situations such as this. I am only saying they should be more open to developers. Hell, had they done it right in the first place, this wouldn't have happened. Screw'em...

the problem is every company to do with a PC has wandered off the path at least once...

its all very trivial. so i am not gonan use a XFI for gaming because creative are scumbags when there really is no better alternative? I could turn to auzentech but i gotta drop $150 on a better card than I have to make even a difference. Auzentech will wander off the path next week then I will have to use another card. LOL who cares.

The pc industry is the most corrupt and most BS there is...

Nah...I can tell you from experience that Real Estate and Coal is worse... ;)
 
Maybe I am just too jaded with todays legal attitudes, but I am actually shocked the letter was written the way it was.

Its the first in a long time that Ive seen mention of Intellectual Property and not include legal action or settlement statements. I would go as far as saying it was almost complimentary (again, by todays standards).

As far as Creative gimping hardware and screwing customers, at least they are public about it. It leaves a huge opportunity for other companies to publicly do the opposite. "Creative doesn't care, but we do!"

Personally.....meh. I haven't bought a sound card in at least 10 years. I think my hearing is severely gimped because on-board audio sounds just fine to me.
 
Instead of castigating him, they should be hiring him and firing the rest of the numbskulls they have writing drivers.

Haven't bought Creative sound cards in ages myself. And after stupidity such as this, I won't be buying anything from them in the future either.
 
Creative must be taking some Sony business courses. I have to laugh when companies don't just shoot themselves in the foot, but when they have to go further with the rectal bazooka.

Creative (and other sound card manufacturers) are already in a bind since almost every recent motherboard has built in 7.1 sound these days. Sure, you can still get the enthusiasts to lay down a few extra bucks for a discreet sound card, but there are less and less of them any more because the sound quality difference isn't really worth the extra money.

Add to that the fact that the ENTHUSIASTS are the ones who care (and know and understand) about drivers and their functionality (or lack thereof), and you end up with a bona-fide sales self-immolation event.

Personally, I haven't purchased a discreet sound card in about 8-10 YEARS. The last one(s) I purchased were 4.1 and 5.1 cards that were free after rebates (probably old Black Friday deals) and THEY ARE ALL STILL IN THEIR ORIGINAL BOXES.
 
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm not entirely sure what the problem is.

My understanding is.
Creative create sound cards.
They also provide sound card drivers.

Some sound cards are exactly the same hardware wise, but they use the driver software to "break" one of them.

This guy they are telling off has created drivers for the cheaper card, that make it was functional as the expensive card.

I cant see why its any different than ATI or Nvidia breaking an 8800 to make an 8600, except Creative do it via software and the others do it via hardware.

Or Sony when they removed software emulation from the low end PS3, which is pretty much an exact duplication, it costs Sony nothing to implement software PS2 emulation, they save nothing by cutting it out, but they did.

Should they?
Well there are business reasons for it. They have to pay for making better drivers, but not everyone wants them, if they provide the good drivers for the $15 cards, who will buy the $30 cards?
If no one buys the $30 cards, the $15 cards have to go up $20 to pay for the cost of creating the better drivers.

Am I in the right area here?

Or is it that they released Vista drivers that were less functional than the XP drivers?
 
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Or is it that they released Vista drivers that were less functional than the XP drivers?

This is the biggy. The others are quite normal, although a crappy way of doing business. Forgive me, but I was raised that you should ALWAYS put forth your best effort. I would say that it has become almost industry standard to put out subpar products...That's to say, to simply make stuff to be making stuff. The idea of support seems to have fallen quite by the wayside. It's been replaced by an attitude of "You want support, by new stuff".

The problem as I see it is there doesn't seem to be any sort of customer relations beyond selling stuff anymore. When did the hardware industry become used car salesmen?
 
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The issue boils down to this:

Hi we're Creative, we are working to get legacy cards working in Vista but havent been able to do so yet, we offer these cards which are completely Vista compatible in the mean time

1-2 years later, still working on it.

Hi Im Daniel K, evidently Creative has abandoned these cards, here is a fully functioning driver for free BUT if you would like to send me a donation here is the address.

Creative fans rejoice

Creative wipes egg from face, does some research and homes in on the donations portion of the FREE offer.

Creative, realizing that a single guy working for donations that arent required has done what they couldnt(refused to ) do in 2+ years decides to release an Open letter.

Creative users all look at the letter and realize that nothing in the letter is anything more then grandstanding and whining about the guy who made Creative look like fools.

Creative users begin lambasting Creative for their (in)actions, and some decide to destroy their cards as proof of their dislike of Creative.

Creative meanwhile is sitting back, holding their hands over their ears and chanting "LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA", hoping the furor will go away.

End users LOSE regardless. If you buy Vista your current sound card(assuming Creative) will be borked functionalitywise due to Creative looking at $$$ as their prime motivator.

I will not buy directly from Creative again, I will not stop using my Audigy2zs or my Harmony or anything that is Creative made, BUT, I WILL only buy them second hand or through a reseller to "in theory" take money away from Creative.

I object to the RIAA/MPAA as a corporate entity and while I havent bought a CD in years, all of my DVD's are bought secondhand from Pawnshops and Blockbusters previously viewed section.
 
I had an Audigy 2 for ages. It was causing issues in Vista so eventually I pulled it an used onboard audio for a while. Now my onboard had good sound, but for some reason, I couldn't figure out how to get 5.1 Audio to stick with it so I only had like a 3.1 system my 2 rear speakers wouldn't work.

I debated for a long time, since the X-FI's came out til just a few weeks ago if I should of get a X-FI card. I did... I'm happy with it but the creative drivers are well lets say bloated. If the story came out prior to me getting the card, I wouldn't of touched it and just stuck it out with my onboard audio. Now that I have it, well I'm enjoying my 5.1 again but I've disliked Creative for years with shotty drivers and well Vista confirmed how shotty they can be or how they can screw there customers.
 
The fact that one guy can do it from his house just insults creative.

It pretty much means they can, but refuse to do it. I think that is 100% unacceptable.

I also won't be buying creative products for that reason. Onboard is fine for my needs, and is also getting very respectable.

The onboard sound specs on the new HTPC type motherboards with onboard graphics are pretty good from what I've seen.
 
I owned the fatality xfi and well lets just say I will never buy creative again. Ever there is about 400 pages of people on the creative forums having incompatibility problems with just the xfi cards. I had this +ASUS mr32n-mvp+ crossfire or not= Epic fail 5 minutes of every game then came the SOD (squeal of death) I now own a ASUS Xonar D2 and well thats 400 dollars in sound cards... but it sound better analogue than the xfi an it works great.

Creative is the next Microsoft, what can we do to get them to make **** work? Apparently they don't listen to please
 
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