The Future of Creative and the Sound Card Market

Hanners writes "Elite Bastards investigates the future of Creative Labs, and in particular their PC sound card business, which is facing a number of big challenges during 2007. Windows Vista has seen some large changes to the driver model required by audio devices, the abilities of on-board solutions have improved somewhat, and the amount of competition in the market place has ballooned. So what does all of this mean for the traditional leader of this market? As well as outlining all of these issues, they speculate as to what measures Creative may need to take to thrive once more in this changing market."

Re:2 words for my business

[Applekid]

"There are still DOS, Win3.1/95/98/ME/NT and 2K systems out in great numbers. Many of the newer integrated chipsets do not have drivers for the older OSes. BUT, thanks to the ubiquity of the SoundBlaster card, those older OSes can still have audio. I don't see this as a huge and growing market. No, it is a dying market, but the need still exists."

Provided they find old cards. Sound Blaster Live and above have no legacy support. Does Creative still even produce any Sound Blaster 16 cards, or has the stock in all stores just been sitting there all this time?

Re:Leader?

[paeanblack]

They're only the "leader" because they have no significant competition in the after-market add-on card market. Just try and name two other sound card manufacturers.

M-Audio, Turtle Beach, E-MU, off the top of my head. I'm neither a musician or an audiophile, nor have I purchased a soundcard in 6 years.

What I don't understand is why Creative even still exists. Onboard audio has long been sufficient for games/mp3s, and anyone who is serious about audio for recording/mixing/audiophile/etc, is not going to bother with what Creative offers. They are the Monster Cable of the sound card market. Saying they are the only player in the space just means you either work for or exclusively patronize Best Buy and simply haven't seen the rest of the industry.

Creative Labs has a "professional" sound division

[Dzimas]

Creative Labs has never produced high end equipment. If you remember back to the 1980s, the thing that allowed them to gain a foothold was their inclusion of FM synthesis at a reasonable price. The company branched into wavetable synthesis with a vengeance in the 1990s, using chipsets developed by California synthesizer company E-Mu Systems (also seen in cards by Turtle Beach and others). They eventually bought E-Mu for around $28m, primarily because of their ability to design/build high quality multichannel audio synthesis chips (stuff which can be done exceedingly well in software today).

Sadly, Creative's "professional" division (AKA E-Mu) didn't fare well after the purchase - their lineup of hardware samplers and synths floundered in the early 2000s due to the availability of quite credible software synthesizers. emu.com still produces a handful of "mid-range" professional sound cards that share the same core chipset as many of Creative's cheaper efforts. Unfortunately, they no longer have market advantage in that segment and the E-Mu name has been sullied by their association with Creative Labs (the "Sound Blaster legacy). That puts Creative in a tough spot because decent quality sound is now definitely a commodity product. They've already passed the point of including "silly" features - 7.1 SuperWOWHyperCool sound with 1024 voices of synth playback, etc. The highly profitable soundcard era is long gone and their mp3 player lineup is now being sold at cut rate prices at Wal-Mart. That can't be good for the bottom line.

They could start...

[Kegetys]

with fixing their drivers. I have an Audigy 2 on my Windows system and the creative control panel absolutely sucks. Settings are scattered across multiple different applications that are extremely slow, bloated, confusing to use and buggy. Because of their stupid driver policy I also had to download the original driver disc image from eMule since I lost the original, as the drivers they offer for download do not work without the original driver from the disc installed. (Though that was a while ago, they might have come to their senses already)

I liked the SB16 I had, and the SB128 worked well too but buying the Audigy 2 was a big mistake.

Re:Ah, poor Creative

[Billly Gates]

It may have an issue with irq routing/sharing.

See if you can turn the bios to non plug and play os and change the dma and irq settings for that pci slot. PS disabling plug and play os can make windows2k and occasionally XP blue screen due to the hal being setup during installation.

Re:I've wondered about Creative for a while

[stratjakt]

Analog outputs, I agree. But I'm using sp/dif, it's a digital signal out, so there's no noise, hiss, or pops. I can't say for the quality of the mic-in, but I only use it for the likes of skype, and nobody has complained thus far.

Re:Leader?

[bitrex]

if by "sound card" you allow extrapolation to the more general term "audio interface" there are plenty - M-Audio, http://www.m-audio.com/ [m-audio.com] Echo Audio http://www.echoaudio.com/ [echoaudio.com] Mark of the Unicorn, http://www.motu.com/ [motu.com] Digidesign, http://www.digidesign.com/ [digidesign.com] RME, http://www.rme-audio.com/ [rme-audio.com] Apogee, http://www.apogeedigital.com/ [apogeedigital.com] Edirol, http://www.edirol.com/ [edirol.com] etc.

Creative Labs is the next SGI

[Chryana]

What does Creative still has to offer? Their drivers are bloated and buggy, the audio quality of their sound cards is average, and they are overpriced. The only reason they have survived this long in their current form is that they ate all the competition in the sound card gaming market and that, as a consequence, they pretty much have a monopoly on 3d audio. Their buyers are mostly gamers who are willing to blow a hundred dollars or more to get 1% less cpu usage. On board sound already offers features that Creative doesn't match, and Vista will force them to rebuild their drivers from scratch, so it may take years before we see a sound card from them which makes decent 3d sound on Vista. If they don't bother updating the drivers for their Audigy line of cards, they are going to alienate themselves with a lot of their current customers. That leaves them with their line of mp3 players, which isn't too hot (or that much different from other products already on the market). I have no idea what they're going to do, but it really looks like continuing on their current path is a recipe bankruptcy.

Re:But the open ones are good

[ivan256]

Creative did not design the Live!. They got the chip when they bought Ensoniq.

Creative has a history of producing crap, treating their customers like crap, and squashing the competition financially before they have a chance to become much of a threat.

Re:Hope they go bankrupt

[Cornelius the Great]

"Aureal more or less bankrupted themselves with some new tech that didn't pan out. They were sueing Creative over core 3d sound patents and won (not the other way around) but not until they were pretty much out of business."

The Vortex2 was quite successful, so I didn't understand how "it didn't pan out". In fact, A3D 2.0 had a much bigger market penetration than EAX at the time. It was Creative that sued Aureal for patent infringement in 1998 and subsequently lost. By the time Aureal could countersue (to recoup legal costs), their private investors had pulled out, leaving Aureal dry, thus forcing them to declare bankruptcy.

Aureal's assets were then bought by Creative, and eventually made their way into EAX. Much of the technology behind CMSS3D Virtual Surround is due to Aureal's research.

In short, Creative is the one responsible for Aureal's demise.

Re:Hope they go bankrupt

[theNetImp]

Actually, yes you can install PCI cards in the Pro line of Mac products. Not all of them have drivers, but those that do work just fine. I bought a netgear PCI 802.11g card for my G4 Tower, and bough 3rd party drivers, and it works just fine.

Re:Dwindling customer base

[radish]

Monster Sound is not for audiophiles, it's for wannabe audiophiles. It's actually an even bigger ripoff than most of the real audiophile stuff if you ask me, because they don't actually do anything expensive or use more expensive materials - they just hike up the prices. Of course, smart people use places like Blue Jeans Cable [bluejeanscable.com].

Re:But the open ones are good

[garinh]

Not true. The original SoundBlaster Live board was based on an EMU 10K1 chip, which was designed at Creative's Advanced Technology Center in Scotts Valley, CA. Ensoniq did provide chips for a variety of Creative products, using derivatives of the ES137x series of chips. Derivatives of Ensoniq technology can certainly be found in some recent model Live boards -- the 24-bit varieties in particular.

For more information, there is a pretty good Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] available.

Garin

Re:2 words for my business

[Nik13]

Vista drivers are just a very small part of the problem with Creative's junk.

When I bought a SB live, I was running Win 2k Pro. AC3 passthru was broken for pretty much as long as I ran that OS.

Then XP came out. XP drivers? Can't have that. You had to install the old and incompatible VxD-based Win9x drivers (which did BSOD my system half the time), then somehow apply the new WDM drivers on top of that. Retarded.

Even today, they still suck. Want app for the live drive's remote control? Download it off their website. Oops, it says "can't find previous version" so it won't install (do they still expect me to use the Win9x drivers disc that shipped with it?) Same for the Play Center app...

Now that Vista's out, same story about drivers. "Just spend a ridiculous amount on a X-Fi you don't need" is their answer. But I've *NEVER* got a single good driver for the 350$ card I already bought in about 6 years, what makes me think me new card will make this any better?

Oh, and drivers are just a small part of the problem.

Adding a SB live to a system with a KT133 chipset made it BSOD like every 5 minutes with Win98. Even the PCI latency "fixes" didn't solve this (just BSOD'ed every 15 minutes instead). Had to buy a new motherboard because of that...

Their promised ASIO support in their drivers for the SB Live? I'm still waiting!

Non-standard interconnects! I'm still extremely pissed off about this. I bought a set of Cambridge Soundworks speakers (Creative's own) -- the DTT3500 along with it. It comes with a short cable. The plugs on that? A 1/8" mini plug on the card - like a normal stereo earphone, BUT with an extra ring (3 pole). Good luck finding one like that anywhere, I never managed. At the other end of that cable, you have a totally non-standard *9pin* mini-din. Good luck finding extensions for that! Even Creative won't sell you any. I called them, and they told me to buy buy one at Radio Shack... I would, if they used NORMAL / standard plugs! I wonder how their X-Fi breakout box connects - likely another weird plug you can't find anywhere should your cable go bad.

So much stuff... And the new cards still suck. No Dolby Digital Live. Very poor connections: on the "basic" X-Fi, the spdif out is same plug as microphone input! So if you plan to use the digital output and that you might need a microphone sometime, then you need something like the X-Fi Elite Pro (300$ instead of 70$).

Way too much problems - more than I've ever had with any other computer part. I've upgraded to an M-Audio card since then. I'll consider using Creative's junk again once THEY stat paying ME to use it. Even the onboard Realtek HD audio on my cheapo HP tower is far better (good drivers, good sound quality, standard plugs and all).

Re:2 words for my business

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit.
The last creative card I used that didn't drive me up the wall at one point or other, was _Soundblaster 16_.
Every single piece of hardware (not just soundcards, either) I've used since then, from creative, gave me so many headaches and generally annoyed the hell out of me that I now quite literally shun the brand.

And just thinking about their support site ... Whoever designed the "labyrinth" to the correct drivers (back then, anyway, I don't know how it is now - I don't want to know), and the apparant *chain* of how to install them/modular updates, for some cards, needs to be fed week old coffee by a tube.

Re:2 words for my business

[Sylver Dragon]

I had the same problem. I'm running Vista Business and I have a Creative Live! card (from before they added all the other adjectives). By default it doesn't work with Vista, and it looks like Creative is using this as an excuse to get people to upgrade (i.e. Buy a new one, we're not making drivers). Truth be told, I am still happy with this card, so I see no reason to upgrade. Fortunately, I did find a work around. Download the XP driver from Creative's site, and run the setup in XP Compatibility mode. Viola! I have sound, and the OS doesn't seem any worse for the wear. Now, if you're on 64-bit, my understanding is that you'll have to jump through some hoops to disable the driver signing bullshit, and as always YMMV. caveat emptor.

Auzentech X-Meridian

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm your typical lurker (I don't post & don't have an account) but to comment on there's no need for a "middle man" market is totally wrong. I am not a recording techy but I certainly appreciate high quality audio. For me, Creative just doesn't cut it (and neither does onboard). Not one sole mentioned anything about the Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1. Now that's a SOUND CARD with some serious quality (custom based 8788 chipset). Google around for it and you'll see many sites praise it as "the best card we've ever tested." I have it hooked up via analog (even though it's capable of DDL & DTS Interactive) because it's analog outs are just...that good. I bought LM4562 upgraded AMPs to place on it and it's by far the best sound to grace my ears. It runs through a Denon home theatre unit (yup lots of cabling as it's 6 RCAs) and some high end Grado headphones.

For those gamer techy guys (I'm not one of them) there's a simple program out called Velbac (made by a member on another msg board) which allows you to run 2 sound cards at the same time. I can tag it up with my older creative card and get EAX 3.0+ (since Creative won't allow other companies to utilize their technology past EAX 2.0). Just thought it'd be a nice heads up.

Re:2 words for my business

[aaronl]

The KX Audio Project drivers will fix the software related problems on Creative cards. I don't use their hardware any more, but those drivers were great when I did.

Re:Via/M-Audio/Chaintech has better sound quality

[Anonymous Coward]

M-Audio's revolution series of sound cards use the Via Envy24 as well. Some of their higher end audio production cards (as well as some of Turtle Beach's higher end cards) use more powerful versions of the Envy24, too. The Envy24 is really renowned as a great sounding chip.

I'm with you - I love my AV-710. Outside of gaming, the audio reproduction through my stereo Kenwood soundsystem and Grado headphones absolutely SPANKS my all of my friends' Creative Audigy or X-Fi and Logitech 5.1 surround sound setups.

Re:But the open ones are good

[Vidar Leathershod]

I can't claim to know the exact story, and Wikipedia is not always accurate, but from the A3D article, we find:

"Creative Labs sued Aureal for patent infringement in March of 1998[1], and Aureal countersued for patent infringement and deceptive trade practices. Aureal won the lawsuit brought by Creative in December of 1999. However, the cost of the legal battle caused Aureal's investors to cease funding operations, forcing Aureal into bankruptcy. Creative then acquired Aureal's assets in September of 2000 through the bankruptcy court with the specific provision that Creative Labs would be released from all claims of past infringement by Creative Labs upon Aureal's A3D technology. While Creative Labs has not chosen to support the A3D API, the underlying advanced features of A3D technology is making its way into Creative Labs' newer EAX incarnations."

I remember when the "Vortex Superquad" came out. It trounced anything that Creative had to offer, and was $50 (at least $20 less than the Creative that was less capable). The 3D was way beyond anything EAX had to offer. Maybe, being a former employee, you took the press releases of your company to heart. It's funny that Creative has the name it does, since it actually creates very little, and has bought most of its junk over the years. Aureal cards (and Turtle Beach cards with the Aureal chipset) threatened Creative's very existence, as all good game audio development was focusing on A3D. Considering the technical advantages Aureal had, the "only option" for Creative was to sue. And they *lost*. The very fact that they bankrupted Aureal with the lawsuit and then bought the assets should qualify the perpetrators for defrauding the shareholders/investors who put good money into a really neat company.

The worst part is that with the exception of possible cannibalization, A3D was dropped, and while I don't use creative cards anymore (just not cost-effective compared with onboard/inexpensive alternatives), Creative kept shipping their inferior product for quite some time afterwards (pride, I guess). It may still be inferior, but I claim ignorance, since I have not used it, and it may have finally caught up. Even if the onboard sound solutions on motherboards weren't good enough, unless Creative has removed their crapware driver installs (hundreds of megs to install soundcard drivers?) it would still be worth it to buy from a competitor.

And yes, I am bitter. I would love to be able to throw that Aureal into my system, as my speaker out has a missing plastic rim now (argh), but Aureal stopped providing driver updates late during the lawsuit (lack of funds?) and Creative doesn't even provide the old ones if I wanted to use the card with an older OS (though I think I have the drivers lying around somewhere). That brings another gripe. When reinstalling an OS on someone's computer with an older Creative card, it's like an easter egg hunt trying to find drivers, since Creative can't be bothered with supplying their own drivers for products that haven't been sold in a while.