Creative Goes After Driver Modder 385
FreedomFighter writes "Since the release of Windows Vista, Creative has promised their Sound Cards as being 'Vista Ready'. Unfortunately, as many unlucky customers did discover, this is not true. What the users actually found were buggy, feature crippled drivers. Creative insisted that features such as Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS(TM) signals and DVD-Audio which worked fine in WinXP, would not work on windows Vista. With Creative releasing less than one new driver a year, things seemed bleak. Fortunately, a talented user, Daniel_K, was recently able to 'fix' many of the drivers, enabling the incompatible features and also fixing many bugs. Just today Creative has decided to put a stop to this. They removed all links to his modified drivers, and banned several users who were posting links to the now banned drivers."
Scruffy seconds. (Score:2, Informative)
Creative blows these days. I too used to be a Creative goon, buying nothing but their cards for any of my many boxxen. After one too many fried - after one too many asinine issues with their crap drivers, and even crappier software (it didn't used to be this way - what the hell happened?!)... Well, I'll take onboard sound over a dedicated Creative soundcard any day.
Seriously, Creative went from awesome to shit. What happened? I still haven't figured that out.
Re:Not a big surprise (Score:5, Informative)
Posted by JohnZS [creative.com] 2) I firmly believe that Daniel K has caught the flack because of the Dolby Digital feature As far as I am aware Auzentech paid a lot of money for an exclusive licence with Dolby to have their cards support this.
But but... didn't Creative have this feature on their cards? I could swear they did, at least in Windows XP.
Meh...Duh...and everything else (Score:5, Informative)
This is what happens when non-technical management + legal team + marketing get together to make decisions (and it's not just Creative...). I've been using a Creative Soundblaster 5.1 Live for the last 7 years - the card cost me 25$ and I've spent over 2000$ in AGP / PCI-Express cards in the same time. I am not much of an audiophile and the card just plain bloody works. Creative makes great hardware - the whining on that forum was driver support for Microsoft Vista but that's another nightmare story...
SSDD (Score:4, Informative)
Not really (Score:5, Informative)
The Soundblaster pro was better, but that's not saying a lot. The fact that the follow up - the Sound Blaster 16 - was NOT Sound Blaster Pro compatible is a clear indication how murky the SB Pro's underpinnings actually were.
Speaking about the SoundBlaster 16. Despite what you may believe the SB16 is NOT a 16-Bit soundcard. It can indeed play back 16-Bit samples, but the drivers simply down converts them to 12-bits.
The AWE was better but it was basically what the SB16 should have been and the competition by this time made the AWE look silly - and that is not mentioning the rather dishonest 64 simultaneous channels claim their marketing department threw about.
Creative's first attempt at a PCI soundcard turned out so murky that 1997 era mobos have something called a "SoundBlaster link" to make them happy. Finally giving up Creative bought another company that had made a PCI soundcard and slapped the SoundBlaster brand on it. (SoundBlaster 16 PCI
The SoundBlaster Live! was not PCI 2.1 complainant. If you somehow didn't know that you had to turn off PCI delayed transactions in the BIOS you would get blue screens every now and then. It also caused disk corruption on Via chipsets. Fun fun fun.
Since then the Live has been rebranded several times. They even spewed out a SoundBlaster Live 24-Bit that did the old SoundBlaster 16-Bit down sampling trick. How nice of them.
The SoundBlaster X-Fi is much nicer than the Live and the Soundcard I'm currently listening to. But beware, Creative is up to their old tricks even here. They talk a lot about their 24-Bit Crysalizer - for instance - but it is actually a 24-Bit Compressor similar to the 16-Bit compressors used by CD mastering studios. Like any audiophile can tell you a compressor helps cheepo speakers by making the sound a little more vivid and louder, at the cost of less fidelity on high end equipment.
Also note that the SoundBlaster X-Fi PCIe Xtreme Audio is not an X-Fi but a good 'ol SoundBlaster Live! in new clothes!
Re:Not really (Score:3, Informative)
Works great in Linux*, AC'97 had finally been replaced with I2C, and a few other improvements, but they didn't seem to screw things up yet. While I don't know if it down-samples 24-bit to 16-bit, I don't think I could hear the difference anyways - but the 48/96 sample rates do sound clearer (I do synthesizer stuff, so I can generate sound that actually uses those rates)
* = Excepting the 50-thousand mixer channels and switches that I have no clue what they do...
Re:E-mu/Ensoniq -- anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not really (Score:3, Informative)
had no working PCI solution until they snapped up Ensoniq and re-marketed the AudioPCI.
I was an early adopter of the AudioPCI, which wasn't available here at the time in Toronto
as Ensoniq just didn't have the market share.
So after hearing about the card and it's purportedly solid SoundBlaster compatibility,
I called up the company, got them to sell me a few cards and they also sent me hardware
documentation and we were working on a reseller agreement when Creative stepped in and
swallowed them up.
Hardly unique (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So, what to buy next? (Score:3, Informative)
I use the M-Audio Delta 66 [m-audio.com]. It worked well under Microsoft Windows XP when I bought it, and it works well under the Ubuntu distribution of GNU/Linux now. I have no idea whether or not it works under Microsoft Windows Vista.
Re:Not really (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Not really (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So, what to buy next? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Shorting stock? (Score:3, Informative)
Incidentally, Creative expects an operating loss for the third quarter ending on Monday, but expects to post a net profit for the quarter. They're able to do this because they've sold their headquarters to another entity for $179M to be amortized on the books over five years, and will lease it back. Their financials have been all over the place over the last few years; this is going to happen to some extent, as they are a technology company, but this looks worse than most to me, though I'm not a financial analyst.
I wonder how much longer until someone buys them outright. At this point, even golden parachutes for the executives would be fine if it means that they no longer had anything to do with the company.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Informative)
there have been some really giant steps forward with some of these usb/firewire interfaces and you can even run a surround sound setup if you like. for the price of whatever the top-of-the-line creative card goes for, you can get a pretty good pro audio solution. watch out for u-he tho, as they are owned by creative. i have never used a u-he card, but if they take after the consumer grade cards you should steer well clear.
Re:Not really (Score:2, Informative)
PCI doesn't support that since it's oriented towards busmaster DMA where the controller is on the card so you need a sideband connector so the old Dos games can run unmodified. At some point distributed DMA started to be supported PCI bridges, so the Dos application could write to the DMA controller but a PCI soundcard could catch the write and emulate it with busmaster DMA. But in the first release of PCI you needed a sideband connector so that old Dos games could use ISA DMA. Then again, I suppose if Creative had got it right then DDMA would have been a mandatory part of PCI from the start.
Re:So post the instructions or a diff (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not really (Score:5, Informative)
Look at http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi.html [digit-life.com] for a very good rundown of the SoundBlaster X-Fi.
Re:Not really (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not really (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Scruffy seconds. (Score:5, Informative)
I've wished since about week two of owning my Creative Zen Touch (40GB) that I had bought something else. Namely, the Ipod. Creative is a pain to deal with if you have support issues. So is their player. Disconnected three times after being on hold 17 minutes each time (HMMM....). If you just want something to listen to music with, their players will work. But don't expect any of the promised firmware updates to fix any issues with the player, so make sure you know all the current problems with it. The problems with mine? Scrolling accuracy to select songs is horrible. 10x worse than the Ipods (which is perfect). You move your finger down the strip to move the selector bar that selects songs, and the UI responds a quarter second later. On top of the that, it's inaccurate and unpredictable. Sometimes moving your finger 1mm will move the song selector one song, sometimes not at all, and sometimes it'll jump down three. You simply can't select songs safely when you're driving. In contrast, the Ipod's scroll wheel is predictable and goes where you want it. Every single time. Move thumb 1mm, it moves 1 song (or might be 2mm I don't know).
Other issues:
-after about 6 months of use the "forward/skip" [>>|] button halfway breaks. By that I mean sometimes you want to fast forward in the song (this is another frustrating thing I'll get to later) so you have to hold down the forward/skip button until the slider gets to the point in the song you want to listen to...so you let go of the fast forward, and then, strangely, the player skips to the next track. Apparently sometimes taking your finger off this button after having it held down tells the player to stop fast forwarding and skip to the end of the song.
-As for fast forwarding, it's the most un-intuitive design ever. It isn't at all easy like on the Ipod, where you press the middle button and then move your thumb around the wheel. When you do this, the Ipod moves the slider that marks what part of the song is playing. You find the part you want, stop moving your thumb on the wheel, press the middle button again, and it plays. On Creative's players, you have to press forward and hold it down for about 5 seconds to skip 30 seconds. A total PITA. Like to listen to your songs gapless (IE you've ripped a CD as one whole MP3)? Be prepared to hold that button down and watch the UI for 20 seconds--(the slider movement speed increases exponentially, which means) when you finally hit the minute mark you want to listen to, and thanks to the laggy UI, you let go and find that it keeps moving ahead for the equivalent of two-ish minutes. Then it starts playing. So until you get used to letting go early, you'll be holding "[|]" down for another 5 seconds till you get back to wherever you originally wanted to be. On top of all that, the player doesn't anticipate "jee, you know, this guy is scrolling forward and this part of the song isn't in my memory, I better spin up the harddrive to be ready for it", it waits until you've stopped fast-forwarding, and then decides to spin up the harddrive, load that part of the song, and play it. And then if you overshoot where you were fastforwarding to, it does the exact same thing, it stops spinning and waits till you've stopped rewinding to spin up the harddrive and load that part of the song (which can't be good for the harddrive anyways, I'm sure this is what broke my first harddrive in the Zen Touch. Thankfully no problems with the warrant replacement). Like I said, don't expect to use this when you're driving.
-If something about your player breaks, be prepared to pay the shipping costs [and insurance if you want to be safe] on your end as well as $35 (when mine broke this was how much it was, it has now changed to $25) as a "processing" fee.
-good luck finding player covers if you want it protected. There's two that I know of, but they're both only available online. One is leather and costs something l
Re:Not really (Score:5, Informative)
I do actually have a reference for the 12-Bit thing. Let me dig it up. Ahh, here it is: http://www.crossfire-designs.de/index.php?lang=en&what=articles&name=showarticle.htm&article=soundcards&page=10 [crossfire-designs.de]
It's a good article about early sound cards. Take particular note to "the ADC could dissolve only 12 bits! Many users could prove this doubt-freely in their attempts, however this has never been officially confirmed."
Re:Scruffy seconds. (Score:5, Informative)
Alternatives exists:
Re:Not really (Score:3, Informative)
It's a good article about early sound cards. Take particular note to "the ADC could dissolve only 12 bits! Many users could prove this doubt-freely in their attempts, however this has never been officially confirmed."
Re:Not really (Score:3, Informative)
Of course we haven't been running DOS for a while now, even on board sound is fairly reasonable these days. So they no longer matter, just like say, 3Com, and for pretty much the same reason.
kX driver too? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not really (Score:2, Informative)
I bought a Live! Player 5.1 with my ABit VP6....and I went through so many hassles getting it to work I damn near broke down in tears. I was only 17 and had saved up from my first job for some kick-ass hardware, only to find that it would blue screen almost every other game of Tiberian Sun. Without net access, I spent weeks fiddling with various settings until I eventually found working solutions using the PCI delay settings in the BIOS.
All was well until I finally bought a second P3 for my VP6.....and all went to shit again. I tried the kx drivers....but the dev at least admits they didn't work in SMP setups...unlike Creative, who insisted that they did.
I eventually solved my problem by doing what I should have done in the first place....I dumped my SoundBlaster and got a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz off eBay.
Re:Not really (Score:1, Informative)
In any case, having programmed the SoundBlaster directly in DOS, I'd agree that they weren't as bad as the grandparent post indicates. They acted pretty much exactly as you'd expect for a DAC and a timer glued onto the DMA chip. I thought they were a lot more reliable than the SB Live! boards, which had many more problems with PCI compatibility -- due to apparently overly strict timing restrictions which made Creative resort to nastiness like reprogramming chipset registers -- and non-SMP-safe drivers in Windows.
There's a copy on isoHunt (Score:3, Informative)
Creative reverses part of it's decision ! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Not really (Score:3, Informative)
This is unbelievable (Score:5, Informative)
I've been a long time Creative user, and they've lost me with this one. I have used Soundblaster cards since the 8-bit Soundblaster Pro. Since then I've owned the Soundblaster 16, AWE 32, and a couple cards in the Audigy series. For over 15 years, I've used Creative's cards almost exclusively (aside from a brief stint with the Pro Audio Spectrum 16).
When Vista SP1 was released last week, I didn't see it in Windows Update because the latest driver available for my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro was not compatible with the update (see this KB article [microsoft.com]). This driver hasn't been updated since March 2007, and didn't work all that well to boot. Analog 5.1 surround was sketchy, and the sub channel didn't even work.
Daniel_K came to the rescue in my situation. I needed to uninstall my drivers to upgrade to SP1, then install his driver package get my card working again. The installation went very smoothly, and my card is working better than it ever has on Vista. There are some quirks, but all surround channels are working as they should, and sound quality seems to be improved over the previous drivers (although this could easily be attributed to the placebo effect).
The last thing that Creative should be doing is going after Daniel_K. If anything, they should hire the guy to teach their driver team a thing or two.
Sadly, this is not likely a technical issue, but a marketing one. Creative seems to have made a deliberate decision to leave Audigy users in the cold in an effort to get them to upgrade to their new X-Fi series. Problem is, it doesn't seem to be working. Peruse Creative's support forums [creative.com] and you'll see post after post lamenting their substandard driver support with promises to avoid their cards in the future.
Creative's strategy may work with casual customers with a sub-$50 card, but not for others who have invested over $200 for a high-end Audigy card with a breakout box. Those people are still looking for return on their investment, and will be the first to walk away from Creative when they get snubbed.
Hopefully this is a misunderstanding, and Creative will work out a deal with Daniel_K. If this doesn't happen, they stand to lose some of their most loyal customers. Given their track record so far, the outlook doesn't look good.
Positial Audio and Headphones (Score:4, Informative)
See, your brain is always comparing the left and right volume of discrete sounds and knows that when you turn your head left, sounds behind you should get louder. If they do not, then your sound position sense is confused.
Most people will unconciously turn their head when trying to pin down a sound location.
Re:Not a big surprise (Score:3, Informative)
DD is the 5.1 sound you get from movies.
DDL is the ability to do real time encoding so you can hear say surround sound from games on a DD sound stream.
If this technology isn't present, you have to use an ANALOG sound connection for a game to get surround, it can only do stereo (not surround) on digital for anything other than movies/tv shows.
This is a 6 year old technology from SoundStorm on nvidia nforce 2 motherboards and creative hasn't bothered to put it on thier sound cards yet.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)