[XMAN26]

http://forums.creative.com/creativel...cending&page=1

read the whole thread, the have crippled previous gen cards drivers for vista on purpose to sell more X-Fi cards. They also shut down the only guy who made them work but also fixed their broken Vista drivers for their X-Fi.

[vazel]

Was Creative trolling? Posting that in the open instead of through PM/email. What did they think would happen?
Creative already forever lost me when they only supplied barebones driver for my Audigy 2 in Vista. This just makes them suck more.

[digitalwanderer]

Hey, real webdrama! Thanks Xman26.

[Florin]

Meanwhile the rest of the world is using Realtek, Soundmax, C-Media and Sigmatel chipsets, and Creative is sliding into oblivion.

[willardjuice]

They also shut down the only guy who made them work but also fixed their broken Vista drivers for their X-Fi.

They shut him down for enabling Dolby Digital Live on cards that are not supposed to have DDL (since Creative doesn't pay Dolby the licensing fee for those cards). They still allow him to provide drivers for Vista (as long as they don't have DDL).

[digitalwanderer]

From that thread I'm reading that they had him pull everything and stop providing anything, link to what you're talking about please?

If you go and spoil my fun on a boring Saturday....

[willardjuice]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

From that thread I'm reading that they had him pull everything and stop providing anything, link to what you're talking about please?

If you go and spoil my fun on a boring Saturday....

http://forums.creative.com/creativel...d=30402#M30402

I checked with management, and it was decided we would bring back the Audigy Support Pack thread and allow you to continue in that endeavor. As long as no intellectual property of Creative is distributed, we will have no problem with it. I will get the thread reposted shortly.

[digitalwanderer]

They're just trying to backtrack from a PR nightmare of their own creation. Someone should tell them just how hard it is to put the genie back in the bottle.

[ChrisRay]

I have refused to use creative lab cards for years. Ever since a bad experience with the Audigy

[BRiT]

Originally Posted by ChrisRay

I have refused to use creative lab cards for years. Ever since a bad experience with the Audigy

Likewise, until I stumbled upon an exceptional deal for their X-Fi product before their official release. My plan was to give it a shot, and if it sucked eBay it for much more than what I bought it for. I'm still using it to this day. It's a world of difference from the Audigy experience I had. However, their Vista drivers are somewhat lacking.

I really hope Asus makes a good showing with their Xonar card.

[XMAN26]

Originally Posted by BRiT

Likewise, until I stumbled upon an exceptional deal for their X-Fi product before their official release. My plan was to give it a shot, and if it sucked eBay it for much more than what I bought it for. I'm still using it to this day. It's a world of difference from the Audigy experience I had. However, their Vista drivers are somewhat lacking.

I really hope Asus makes a good showing with their Xonar card.

I have 4 SB Live cards, 1 Audigy and 1 Aud2ZS card and none are being used and it would seem that the popping issue with SBlive and Nforce chipsets really is a CL issue after reading thru that thread. CL is stupid, so long as my onboard solutions work and not cause issues, I'll never be using their crap again, especially now that I know they have crippled the older products to sell their newer stuff.

[digitalwanderer]

I love my Audigy2ZS under XP, under Vista it's all buggery.

I really will have to check out M-Audio now, all me buds have been raving about them.

EDITED BITS: BTW- Daniel_K's driver packs are up at various torrent sites, I'm grabbing 'em just to see if they help.

[PsychoZA]

It's gotten to the point where the SNR and THD of onboard audio is good enough for me (and mp3s...). I have an X-Fi card sitting in a cupboard because Creative drivers caused my PC to take about 20 years to shutdown and EAX reverb is mostly crappy. I honestly don't see the point in wasting money and I wouldn't care less if Creative died.

[Silent_Buddha]

For the most part the new gen HD audio codecs have been just peachy for regular desktop and gaming use. I was rather pleasantly surprised when I went to onboard only with the launch of Vista since CL couldn't dig it's head out of it's arse and make decent Vista drivers.

When it comes to using headphones though. Ugh. Have to use a stand alone card. I have yet to use any onboard solutions with decent headphone output for listening to music.

Regards,
SB

[vazel]

The DACs are still of concern with onboard audio. Although if you use digital output there is no problem.

[vazel]

Looks like someone else is pissed at Creative. His own fault for storing his porn in the temp directory. If it wasn't Creative another app would've come along that cleared the temp directory. http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...ivers-ate-porn

[swaaye]

Yeah I too have quite the collection of Creative hardware. Inherited some of it. I still use my A2ZS.

I've had great luck with Daniel_K's Audigy Vista pack here:
http://nomoregoatsoup.wordpress.com/...driver-pack-2/

I'm sure Creative is fully within their rights to stop him, even if it causes lots of unhappyness. He is violating the EULA in various ways, especially by asking for money (!!) for his hack jobs. Although they definitely shouldn't have publicly announced it! That was really dumb.

You know, this reminds me of two of the favorite companies on this forum. ATI and NV don't exactly support their hardware anywhere near endlessly either. Radeon 9250 and probably GeForce 7 actually (seriously!) and older aren't developed for anymore. Don't get me started on NV's lack of any driver updates since 2006 for GeForce 7 Go. My Mobility Radeon 9600-equipped eMachines from 2004 can run the latest Catalyst pack right from AMD's site, but my GeForce-equipped Dell is "dead" hardware.

Companies do have to call it quits at some point. It's a balancing act of keeping customers happy through most of a product's useful life while also making sure it's not a waste of R&D funds and personnel. And really, the Live! and Audigy cards do work very well in XP and down. The official Vista drivers for Audigy aren't half bad either. I'm not even sure that I've had any problems with them while I used them.

Hell, the original Audigy can do all of the EAX 4 effects, just like Audigy 4 can. The whole Audigy line (excluding the fake host-processing cards) are excellent gaming sound cards even today. They put out damn good analog signal quality, too, and have great MIDI capabilities for DOSBOX users. Unfortunately, it's not really realistic for a company to support something they haven't made money on in 5 years. I don't like it at all. I want my Audigy 2 ZS to be fully utilized forever and become outmoded through better technology, not by a lack of driver support. But I understand why Creative does what they do.

It is, of course, disappointing from a consumer perspective to see how unwavering they are in their "smart business tactics". They do what they do to make a buck, not to make my purchase as rewarding as possible.

[Davros]

Hopefully with openal becomming the standard other companies will start making gaming soundcards
what openal need to do is create some levels - something for soundcard makers to aspire to
eg:
openal level 1 - equiv to eax2.0
openal level 2 - equiv to eax 5.0
openal level 3 - equiv to greater than eax 5.0

then soundcard makers could put a huge sticker on the box "openal level 3" gives them something to bragg about and it would also be easier for the public

ps: just bought a x-fi (using xp) and im very happy with it

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by swaaye

Don't get me started on NV's lack of any driver updates since 2006 for GeForce 7 Go.

Currently running 163.69 for Vista32 dated Nov 07 which came through via Windows Update IIRC.

There are also drives newer drivers for XP. My card is a 7600 Go.

[swaaye]

Originally Posted by Curt

Currently running 163.69 for Vista32 dated Nov 07 which came through via Windows Update IIRC.

There are also drives newer drivers for XP. My card is a 7600 Go.

Hmmm. I've found that the 169's work if I get the hacked drivers from laptopvideo2go, but earlier versions (I've tried many) gave me these strange continual system pauses/stutters. I have a 7800 Go GTX. Neither Dell or NV have updated drivers since 84.69. I don't remember anything showing up on Windows Update. That probably wouldn't include a better control panel, which is one of the biggest issues with 84.69. It has a buggy early version of their current CP.

[swaaye]

Originally Posted by Davros

Hopefully with openal becomming the standard other companies will start making gaming soundcards
ps: just bought a x-fi (using xp) and im very happy with it

NVIDIA has been the only other provider of OpenAL-acceleration hardware. And that was way back with the Xbox-originating NVAPU in nForce2.

It would be nice to see support, but I think companies have given up on the gaming sound card market because most gamers don't really seem to care about audio quality or effects. At least, most of the gamers I've known. It seems that high-end soundcards are instead being based on excellent implementations of basic, cheap codecs from the likes of CMEDIA, etc. Specialized DSPs that only provide "added value" in a few games aren't worth their cost for most folks/companies.

I believe that the late '90s saw a period of excitement from companies who thought that there was a bright future for gaming soundcards, just as 3D cards were exploding. But it didn't happen. PCI sound cards were new and so was the introduction of interactive 3D audio processing in games.

Aureal & Creative released some amazing stuff in those days, and it was exciting. There were also some quieter companies such as VLSI and Forte. Of course, people blame Aureal's fall on Creative. I don't really think that was the case though. It may have been the final nail in the coffin but Aureal had some history (Media Vision) that makes the think they were on the way out anyway. We've also seen more than a few companies give up on game audio cards undoubtedly because the sales weren't happening.

[digitalwanderer]

http://boycottcreative.com/Newegg_Backup.html

While it is not our place to condemn the decisions of Creative regarding this issue, our customers come first. That being said, it has come to our attention that many of our customers are not happy with the products Creative has released nor the support for those products. To wit, we have processed nearly 5,000 return orders within the past 48 hours. While it is not normally in our best interest to publically comment in a manufacturer's forum, the overwhelming concensus has left us little choice. As such, effective tommorow morning newegg.com will suspend sales of the sound cards in question, particularly those indicated as "Vista compatible", pending an investigation into the matter. Those of you whom recently ordered such a card will still recieve your product as indicated in any relevant conversations. While we regret this abrupt decision, it has been deemed neccessary to protect the interest of our consumers. We welcome contact from Creative as soon as is possible so that we may resolve this issue.

DISCLAIMER: I love Newegg!

[AlStrong]

haha awesome.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by AlStrong

haha awesome.

Sorry, but is that letter legit?


"Those of you whom recently ordered..."


Hmm.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by swaaye

Hmmm. I've found that the 169's work if I get the hacked drivers from laptopvideo2go, but earlier versions (I've tried many) gave me these strange continual system pauses/stutters. I have a 7800 Go GTX. Neither Dell or NV have updated drivers since 84.69. I don't remember anything showing up on Windows Update. That probably wouldn't include a better control panel, which is one of the biggest issues with 84.69. It has a buggy early version of their current CP.

I just checked and the drivers are listed as 10/10/2007 in WU with a September release date.
The control panel is actually weird. It's definitely not the 'full' version I'm familiar with from my desktop GTS.