Creative: ASUS Misleading Customers on EAX Drivers

[Mussels]

actully they already do that, thats how most cards are designed, before the core is built they emulate it and the enviroment, but it takes a server farm to pull it off

another rare time i agree with candle: this is how they design all versions of directX. they do it in software, make sure its stable and meets their goals (speed, looks, etc) and then ask everyone else to make hardware that fits their standards - thats why its called "hardware accelerated" as the hardware merely does it a gazillion times faster than software would.

 

[candle_86]

hey mussles you know eventually im gonna convert you to the dark side of the computer world

 

[Mussels]

hey mussles you know eventually im gonna convert you to the dark side of the computer world

already there, intel + nvidia.

 

[BumbRush]

found an intresting post on creatives own forums.

A short history of Creative Labs (AKA Creative's Unethical Tactics) Options

goodRiddance
Contributor
Posts: 23
Registered: 03-29-2008



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Creative forced Advanced Gravis out of the soundcard business by using
a grant from the Singaporean government to sell their soundcards below
cost.

Creative bought out E-MU and Ensoniq. E-MUs technology, which Creative
acquired and didn't actually create, forms the basis of every Creative
soundcard since the Live.

Creative forced Aureal out of business by inundating them with bogus
lawsuits. Creative infringed on Aureal's patents, not the other way
around and even though Aureal won their counterclaims against Creative,
the investers all pulled out and they were forced to sell out to
Creative. So much for the patent system protecting the little guy. And
it's a shame because A3D 2.0 was and still is lightyears ahead of EAX.

Creative forced nVidia out of the computer audio market by buying out
Sensura. The nVidia SoundStorm on the nForce and nForce 2 was an actual
discrete audio processing unit similar to what you find on a Creative
soundcard except lightyears better since it actually supported Dolby
encoding in realtime. It was based heavily on technology licensed from
Sensura and when Creative bought them out, it marked the end of
SoundStorm. 5 years after the original SoundStorm was released,
Creative soundcards still can't do real-time Dolby encoding.

Creative then blackmailed John Carmack into including EAX support in
the Doom 3 engine by threatening him and ID Software with bogus
software patents. Creative didn't actually invent the method described
in the patent in question and there is documented evidence of prior art
but ID Software didn't have the resources to fight Creative and was
forced to capitulate.

Creative's dominance in the discrete soundcards market comes not from
making a good product but from questionable and immoral business
tactics. They bully or acquire the competition anytime it poses a
serious threat to Creative's discrete soundcard market share.

They've also convinced (or blackmailed game developers) into
integrating EAX 5.0 into their games which is a proprietary Creative
technology that no other soundcard can implement without paying
royalties. This helps to create vendor lock-in and makes it hard for
new soundcards to compete because they are almost always dinged on
their reviews for lack of EAX 5 support despite it's proprietery
nature. EAX is still just a bunch of gimmicky reverb effects that still
can't hold a candle to A3D 2.0. It's a shame that so much innovation in
the computer audio market has been stifled by Creative.

If there is any good news, it's that Creative is steadily loosing
ground to onboard audio. It may be crappier and it may lack features
and have poorer sound quality (though the X-Fi's sound quality isn't
all that great considering Creative's choice of OpAmps and Capacitors)
but they work and don't force you into a single vendor's standard.

Also, Vista eliminates the ability to use EAX with Microsoft's sound
APIs (except through a hack like Alchemy). The new Vista sound API has
it's own software DSP that provides EAX 5.0 level effects for all
systems no matter what kind of soundcard with a minimum of CPU usage.
Creative's days are numbered as a result and I say good riddance.

oh and they have demanded that daniel k stop stop producing his drivers.

Daniel_K:

We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don't have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.

Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you. We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages. To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP. In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules. If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.

Phil O'Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.

so yeah, anybody defending creative for their acctions/drivers/hardware is just an insain fanboi......


http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332

 

[btarunr]

found an intresting post on creatives own forums.



oh and they have demanded that daniel k stop stop producing his drivers.



so yeah, anybody defending creative for their acctions/drivers/hardware is just an insain fanboi......


http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332

How does that affect me? No ways. I want good sound and I get it. What I also get is that you are a troll. I would go way off topic if I list out similar things pertaining to Intel, Samsung or other major players in the industry of which none concerns us, but I won't.

Secondly, nothing constructive...leave alone talking on-topic "Creative: ASUS Misleading Customers on EAX Drivers" can be expected from your post(s). So please quit trolling. My buying from a company and being satisfied with what it gives me is nobody's business, certainly not yours. If you call me or another member a 'fanboy'...you will be going against forum guidelines because you are doing nothing constructive here at all.

 

[imperialreign]

For starters, I find a lot of information in that "history" to be incorrect, or manipulated to back up the claim that Creative is evil, devilish, demonic and corrupt. Although the Soundstorm had good audio quality, nVidia got out of the sound arena because their drivers just sucked and their hardware was dodgy. Aureal was bought by Creative after the legal onslaught where Aureal won it's claims, but it was ruled that Creative did not infringe upon Aureal's patent technologies. After the merger, A3D was incororated into EAX 2.0 (different than EAX 2); so the idea that A3D sounds better than EAX 5.0 is a load of bull, IMO. Asides, EAX 5.0 was designed around the X-Fi hardware architecture, find me a competitng soundcard that can run these EAX calls correctly.

Creative's cards are capable of Dolby encoding, but the reason we haven't seen that capability passed down to the X-Fi drivers is because Auzentech paid quite the sum to Dolby and Creative for those licenses with the Prelude. It would be an infringement on Creative's part to offer the capability.

And yes, Creative has had a lot of issues with Vista support - they were late to the playing field in terms of writing drivers for Vista. Read my earlier posts to find out why. Thank MS for that one. On tope of that, name one audio manufacturer that hasn't had their share of problems with Vista, also. Hell, name one hardware manufacturer in general that hasn't had issues with Vista drivers.

I'd also like to point out that yes, indeed Creative has crippled drivers for older audio cards - WHAT FRIGGIN HARDWARE MANUFACTURER DOESN'T AT SOME POINT, EITHER BY ACCIDENT OR ON PURPOSE, CRIPPLE THEIR DRIVERS OR DROP SUPPORT FOR LEGACY HARDWARE TO MOVE CUSTOMERS UP TO NEWER HARDWARE?!!!

It's not just Creative that follow this practice!!!!



As to Daniel_K's audio drivers: I commend him on his work, and the help that he provided to others; but to qoute from a post in that thread on Creative's forums:

Although I agree it is a sad day to see a driver modder get punished for helping people, I think it is unfair to "bash" Creative on this. For a few reasons.



1) The licence agreement which we all accept to says that we must not reverse engineer or tamper with the software as it is the property of Creative Labs.



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. Now, Creative would get into trouble if they allow a means for this to be "cracked" to run on non-Auzentech cards.



3) Accepting money (even in the form of donations) for someone elses copyrighted material is a big NO NO.

you will find a similar license agreement with 95% of hardware manufacturer's. It's up to the manufacturer if they want to undertake enforcing it or not. Usually, they don't pay much notice, as they don't offer any support for those drivers, and they typically will void warranties as well - if the drivers are the cause of hardware failures. Once you start accepting payment for modified drivers, though, I guarantee you you'll catch the eye of the manufacturer.


Just my two cents:
Enough of the Creative bashing here on TPU. If you want to continue to dig at Creative for any ungodly reason - go carry your ass to Creative's Forums which are breeming with lurkers, trolls, sith and sinners just waiting to have their go with the Nerf baseball bat. There are more than enough forums on the internet that continue to allow it, and I don't see why TPU needs to be drug into the mix, either.

 

[BumbRush]

no other hardware maker i have ever seen has tryed to charge peopel to enable fetures that where part of the card when sold, 9.99 to get your audigy card working as advertised under vista, thats a crock of shit, creative is just trying to double dip, charge people for the card then make them pay for updated drivers........

and cutting support for a product is FAR diffrent from charging people to have access to FULL support, if you can even call creatives support full with its latist products.

 

[Steevo]

I just wish somebody else would design cards that offload. So far, Ceative seems to be the only ones that are doing it. All other cards still render via cpu.

C-media


Creative shut down the guy making their drivers work.

http://forums.creative.com/creative...hread.id=116332&view=by_date_ascending&page=1


That was Creative (same guy) trying to point fingers and make them seem the good guys by dumping on Asus. Good job Creative, fucking over the customer again.

 

[btarunr]

no other hardware maker i have ever seen has tryed to charge peopel to enable fetures that where part of the card when sold, 9.99 to get your audigy card working as advertised under vista, thats a crock of shit, creative is just trying to double dip, charge people for the card then make them pay for updated drivers........

and cutting support for a product is FAR diffrent from charging people to have access to FULL support, if you can even call creatives support full with its latist products.

A. We don't pay for drivers.

B. So what if Creative chose to cut manufacturing costs and release the Xtreme Audio as just a rebadged Audigy SE with added features at a premium? Think of them as a 'higher variant' just like you have in cars and pretty much every commercial product.

C. I have called, I got my support at I wasn't charged. Please stop making things up.

 

[imperialreign]

no other hardware maker i have ever seen has tryed to charge peopel to enable fetures that where part of the card when sold, 9.99 to get your audigy card working as advertised under vista, thats a crock of shit, creative is just trying to double dip, charge people for the card then make them pay for updated drivers........

and cutting support for a product is FAR diffrent from charging people to have access to FULL support, if you can even call creatives support full with its latist products.

The Audigy line is friggin 6 years old! Audigy 4 dates back to '05! People still use Live! cards, and those date back to '98!

I'm not saying you have to go out and buy the newest sound card as soon as it hits the shelves - but you wonder why people complain about dodgy sound card issues and audio stability when they're playing the newest games and running the newest OS! I find it completely dumbfounding.

Creative doesn't charge for full support - only the Vista ALchemy drivers for the Audigy; which I do think is a bit f-ed up - but they're not charging for "as advertised under Vista" - Vista drivers for the Audigy are free . . . but we're coming up on the end of the Audigy's support lifetime. Creative already revamped the Audigy lineup to close the gap with the X-Fi for it's initial release. I think they've been more than generous in their support.


<edit>
btarunr beat me to it

 

[BumbRush]

A. We don't pay for drivers.

B. So what if Creative chose to cut manufacturing costs and release the Xtreme Audio as just a rebadged Audigy SE with added features at a premium? Think of them as a 'higher variant' just like you have in cars and pretty much every commercial product.

C. I have called, I got my support at I wasn't charged. Please stop making things up.

buying alchemy=paying for fetures that should be free.

as to your bullshit imperialreign, check out the cmedia 8738 cards and note they have FULL vista support, not just built in drivers but FULL updated drivers for vista, this is a card thats as old as the sb live, so yeah, creative sucks.

also note that creative is STILL SELLING AUDIGY CARDS, if your selling it FUCKING SUPPORT IT dont try and charge people for proper support.........gdm fanboi's......

 

[btarunr]

buying alchemy=paying for fetures that should be free.

as to your bullshit imperialreign, check out the cmedia 8738 cards and note they have FULL vista support, not just built in drivers but FULL updated drivers for vista, this is a card thats as old as the sb live, so yeah, creative sucks.

also note that creative is STILL SELLING AUDIGY CARDS, if your selling it FUCKING SUPPORT IT dont try and charge people for proper support.........gdm fanboi's......

Alright, you have shown to suffer extremely low IQ, let me spoon-feed:

ALchemy makes multi-channel audio games expolit Creative's propreitary DSP's, it is NOT essential for normal usage of Audigy for Vista. You CAN use an Audigy + Vista output but just not use the EAX and other DSP's.

Secondly, while they sell it, they don't advertise 100% Vista support anywhere so your argument about "if your selling it ****** SUPPORT IT" is null / void, customers buy them at their discretion...for $20. You get what you pay for. Just because C-Media does it doesn't imply Creative should, there's no hard/fast rule...it's clear that Creative has some surplus Audigy SE stock to sell which is selling because of the current low price and that if they include ALchemy, it would cannibalise the sales of the X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI so it's a company decision, the Xtreme Audio now sells at the same price at which Audigy SE used to sell when it was out.

 

[imperialreign]

buying alchemy=paying for fetures that should be free.

as to your bullshit imperialreign, check out the cmedia 8738 cards and note they have FULL vista support, not just built in drivers but FULL updated drivers for vista, this is a card thats as old as the sb live, so yeah, creative sucks.

also note that creative is STILL SELLING AUDIGY CARDS, if your selling it FUCKING SUPPORT IT dont try and charge people for proper support.........gdm fanboi's......

and you call me a fanboi?!

I have no qualms recommending another audio product if I feel that it would meet someone's needs. Personally, I find a lot of the attacks on Creative and their products to be truly unjustified and blown out of proportion by people such as yourself. There are too many people out there that expect instant gratification whith their hardware, and expect it to instantly work beyond their expectations - many times, the issue isn't with the product, but with the owner.

I've grown quite tired of your trollish posts

the Audigy is supported by Creative - they don't use EAX + Vista in their marketing for the cards; I agree it's a little f-ed up to charge people for the ALchemy drivers, but the sound card drivers are FREE. There's no gimmick there, and no slight of hand - contrary to your belief.

I can gurantee, also, that within the next year or two, we'll see the sales of the Audigy cards come to an end, as more people slowly migrate to Vista. Creative will continue to offer driver support for the Audigy for a year or two after sales have ceased - as they have with all previous sound card lineups.

If C-Media feels the need to continue support of legacy chipsets, that's their prerogative. If you also noticed, though, C-Media doesn't list a newer driver for the 8738 chipset with a release date newer than 2002, nor do they offer a driver release for Vista. So what that they still offer the download? I don't see ongoing support there. m00t argument, IMO.


Please, if you want to continue the trolling, do so on Creative's Forums, or find some other board to fill with filth. I see no need for it here.

 

[Mussels]

as to alchemy: its the same as if Nvidia or ATI started charging us to use DX9.0c under vista.

Oh sorry you only get DX8.1, we know your card used to work under XP, but vista changed things so you should either buy a new one or pay us for software to make your card work right.

 

[BumbRush]

check the forums, their sites updated by a diffrent part of the company, if a company has forums, CHECK THEM FIRST, since many times the websites are WAY out of date.

http://www.cmedia.com.tw/forums/viewtopic.php?t=863

updated as of july 20 2007, no need for more updates yet as the drivers have worked fine(i have tested them myself, and even 5.1 should works on the 8738 cards and works properly even in games.....something creatives struggled with to say the least, the reasion i said fanboi is that anything bad said about creative you jump in and call peopel liers for having seen or been effected by those propbems, i work in this field, and guess what, i have seen ALOT of these problems, the shop i was working at acctualy started giving creative owners a trade in value of 1/2 the price of a higher end card of their choice(all cmedia based eather auzen or ht omega cards that didnt use the x-fi chip) most took it because the problems they had with vista or even XP with the x-fi where dirrectly related to the drivers from creative.

creative started this downhill quest for ultimage suckage with the sblive cards and their inabliltiy to work properly on 85% of the boads on the market without setting the pci latancy at 96(stock is 16 or 32) the audigy once flushed out was an ok card but had its driver suit related issues, then the x-fi and its underwelming driver support, and creatives lack of xp x64 pro drivers for sblive/live24(same chip as audigy) cards........creative just needs to get a better driver team maby hire some linux programing nerds to start from scratch making drivers that acctualy work without being huge and combersome, hell look at the current drivers, its like watching a giant mountin troll lumber around trying to swat gnomes with a stone hammer.........better make that a drunken mountin troll

 

[BumbRush]

as to alchemy: its the same as if Nvidia or ATI started charging us to use DX9.0c under vista.

Oh sorry you only get DX8.1, we know your card used to work under XP, but vista changed things so you should either buy a new one or pay us for software to make your card work right.

exectly, im glad somebody saw my point.......

 

[btarunr]

as to alchemy: its the same as if Nvidia or ATI started charging us to use DX9.0c under vista.

Oh sorry you only get DX8.1, we know your card used to work under XP, but vista changed things so you should either buy a new one or pay us for software to make your card work right.

ALchemy for X-Fi is free. For Audigy it is paid because of the price slash....that people can get an Audigy SE for as low as $20. Secondly, the Audigy SE isn't a current generation product...the way Creative puts it. So I would reverse your logic....take my DirectX 9.0c graphics card to Vista and expect it to run a DX10 -only app such as NVidia Cascades. The reason ALchemy is paid for older cards is they don't want to suffer losses due to people getting away with $20 cards that are 80% the same as current cards, they would want their $45 cards SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio to not be cannibalised by this...so, though from a consumer's POV it's bad, not so from theirs and it's part of their EULA, and company policies we can't crib about. Microsoft is responsible for this no-DirectSound mess, don't blame Creative for that

And BumbRush, stop this Anti-Creative drama, you're gaining nothing constructive out of it.

 

[BumbRush]

btarunr ur wrong, again, its like buying a 9700pro just b4 dx9 came out, then having ati tell you that you gotta pay to get dx9 support, or getting an 8800gts/gtx b4 vista came out, then nvidia saying, "oh wait, you gotta pay to get dx10 support/drivers for that"

creative is still selling the audigy cards, if they didnt want to support them, then they should have stoped making them when the x-fi came out!!!!!

i would bitch about any company that pulls this kinda crap, if you charge to support something that should be supported by default ur disshonist, if you dissable fetures just to force people to buy a new card ur disshonist, just as saying the FX line of nvidia cards where directX9 was disshonest because, dispite them having the hardware to technicly do it, they couldnt do it at a playable framerate, its like selling somebody a yugo and telling them it can tow a 17foot boat, sure maby on a down hill sloap it can tow it

 

[imperialreign]

check the forums, their sites updated by a diffrent part of the company, if a company has forums, CHECK THEM FIRST, since many times the websites are WAY out of date.

http://www.cmedia.com.tw/forums/viewtopic.php?t=863

updated as of july 20 2007, no need for more updates yet as the drivers have worked fine(i have tested them myself, and even 5.1 should works on the 8738 cards and works properly even in games.....something creatives struggled with to say the least, the reasion i said fanboi is that anything bad said about creative you jump in and call peopel liers for having seen or been effected by those propbems, i work in this field, and guess what, i have seen ALOT of these problems, the shop i was working at acctualy started giving creative owners a trade in value of 1/2 the price of a higher end card of their choice(all cmedia based eather auzen or ht omega cards that didnt use the x-fi chip) most took it because the problems they had with vista or even XP with the x-fi where dirrectly related to the drivers from creative.

creative started this downhill quest for ultimage suckage with the sblive cards and their inabliltiy to work properly on 85% of the boads on the market without setting the pci latancy at 96(stock is 16 or 32) the audigy once flushed out was an ok card but had its driver suit related issues, then the x-fi and its underwelming driver support, and creatives lack of xp x64 pro drivers for sblive/live24(same chip as audigy) cards........creative just needs to get a better driver team maby hire some linux programing nerds to start from scratch making drivers that acctualy work without being huge and combersome, hell look at the current drivers, its like watching a giant mountin troll lumber around trying to swat gnomes with a stone hammer.........better make that a drunken mountin troll

Users shouldn't have to check forums for the most current driver release - unless they're looking for beta drivers. It makes no difference to me, then, if the most current driver is found listed on some BBS.

The most current "official" driver then, is the one listed on their site. That's how a user is going to look at it.

And, I'm not the only one calling your BS, and that's all it has been IMO is BS. Your arguments are quite unfounded, and you've been manipulating information to back your BS claims. That is trollism at it's best right there. If you actually made solid, legitimate arguments, I wouldn't have to call BS - it would simply be a disagreement.

It matters not to me if you work in this field or not - I've seen lots of issues as well, and not just with Creative's cards. If the "shop" you worked for had to resort to giving people discounts to convert over to other hardware - that's your issue that you weren't able to get drivers working on people's systems. To me that says incompetent. I've never had any major issues with the any of Creative's hardware, and it's never been a big headache to get things working as intended. Not until the release of Vista have I ever seen so many issues with a soundcard, and it's mostly with the X-Fi lineup, and has more to do with the OS audio kernel than with it being an issue with the audio hardware.

Also, citing that you had to set the PCI latency of the Live! cards to 96 is again a m00t argument. How many systems back then used a NIX card, a 2D VGA adapter, a 3D accelerator, and other PCI components? You think the PCI BUS might've been just a little bit saturated with IRQ requests?!!! C'mon, man, what kind of logical arguement is that you're trying to give me? BIOS is meant to allow for configuration of a system based upon the components installed upon it. Name one BIOS from any manufacturer that doesn't need to be 'configured' to some small extent.

creative is still selling the audigy cards, if they didnt want to support them, then they should have stoped making them when the x-fi came out!!!!!

i would bitch about any company that pulls this kinda crap, if you charge to support something that should be supported by default ur disshonist, if you dissable fetures just to force people to buy a new card ur disshonist, just as saying the FX line of nvidia cards where directX9 was disshonest because, dispite them having the hardware to technicly do it, they couldnt do it at a playable framerate, its like selling somebody a yugo and telling them it can tow a 17foot boat, sure maby on a down hill sloap it can tow it

THEY DO SUPPORT THE AUDIGY CARDS!!!
AUDIGY EAX SUPPORT IN VISTA IS NOT A MARKETING POINT!!!!

They don't disable features on the Audigy - thank MS for that lack of hardware acceleration, not Creative.

Take your trolling elsewhere.

 

[BumbRush]

oh and xp 8738 drivers that where updated as of Jul 31, 2006 no updates have been needed because the drivers JUST WORK!!!!

http://www.cmedia.com.tw/forums/viewtopic.php?t=261

creative fully dumped the sblive not even giving this much support..........so yeah, cmedia the smaller company totaly pwns creative in the support dept

 

[Mussels]

ALchemy for X-Fi is free. For Audigy it is paid because of the price slash....that people can get an Audigy SE for as low as $20. Secondly, the Audigy SE isn't a current generation product...the way Creative puts it. So I would reverse your logic....take my DirectX 9.0c graphics card to Vista and expect it to run a DX10 -only app such as NVidia Cascades. The reason ALchemy is paid for older cards is they don't want to suffer losses due to people getting away with $20 cards that are 80% the same as current cards, they would want their $45 cards SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio to not be cannibalised by this...so, though from a consumer's POV it's bad, not so from theirs and it's part of their EULA, and company policies we can't crib about. Microsoft is responsible for this no-DirectSound mess, don't blame Creative for that

And BumbRush, stop this Anti-Creative drama, you're gaining nothing constructive out of it.

no one cares about this price slash... we bought the cards BEFORE THAT HAPPENED.

I'd like to see how you'd react if your 6800GT was capped at DX 7.0 in vista unless you paid up because 'its a lot cheaper to buy now'

Yeah you love creative and you have a positive look on everything - some people get the short end of the stick, and DOWNgrading hardwares capabilities and charging to have it re-enabled is just low.

Edit: you're really looking at it the wrong way. with the video card analogy its not buying a DX9 card and expecing DX10 for free, its buying a DX9 card, using it as a DX9 card... and then being told you now have a DX7 card unless you pay up. you can buy a new one real cheap if you want, but its gunna have the same problem.


Edit2: i too had the issues with latency, but then again lots of hardware had issues like that in those days. crackling onboard audio and PCI cards almost went hand in hand.

 

[btarunr]

btarunr ur wrong, again, its like buying a 9700pro just b4 dx9 came out, then having ati tell you that you gotta pay to get dx9 support, or getting an 8800gts/gtx b4 vista came out, then nvidia saying, "oh wait, you gotta pay to get dx10 support/drivers for that"

creative is still selling the audigy cards, if they didnt want to support them, then they should have stoped making them when the x-fi came out!!!!!

The fact that they're selling them now doesn't imply that they should support it to current software. Certain Server/Workstation-class motherboards made by SuperMicro and TYAN, etc do NOT ship with drivers for all devices for Windows Vista. They ship with drivers for XP, Win2003, tons and tons of free Linux/BSD drivers and now, drivers for Server 2008. Beat that!. the logic is that when I make a certain piece of hardware for year 2008, I needn't guarantee software support for 2011. It's not that Creative doesn't offer the support, only that it isn't free because the prices are slashed and that they don't want the surplus stock / current Audigy users to eat into the X-Fi series sales which isn't a big thing to fuss about, really. They have surplus stock of Audigy SE left worldwide, they can't recall all of them and rebadge them to X-Fi which is why they chose to cut their costs and offer ALchemy as a premium feature.


The rest of your post makes no sense.

 

[BumbRush]

Users shouldn't have to check forums for the most current driver release - unless they're looking for beta drivers. It makes no difference to me, then, if the most current driver is found listed on some BBS.

The most current "official" driver then, is the one listed on their site. That's how a user is going to look at it.

And, I'm not the only one calling your BS, and that's all it has been IMO is BS. Your arguments are quite unfounded, and you've been manipulating information to back your BS claims. That is trollism at it's best right there. If you actually made solid, legitimate arguments, I wouldn't have to call BS - it would simply be a disagreement.

It matters not to me if you work in this field or not - I've seen lots of issues as well, and not just with Creative's cards. If the "shop" you worked for had to resort to giving people discounts to convert over to other hardware - that's your issue that you weren't able to get drivers working on people's systems. To me that says incompetent. I've never had any major issues with the any of Creative's hardware, and it's never been a big headache to get things working as intended. Not until the release of Vista have I ever seen so many issues with a soundcard, and it's mostly with the X-Fi lineup, and has more to do with the OS audio kernel than with it being an issue with the audio hardware.

Also, citing that you had to set the PCI latency of the Live! cards to 96 is again a m00t argument. How many systems back then used a NIX card, a 2D VGA adapter, a 3D accelerator, and other PCI components? You think the PCI BUS might've been just a little bit saturated with IRQ requests?!!! C'mon, man, what kind of logical arguement is that you're trying to give me? BIOS is meant to allow for configuration of a system based upon the components installed upon it. Name one BIOS from any manufacturer that doesn't need to be 'configured' to some small extent.





THEY DO SUPPORT THE AUDIGY CARDS!!!
AUDIGY EAX SUPPORT IN VISTA IS NOT A MARKETING POINT!!!!

They don't disable features on the Audigy - thank MS for that lack of hardware acceleration, not Creative.

Take your trolling elsewhere.

im not gonna spend 4hrs trying diffrent fixes for each system till i find the magic fix for each one to get the creative shitty POS drivers to work, its not cost effective use of the 25/hr i get payed(after taxes).

and if its the pci buss thats the problem answer me this, why would the sblive card STILL POP when it was the ONLY pci device? or why would every other companys card work PERFECTLY and creatives be the ONLY one that had problems?

its called incompatance, the owner finnely instatuted the trade up program for 1 resion he was sick of me having to spend as long as 4hrs fucking with a system to get the damn thing to work correctly, then i had to make a restore point AND reg backup just incase somehow something the client did messed up the drivers magic tweaks and caused it to fuk up again.


"And, I'm not the only one calling your BS," yeah you have btarunr a self admited nvidiot fanboi as your assistant.....thats really crediable........

 

[Mussels]

you cant blame vista for the audio thing, that is just a marketing spin. It works on the X-fi *and* it works on the audigy cards - in fact, i'm sure it'd work on any card that used alchemy.

Heres the thing... why are they charging, why is it a seperate app and not part of the drivers? no one should have to pay more for something they already paid for! screw this 'aaudigy SE for $xx' i paid $150 for the audigy 4, creatives TOP card before the X-fi... and i got shafted. Oops we released a new one, go get screwed. I'll never buy creative again because of crap like this - i dont give a shit what it sounds like or how pretty the box cover art is, if they did this once they'll do it again with the next gen. WIth video cards we upgrade when performance of features convince us, not because features we've used for a long time suddenly stop working.

 

[imperialreign]

im not gonna spend 4hrs trying diffrent fixes for each system till i find the magic fix for each one to get the creative shitty POS drivers to work, its not cost effective use of the 25/hr i get payed(after taxes).

and if its the pci buss thats the problem answer me this, why would the sblive card STILL POP when it was the ONLY pci device? or why would every other companys card work PERFECTLY and creatives be the ONLY one that had problems?

its called incompatance, the owner finnely instatuted the trade up program for 1 resion he was sick of me having to spend as long as 4hrs fucking with a system to get the damn thing to work correctly, then i had to make a restore point AND reg backup just incase somehow something the client did messed up the drivers magic tweaks and caused it to fuk up again.


"And, I'm not the only one calling your BS," yeah you have btarunr a self admited nvidiot fanboi as your assistant.....thats really crediable........

If you consider youself an IT tech - or whatever - than it's your job to configure someone's system for them to be happy with it. Saying that you won't deal with drivers because it would take you 4 hours to get them working means that you have some very shoddy work ethics and practices, IMO. you'd rather screw your customers by having them buy something else becuase you don't want to actually work? That's crooked, IMO.

And if it took you 4hrs per system (which is how you make it out to sound), I'd have to say that's incompetent in itself. Not EVERY system has issues with audio cards, of any sort.

As to your question about when a Live! would still pop being the only device on the BUS - I'd have to know more about what kind of setup it was. If it's in a more modern setup, it could be a number of things. On older hardware, it could've been a number of things as well - even down to poor IRQ setup. Creative's cards have always been a bit BUS hungry, but they've also performed faster than any competing hardware as well. Whenever they release a new lineup, their cards further push what hardware and software voices are capable of being processed, surpassing that of all competition that is currently out. But back in the days when the live was released, you couldn't have only one device on a PCI BUS - not if you actually wanted to run a monitor.

bta hasn't been the only other one to call your BS. I was mentioning that to point out that we find your arguements flawed, and that you continue to provide flawed arguments. Resorting to insulting other members in such a fashion is quite low as well.