Founder of Creative Technology (Sound Blaster) Dies

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Sim Wong Hoo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Creative Technology, passed away peacefully on January 4, 2023, according to a letter that was sent out by the company's board of directors yesterday, one in which it expressed gratitude for the immense contributions that the executive made during his tenure at Creative, which he founded in 1981.

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Aw, that's a shame.

Creative has not been as influential in the last 15-20 years (in large part due to Microsoft killing off the DirectSound 3D Audio HAL with the launch of Vista)

In the early days of this hobby, getting a Sound Blaster (First a Sound Blaster Pro in 1991, and later an AWE32 in 1994) was what really started making PC gaming interesting compared to the bleep bloop PC Speaker era.

It's really a shame that Microsoft killed off the DirectSound 3D Audio HAL. Apparently Creative had no warning at all. They found out a few weeks before Vista launched and were like "Oh, ****, that's our entire business model". It's pretty impressive they survived that.
 
RIP sir. You helped changed the industry in a huge way. I may've stopped using sound cards with the advent of HDMI and improved onboard options of motherboards but I'll never forget the awesome sound I enjoyed with my P4 build in the early 2000s.
 
My first Sound Card was a Sound Blaster 2.0. But I don't think I even heard the name Creative Labs in the past five years.
 
MadMummy76 said:
My first Sound Card was a Sound Blaster 2.0. But I don't think I even heard the name Creative Labs in the past five years.
Click to expand...

They made quite a splash a couple of years ago with their new DSP based technology that attempts to make headphones sound like speakers.

They called it Super X-Fi. I used it on a Sound Blaster X3 and it was pretty impressive.

You have to take pictures of your ears, which it analyses with some sort of algorithm and creates a profile, that tries to mimic the different ways sounds simultaneously passes through our skull and brain, and enters our ear drums. Coupled with a headphone specific profile, they used that data to make regular 2 channel headphones sound "airer" and provide better surround sound.

It worked pretty well after I got dialed in on my X3, but then the thing went haywire after about a year, right after my warranty expired, of course.

I'm not sure I'd buy another one, as I kind of like the traditional headphone sound, but it is pretty cool tech if you ever get a chance to sample it.
 
MadMummy76 said:
My first Sound Card was a Sound Blaster 2.0. But I don't think I even heard the name Creative Labs in the past five years.
Click to expand...
Pretty sure mine was too. Been so long that I don't remember. I do remember being pissed when they lost a lawsuit with the engineers who helped in developing it due to not having everything properly licensed and put out a driver that flashed the firmware so that the advertised on-the-box 24/192 became 24/96. I updated the driver w/o realizing that and after I noticed the sampling rate changed I googled it and was shocked. Years later I got one of the X Audigy's or some such and used it for a few years. I still have that one sitting up in a closet. Used it with a P4 rig and then Quad2Core but retired it to use the optical with that rig and later on then GPU HDMI when I built the 2600K rig with its 2x 560 Ti's in SLI.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
Pretty sure mine was too. Been so long that I don't remember. I do remember being pissed when they lost a lawsuit with the engineers who helped in developing it due to not having everything properly licensed and put out a driver that flashed the firmware so that the advertised on-the-box 24/192 became 24/96. I updated the driver w/o realizing that and after I noticed the sampling rate changed I googled it and was shocked.
Click to expand...

Sucks to lose advertised features, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn't make a difference unless you were working in audio production.
For playback purposes there is no benefit in anyhting over 16bit 44.1khz. You alwasy want your audio hardware to match the formats you are playing back, otherwise it results in dithering/upscaling, and 99.9% of the time, the source material is 16bit 44.1khz.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
Years later I got one of the X Audigy's or some such and used it for a few years. I still have that one sitting up in a closet. Used it with a P4 rig and then Quad2Core but retired it to use the optical with that rig and later on then GPU HDMI when I built the 2600K rig with its 2x 560 Ti's in SLI.
Click to expand...

I had some form of Audigy I think in college. I can't remember. For some reason most of my college hardware got thrown out. I think I left it in a box in my parents basement, and they got rid of it after I moved out and started my first job. A bit of a bummer, but it is what it is.

After that I had a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD starting in like 2009 I think? I had that in my machine up until very recently, when I pulled it because I just didn't need it anymore.

I've been using USB DAC's for years, but even after I made the switch, I found it nice to have the Titanium HD around for recording purposes, as none of my USB DAC's have inputs. The Titanium HD had actual RCA in and outs which was badass, IMHO. I loved not having to use a 3.5mm to RCA adapter all the time.

iu
 
Aside from my time with the Aureal Vortex 2 (one of my favorite sound cards of all time), and a Turtle Beach or two in the super-early days, literally the entire time I've been using PCs I have been using SoundBlaster cards. I am still using a SoundBlaster (X-Fi).

RIP Mr. Hoo, thanks for all the awesome Creative Labs sh1t over the years.

Zarathustra said:
It's really a shame that Microsoft killed off the DirectSound 3D Audio HAL. Apparently Creative had no warning at all. They found out a few weeks before Vista launched and were like "Oh, ****, that's our entire business model". It's pretty impressive they survived that.
Click to expand...
Still really pissed about that. Now the only way to get hardware-accelerated audio in Windows is through applications using OpenAL instead of XAudio (thank you Unreal Tournament 1-3 and Serious Sam Fusion, and OpenAL output plugins for Winamp 5), or by using ALchemy (which translates DirectSound3D calls into OpenAL calls). At least in Linux ALL audio gets processed by the sound card.
 
Zarathustra said:
After that I had a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD starting in like 2009 I think? I had that in my machine up until very recently, when I pulled it because I just didn't need it anymore.
Click to expand...
That is a card of beauty! I went home for the holidays and mailed myself back my old computer I'd given to my sister years ago. Audigy 2ZS PCI. Can't wait to get 98 back on it. Mr. Hoo, RIP, you gave me the best memories I've ever had in computer audio.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
Pretty sure mine was too. Been so long that I don't remember. I do remember being pissed when they lost a lawsuit with the engineers who helped in developing it due to not having everything properly licensed and put out a driver that flashed the firmware so that the advertised on-the-box 24/192 became 24/96. I updated the driver w/o realizing that and after I noticed the sampling rate changed I googled it and was shocked. Years later I got one of the X Audigy's or some such and used it for a few years. I still have that one sitting up in a closet. Used it with a P4 rig and then Quad2Core but retired it to use the optical with that rig and later on then GPU HDMI when I built the 2600K rig with its 2x 560 Ti's in SLI.
Click to expand...
No, the original 2.0 was 8-bit 11khz stereo, or 8-bit 44khz mono capable only. This is an 1991 card. I owned it between 1994-1996.

Where features were not fully exposed by the driver was the EMU10K days. I had a Live!, and you had to run 3rd party hacked drivers to be able to utilize the full potential, but then many games crapped out due to compatibility issues. Although by the mid 2000s even the official drivers had problems with new games, I used my Live! well beyond its intended shelf life.

The last sound card I used was an Audigy 2. Which served me until PCI ports died out.
For some reason, I don't remember what got into me, I purchased an Audigy RX in 2014, but it's still sitting in some drawer, I never actually used it.
 
I know I had a SB16 way back, my edge3D GPU/Soundcard sucked balls so I added one of those in my Cyrix p166+ machine.

Been rummaging in some of my old hardware and found my old Audigy SB 1349 and X-fi titanium Fatal1ty. Don't think I ever used anything then a creative soundcard since that Edge crap pos.
 
Zarathustra said:
Sucks to lose advertised features, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn't make a difference unless you were working in audio production.
For playback purposes there is no benefit in anyhting over 16bit 44.1khz. You alwasy want your audio hardware to match the formats you are playing back, otherwise it results in dithering/upscaling, and 99.9% of the time, the source material is 16bit 44.1khz.
Click to expand...
Although I used it for gaming I was also experimenting with transferring vinyl to wav back then but I totally agree otherwise. I was also using that PC as an HTPC and had it connected to a Sony Trinitron via gold-contact S-Video and a Panasonic 6.1 receiver. Back then, PowerDVD was a cool thing and my PC actually provided better playback than any standalone I had at the time. Good times.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
I was also using that PC as an HTPC and had it connected to a Sony Trinitron via gold-contact S-Video
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You didn't use RGB? Shame!

Oh yeah, The US didn't have EUROSCART, at least there is one thing we were ahead in. Well, two we had 576i resolution on PAL compared to NTSC's paltry 480i.
 
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MadMummy76 said:
You didn't use RGB? Shame!

Oh yeah, The US didn't have EUROSCART, at least there is one thing we were ahead in. Well, two we had 576i resolution on PAL compared to NTSC's paltry 480i.
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Exactly but gotta say that pushing stuff at 1024x768 60hz back then looked pretty nice. Once I upgraded to some nice gold cables it got rid of nearly all the signal noise and looked really sharp.
 
Roommate had one of the early 8bit ones, I guess the SB 2.0 in his Gateway. I had a SB Pro, then AWE32 (midi was so cool back then, wonder why that died out), AWE64 Gold, Live, Audigy something, and still using the X-Fi Fatal1ty I got on clearance at Fry's like 15 years ago.

Somewhere in between was a Gravis something which sounded really good with music but games were an issue, also it had some kind of spider break-out cable in the back instead of regular ports and that broke at some point.

Honestly if the X-Fi ever dies (or becomes unsupportable) I doubt I'll buy another one. Just use onboard or hdmi or something. However having those optical in ports are nice when I want to use my PS4 in my office.... which honestly I haven't done in 3-4 years anyway
 
Burticus said:
Somewhere in between was a Gravis something which sounded really good with music but games were an issue, also it had some kind of spider break-out cable in the back instead of regular ports and that broke at some point.
Click to expand...

I never actually heard a Gravis Ultrasound. Back in the DOS days I kept seeing them in some games setup menus, and I was really curious if it was any good.

I recall some games having support for the Gravis Ultrasound, but I also remember many having no support for it at all, only Sound Blaster and Adlib.

I bet it sounded awesome in the games that worked with it, but that you often got no sound at all in many titles.

Burticus said:
Roommate had one of the early 8bit ones, I guess the SB 2.0 in his Gateway. I had a SB Pro, then AWE32 (midi was so cool back then, wonder why that died out), AWE64 Gold, Live, Audigy something, and still using the X-Fi Fatal1ty I got on clearance at Fry's like 15 years ago.
Click to expand...

I loved my AWE32. It was a HUGE improvement over Adlib based FM systhesis MIDI, though in some games the samples sounded a little weird.
I had that thing for tears before I realized that if I populated the SIM RAM SIM slots on it with my RAM from my old 486, I could download larger Soundfont packs from the internet and vastly improve the sound.

At some point I upgraded to a motherboard that no longer had ISA slots. Might have been my Socket A Duron in 2001. At that point I retired it and got a PCI compatible souind card. I think it was a Sound Blaster Live (I misremembered earlier when I said Audigy).
At that point most new games weren't using MIDI for music anymore. They had digital audio where they could choose their own sounds or even have orchestral tracks. There really wasnt a need for the midi anymore, which is probably why it went away except for among musicians who still use it for keyboards and trackers.
 
Ah computer audio. It could be more than a 3.5mm hole, but it won't be for some reason.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
Exactly but gotta say that pushing stuff at 1024x768 60hz back then looked pretty nice. Once I upgraded to some nice gold cables it got rid of nearly all the signal noise and looked really sharp.
Click to expand...
When using an S-VIDEO out it wasn't really pushing 1024x768 to the TV, the onboard TV out chip just downconverted it to a regular TV signal

Using the RGB method however the TV out chip was entirely bypassed as the cable was connected directly to the analog monitor output. You needed special software to set up the resolution needed. 720x576 worked for most TVs. And you needed to enable sync on green, which only ATI cards supported, couldn't do this on nVidia.

Now that was actually a crisp picture, not even comparable to s-video out. I used this method on my HTPC until I got a flat screen TV in 2012.
 
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