Founder of Creative Technology (Sound Blaster) Dies

[Niner51]

RIP. I used my X-Fi Xtreme Music card for years, before it just wouldn't function with the new OS's. It was a great card.

 

[LazyGamer]

I still have an X-Fi... something, forget why I'd stopped using it many years back; I did try one of the newer cards, but wound up returning it because it would reliably push all sound to only one channel after some use. Never understood how that would be possible, but surprise!, the ASUS Z170 board I was using at the time was able to power my Sennheiser HD600 (300Ohm) directly, until I picked up an O2/ODAC combo unit from JBS Labs (which I'm still using on one of my systems).

 

[Soulstorm brew]

Used an Audigy back in the days, when onboard audio was crap.
Creative weren´t always nice though, anyone remember them gimping cards, and you needed daniel ks drivers to unlock them.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Used an Audigy back in the days, when onboard audio was crap.
Creative weren´t always nice though, anyone remember them gimping cards, and you needed daniel ks drivers to unlock them.

Yep, I mentioned that earlier in this thread. I didn't know about the Daniel KS drivers. I was pissed when it happened. I had already owned the card for a time and then innocently installed an update and didn't think anything about it. At some point down the road, I noticed it didn't sound the same and checked the sampling rate and was shocked and then found out it was because they lost a lawsuit over licensing.

 

[Burticus]

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.

And let's not forget the necessary but massive PITA that was Powerstrip. Needed that to create the custom resolutions and frequencies needed to get a full on HD desktop on my Mits RPTV without massive overscan. It looked great and worked for movies and desktop stuff, but never could get games to cooperate until HDMI became a thing.

 

[MadMummy76]

And let's not forget the necessary but massive PITA that was Powerstrip. Needed that to create the custom resolutions and frequencies needed to get a full on HD desktop on my Mits RPTV without massive overscan. It looked great and worked for movies and desktop stuff, but never could get games to cooperate until HDMI became a thing.

Yes, powerstrip that was the utility that allowed to create custom resolutions and scan frequencies.

 

[SmokeRngs]

Used an Audigy back in the days, when onboard audio was crap.
Creative weren´t always nice though, anyone remember them gimping cards, and you needed daniel ks drivers to unlock them.

Don't forget about the time, the very short time, Creative had planned to charge users to get drivers for the cards. That was something planned during the SB Live era and they only pulled it before it went live due to the massive negative feedback. That was the last straw for me regarding Creative cards and never used another one after my Live. Stopped using it during the nForce2 Soundstorm days. Drivers for that tended to be buggy as well but it worked for the most part and stuck with onboard sound ever since.

Outside of being able to drive high-ohm headphones (and some onboard audio can do that fine) there would be no reason for me to bother with anything other than onboard for my analog sound needs. As it is I don't even have high-ohm headphones to drive so that isn't a concern. I've had no issues with electrical interference from using onboard sound which is one of the other main reasons given for an add-in card. Besides, the motherboard has the sound built-in whether I use it or not and since it's good enough I see no reason not to put the extra money saved from not purchasing a sound card towards something else in the build.

 

[Zarathustra]

Don't forget about the time, the very short time, Creative had planned to charge users to get drivers for the cards. That was something planned during the SB Live era and they only pulled it before it went live due to the massive negative feedback. That was the last straw for me regarding Creative cards and never used another one after my Live. Stopped using it during the nForce2 Soundstorm days. Drivers for that tended to be buggy as well but it worked for the most part and stuck with onboard sound ever since.

Yeah, that was ****ty. I had forgotten about that.

That said, the whole PC peripherals and expansion cards market was in an upheaval at that time.

The whole industry had naively assumed that the Windows driver model used in Windows XP would remain unchanged in perpetuity, and then when Vista came out and it changed, the industry as a whole threw a hissy-fit when they realized they had to rewrite their drivers. They hadn't budgeted for that, or factored it into their product costs.

This was one of the main reasons the Vista launch was so rocky. Due to industry having a temper-tantrum and refusing to rewrite drivers, Vista launched with terrible hardware support.

Creative was hit particularly hard by this, as the end of the DirectSound 3D HAL in Vista completely took their value proposition away from them, requiring them to do a massive amount of work on the software side. Had this been factored in when the products were developed, that would have been built into the cost of the sound cards, but they only found out a few weeks before Vista was supposed to launch :/

Microsoft really screwed the pooch on messaging there.

It might just have been a desperate attempt to keep the company afloat looking forward towards an uncertain future without the DirectSound 3D HAL, and sudden unplanned and expensive software projects.

Still, ****ty, but I think they were legitimately concerned about the survival of the company.

 

[Brian_B]

Don't forget about the time, the very short time, Creative had planned to charge users to get drivers for the cards. That was something planned during the SB Live era and they only pulled it before it went live due to the massive negative feedback. That was the last straw for me regarding Creative cards and never used another one after my Live. Stopped using it during the nForce2 Soundstorm days. Drivers for that tended to be buggy as well but it worked for the most part and stuck with onboard sound ever since.

This is, unfortunately, what I remember most about Sound Blaster. I used to love them, think the last one I had was an AWE32 or something - then one day they wanted cash for a driver upgrade. I said "NOPE" and never looked back.

 

[Burticus]

This is, unfortunately, what I remember most about Sound Blaster. I used to love them, think the last one I had was an AWE32 or something - then one day they wanted cash for a driver upgrade. I said "NOPE" and never looked back.

And that is when I discovered the Daniel K drivers, when my Audigy suddenly went "unsupported" on Vista/w7