Creative seriously screw up BIIIIIIIIG TIME!

[new_rez]

Seriously, i've never seen something screw up so bad! It really is worth a look! The first link is to the message that sparked the hatred. People are threatening legal action & such.

Original post - http://forums.creative.com/creativel...read.id=116332

State of the forums - http://forums.creative.com/creativel...d=soundblaster

OCN summary - http://www.overclock.net/hardware-ne...all-glory.html

I hope something comes out of this. Creative driver support is crud.

[new_rez]

This is pretty important.

[imperialreign]

it's been beaten to a dead horse here already - too many users out there who fail to think before getting their thongs in a bunch over something that Creative is within their right to do.

[new_rez]

Well, im with the guys against creative. They are out of order. Intentionally crippling soundcard feature in the drivers and such. All that dude was doing was making them work well in vista.

[imperialreign]

problem being - Auzen has the license for Dolby encoding, that's why their cards work. The X-Fis are capable, but for Creative to enable such capability with their drivers infringes upon whatever agreement there is between Auzen and Creative, and Auzen and Dolby.

The issue in Vista isn't just limited to Creative sound cards, either. Both Razer's AC-1 and the ASUS Xonar have similar issues with Dolby playback, especially in 3rd party software such as PowerDVD.

The response on Creative's forums and elsewhere just says "mindless sheep" to me, as no one is really stopping to think about any legal limitations that Creative might be under when it comes to the Dolby capabilites.

[new_rez]

Im sure people have little chance in taking legal action or w/e, but i still think it was a bad move by creative. Otherwise there wouldn't be such uproar.

[imperialreign]

Originally Posted by new_rez

Im sure people have little chance in taking legal action or w/e, but i still think it was a bad move by creative. Otherwise there wouldn't be such uproar.

I agree - these online petitions and threats of legal action won't solve anything. Neither the Audigy cards, nor the X-Fis were ever advertised with Dolby encoding support, and if the issue truly lies within Vista, it's not Creative's problem.

They shouldn't have made the issue public. It's possible that Creative was put into a position to have to do something, if Dolby or Auzen pressured Creative; but that's hard to say.

Either way, it truly should've been done behind closed doors - through email or whatever. Now that Creative has made the issue public, they'll have to respond to it in some way shape or form. What was a private issue has now gone public, and the public has a right to know what happened.

I just think a lot of people are too quick to pick a scapegoat and jump the gun, and considering Creative's market share, they're the first target.

[DaMulta]

Fire the guys that can't fix the things that need to be fixed, and hire the guys that can fix the @!#%@# problem sloved.

[AsRock]

Creative to me were only good once upon a time. The EMU chip was sweet still is today but if i remember right it was not there doing it was from another company that they brought out years ago.


i'll never buy them until they prove to me they are as good back int he day.

[imperialreign]

E-Mu has been a Creative brand since 92 or 93, IIRC. Great products aimed at the audio creation industry. Still are great products, although a bit pricey.

TBH, a lot of their current tech descends from E-Mu designs, IIRC.

[AsRock]

Originally Posted by imperialreign

E-Mu has been a Creative brand since 92 or 93, IIRC. Great products aimed at the audio creation industry. Still are great products, although a bit pricey.

TBH, a lot of their current tech descends from E-Mu designs, IIRC.

about time they improved on it or cannot Creative do this ?. till about year 2000 i used to be able to say yes creative is the card you want in your PC. but today you have no chance me saying it for a few reasons.

i wish Creative did not own EMU maybe there would of been a much better sound card by now with...

EDIT:
EMU yes indeed pricy but Creative cards are to for what they do. I've got better and more support by having a onboard sound card. And for this one on this mobo it's sweet once rigged to a amp.

[imperialreign]

TBH, I think the big issue here isn't Creative's drivers - but WIN Vista.

All other competing audio cards right now are having similar issues with loss of functionality. Creative just seems to be taking the brunt of it due to how large their customer base is.

Modded drivers break the EULA; Creative are within their rights with this situation . . . they just goofed in how they've decided to handle it.

[btarunr]

Yup, Creative support is going downhill but it's high time they set right their entire software and marketing and support departments. The only department in that company that seems to be doing its job well are the RnD (hardware) and manufacturing....and arguably the legal (IPO) departments (for bonking out Daniel_K....which is justified as an EULA violation). Well, our clubhouse tries its best to help such distressed users. (and this is shameless on my part).


Here's my sub-topic: Was Daniel_K justified despite the technical EULA violation?

My answer: Dan didn't deserve that sort of treatment from Creative. Unwinder and W1zzard have both modded drivers for ATI Technologies, and ATI has a EULA too, but instead ATI offered them jobs.

[imperialreign]

I think he was within his right as an indvidual, regardless of breaking the EULA at all. Manfucaturer's tend to not notice these kinds of things, they turn a blind-eye to it.

But, you start asking donations for continued improvment, that will catch their attention.

Is it possible Creative still might hire him on and they're only trying to clear out the shade-tree software first? Entirelly possible.

It's also possible that pressure was put on Creative from either Auzen or Dolby.

Until we see some kind of official statement from Creative execs, it's only a guessing game.



Asides - I have half a mind to post a link on Creative's Forums to the XSS; although I fear a spill over effect of the bashing, as I've tried to keep that thread as crap free as possible.

[candle_86]

http://forums.creative.com/creativel...117948#M117948

read this, if this is true, creative is in alot of trouble

[btarunr]

Originally Posted by imperialreign

I think he was within his right as an indvidual, regardless of breaking the EULA at all. Manfucaturer's tend to not notice these kinds of things, they turn a blind-eye to it.

But, you start asking donations for continued improvment, that will catch their attention.

Is it possible Creative still might hire him on and they're only trying to clear out the shade-tree software first? Entirelly possible.

It's also possible that pressure was put on Creative from either Auzen or Dolby.

Until we see some kind of official statement from Creative execs, it's only a guessing game.



Asides - I have half a mind to post a link on Creative's Forums to the XSS; although I fear a spill over effect of the bashing, as I've tried to keep that thread as crap free as possible.

It goes beyond an EULA violation, it becomes a question of ethics. Creative could have ignored Daniel or done themselves a BIG favour by hiring him, at least hiring him is a more sensible thing to do than cribbing about him collecting donations. Afterall, his work deserves a donation of which is voluntary. Tomorrow when I roll out my "kitchenfoil mod" for the X-Fi (coming soon (sneak peak: addresses several cracking/popping/EMI/thermal issues of CA20K1 based cards)), I don't want to face flack from Creative so I'm now in doubt whether to scrap the project or modify the project to address issues of all sound card brands (which is time consuming and doesn't fit into my upcoming academic schedule).

[JC316]

First rule if old tech works, then there would be no reason to buy new tech, especially in the sound card market which is about as advanced as it's gonna get for a while. So why would they want someone fixing their intentional bugs? They have shot themselves in the foot in this case.

I would LOVE to see everyone band together on something like this and hit the greedy bastards where it hurts, the bank account. If people could do that, ALOT of injustices in this world would be stopped. I have personally never liked Creative, the last product that I bought was returned the next day due to incompatible drivers.

[lemonadesoda]

Creative products used to be really OK. More than good enough for joe consumer... but never good enough for pro-audio production.

But their drivers sucked, were bloated, and were LATE to fix. They also had this stupid "driver upgrade" files on their website, and no "full driver install". Meaning you had to LOAD BUGGY DRIVERS FIRST FROM CD and THEN update. Completely idiotic.

I havent bought a Creative card in a long time... Since my Audigy 1 and Audigy 2 are easily recyclable into new builds. AND THATS THE RUB FOR CREATIVE. Very few people were buying new cards, but were reusing older cards into new builds. So they thought "LETS SCREW 'EM ME HEARTIES... And MAKE them buy a new card by NOT giving them Vista drivers".

It's a business model / position they are entitled to take. But then they have to live with the consequences.

I agree with the sentiment of the thread on the Creative forum... DOWN WITH CREATIVE. LOST ONE MORE CUSTOMER.

I would have posted there also... except you have to jump through a 100 hoops to register and invent some ridiculously complex password. I guess that one ANOTHER ATTEMPT to keep complainers off the board... but evidently not given the 200,000+ views and 200 pages worth of comments in just a weekend. WOW.

[btarunr]

Actually our TPU clubhouse seems to be of far higher standards (and helpful) than Creative's forums

Would people backing away from buying Creative stuff hit them hard? Not quite. By the looks of it, they're in plans of selling their chipset to sound-card manufacturers prettymuch like how C-Media do it....and they outsource product support to them so they could just make and sell the APU and wash their hands off. This could be one of the reasons behind Creative becoming such big assholes that a rhino could pass through. They've already roped in Auzentech and MSI, more to follow.

[Hawk1]

Originally Posted by btarunr

Actually our TPU clubhouse seems to be of far higher standards (and helpful) than Creative's forums

Would people backing away from buying Creative stuff hit them hard? Not quite. By the looks of it, they're in plans of selling their chipset to sound-card manufacturers prettymuch like how C-Media do it....and they outsource product support to them so they could just make and sell the APU and wash their hands off. This could be one of the reasons behind Creative becoming such big assholes that a rhino could pass through. They've already roped in Auzentech and MSI, more to follow.

Well then it may be time to take a look at ASUS or Razer.

[btarunr]

Originally Posted by Hawk1

Well then it may be time to take a look at ASUS or Razer.

Or Auzentech, which I already have.

HTOmega is another great company.

[Hawk1]

Originally Posted by btarunr

Or Auzentech, which I already have.

Yeah, I know, but they license from Creative, so if you REALLY dont want any connection to Creative, this wouldn't be your option. I personally wouldn't boycott, but I just want my XFI to work the same in VISTA as it does in XP - still some bugs there.

[imperialreign]

Originally Posted by btarunr

It goes beyond an EULA violation, it becomes a question of ethics. Creative could have ignored Daniel or done themselves a BIG favour by hiring him, at least hiring him is a more sensible thing to do than cribbing about him collecting donations. Afterall, his work deserves a donation of which is voluntary. Tomorrow when I roll out my "kitchenfoil mod" for the X-Fi (coming soon (sneak peak: addresses several cracking/popping/EMI/thermal issues of CA20K1 based cards)), I don't want to face flack from Creative so I'm now in doubt whether to scrap the project or modify the project to address issues of all sound card brands (which is time consuming and doesn't fit into my upcoming academic schedule).

Honestly, I truly felt Creative approached the issue in a very unprofessional way. Truth be told, I'd like to see Creative hire him on, lord knows they need the extra help with their software.

But, I think the herd mentality has grabbed hold of most visitors to their forums as well - no one seemed to notice that Creative isn't fragging Daniel_k on his Audigy drivers, only the X-Fi drivers. Seems to me that there's something going on behind the scenes with that. IDK if it has something to do with functionality that Creative intend to add to the cards, or if unlocking certain features could cause strained relations between either Auzen or Dolby - hard to say.

But, everyone's "we're gonna file a class action lawsuit" won't do crap - seriously. People over there breaking their hardware won't do anything either. Posting threads loaded with insults doesn't solve anything, nor do online petitions.

The thing I find so friggin funny about it - everyone getting upwaded over the fact that Creative have listed Minimum requirements for the card as XP and Vista. Only two online retailers (that I know of) actually advertise it this way: Creative Shop and Newegg. There are numerous manufacturers whose hardware and drivers still suck-ass in Vista listing the new OS as min spec. Everyone is complaining that Creative have removed functionality in Vista - but, I haven't seen a single thread on any site that specifically details what functionality has been removed. On top of that, the majority of issues relating to functionality is due to the Vista OS - lack of 5.1 support, reduction of 5.1 or 7.1 to 2-channel, loss of Dolby decoding capabilites, etc - all revolves around MS' bullshit OS architecture - and Creative isn't the only manufacturer that has those same issues. the Xonar, AC-1, HT Omega and all other soundcards with similar capabilities suffer the same loss of functionality. I find it funny how many people have threatened to purchase competing hardware instead, when they'll more than likely be plagued by the same issues.

I also feel that yes, Creative's Vista drivers are a bit more dodgy than other manufacturers, but Creative were late to the game. If the collaboration between Creative, MS and nVidia had worked out just fine - we'd have hardware accelaration within Vista, and working drivers. nVidia pulled out of the joint effort, and MS decided to drop it at that point, which left Creative high and dry; now they had to go an write drivers from the ground up on a different OS architecture than they had originally forseen being used; plus they put a lot of time and development into the OpenAL API as well. Creative was one of the only manufacturers that was over a month behind with official drivers after the OSes release.


Asides - @btarunr, I don't think there'd be an issue with your project being posted up. Technically, and modification to the cards voids the warranty, and I've made sure to specifically spell that out in post #1. I think you'd be alright with it.

Anyhow, I just got home from work, so I'm trying to catch up as to what all crap has transpired in the Creative realm over the last 12 hours . . .

[imperialreign]

sorry for the double post

In light of what's going on at Creative's site, I'm seeing quite a few threads of legitimate issues people are bringing up that fall into utter spamming and chaos amoungst the mob of irrate users there. I'm half considering posting a link to the XSS thread on Creative's forums to possibly unload some of those issues so their mods can better handle the trolls.

I'd like some opinionsfirst, though:

[Nitro-Max]

I still love my card thanks creative i also havent swallowed the vista bug either so this doesnt effect me why complicate my life even more?