Creative share price hits lowest point since 1996.

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
The X-Fi sucked? It was the only leap since the original Audigy

Leap in terms of what? Sure it had some vague HRTF processing, and a 'crystalizer' that did the complete opposite of what it was intended to do while managing to be effectively deceptive.

No new sound propagation models (once again), in fact no propagation model whatsoever. No attempts at procedural sound, no VST support in the mixer, completely redundant and slow as shit memory chips that had no purpose other than looking 'hip'. The whole thing was a gimmick from top to bottom. At least the Audigy 2 wasn't a poser.

Originally posted by: JohnCU
How much better can they make a sound card, though?

That's part of the problem, sound DSPs are obsolete. Everything the X-Fi did could have been done in software at no cost. From a business standpoint, that was not an option, so the X-Fi had to be necessarily shipped with a truckload of marketing bullshit. The honest and productive alternative would have been to release a sound card with a high quality DAC and preamp at a ground breaking low cost, and use the other funding to instead develop a development API for, perhaps beam traced environmental processing and maybe even personalized HRTF algorithm generator that could have come with surface modeling hardware, on which they would have made a generous profit. It would be a highly non-standard venture, but that's what a leader does, innovate where it's needed. Creative just sat on their EAX turd all this time until it dried. I knew such a crash was inevitable since all the broken promises of the X-FI have been realized. It was supposed to be an innovator, it was a turd. That's just speaking for the X-Fi, the Zen is another disaster worth a paragraph.

so why does some random dude on a forum knows all about this yet no company out there is doing anything you say?

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: bigrash

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
Zen > iPod

hahaha.

larger screen, fewer restrictions, drag&drop transfers (as opposed to itunes), equal capacity at lower price. i don't see the problem.

apple marketing simply wtf-pwned everything in sight.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Danm, I was going to get a Creative Zen Vision M in a bit too. I wonder if they will drop the price really low.

 

[her209]

What happened to this product?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezAtaxLSLlA

 

[Aharami]

so are you telling me that the X-Fi Extreme Music for $50 is no better than Realtek ALC888 onboard audio?

 

[SketchMaster]

I'm sure a good part of it is their crappy support.

From a E-mail I got from Creative:

"Detailed Problem Description:
MuVo Will play for about 50 seconds and then
music will cut in and out and then shut off. I
have tried firmware update, formatting, putting
fresh copies of the songs on and checked the
batteries and still it will not function
properly.

......

Dear Joseph,

Thank you for contacting Creative Technical Support; we appreciate the
opportunity to assist you.

I understand that your player is having issue staying on. Therefore, I
would like you to do a firmware update on your player as follow:"

We went back and forth two more times before I got fed up and told the guy I tried all that crap BEFORE I even submitted the ticket. After that they sent me an RMA #.

My X-Fi sound card was even more fun... And the damn thing is still f'ed up. And the best thing is even though the card has optical out it can't encode surround sound audio, only stereo. Creative said that was too advanced of a feature to put on the card yet other sound cards and even old on-board audio can do it, so why the #*&% can't my $300 card do it?!

What a waste of money.

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: pontifex

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
The X-Fi sucked? It was the only leap since the original Audigy

Leap in terms of what? Sure it had some vague HRTF processing, and a 'crystalizer' that did the complete opposite of what it was intended to do while managing to be effectively deceptive.

No new sound propagation models (once again), in fact no propagation model whatsoever. No attempts at procedural sound, no VST support in the mixer, completely redundant and slow as shit memory chips that had no purpose other than looking 'hip'. The whole thing was a gimmick from top to bottom. At least the Audigy 2 wasn't a poser.

Originally posted by: JohnCU
How much better can they make a sound card, though?

That's part of the problem, sound DSPs are obsolete. Everything the X-Fi did could have been done in software at no cost. From a business standpoint, that was not an option, so the X-Fi had to be necessarily shipped with a truckload of marketing bullshit. The honest and productive alternative would have been to release a sound card with a high quality DAC and preamp at a ground breaking low cost, and use the other funding to instead develop a development API for, perhaps beam traced environmental processing and maybe even personalized HRTF algorithm generator that could have come with surface modeling hardware, on which they would have made a generous profit. It would be a highly non-standard venture, but that's what a leader does, innovate where it's needed. Creative just sat on their EAX turd all this time until it dried. I knew such a crash was inevitable since all the broken promises of the X-FI have been realized. It was supposed to be an innovator, it was a turd. That's just speaking for the X-Fi, the Zen is another disaster worth a paragraph.

so why does some random dude on a forum knows all about this yet no company out there is doing anything you say?

Why is there no company providing general mtDNA replacement therapies? Why doesn't America spend the money to repair one bridge? Why oh why can't anyone combine the million typical jump switches of a motherboard into a single standardized connector? Ah, the mysteries of life. Few things come exactly when you want them. In this case I would expect it's simply a fear of competition combined with consumer ignorance that sways companies to more profitable ventures. It's likely that the hardware accelerated market was just meant to die, and there was really nothing Creative could have done to avoid the inevitable. They will just have to reinvent themselves and expect to be less profitable in the future.

 

[Fritzo]

Their Vision:M is still the best video player out there- they just have NO sense of marketing.

 

[Modelworks]

Good .
I hope the company disappears.
They have always had crappy drivers and when people wanted support they were ignored.
The xifi cards are nothing special.

Look at the chipsets coming and current from companies like cmedia.
Dolby digital live and DTS decoding and encoding in hardware.
I went with auzentech for my sound cards now, got a explosion and meridian.
Both are superb compared to the creative stuff, changeable opamps, metal can capacitors, discrete parts.
Both can do dolby digital and dts on the card.

Creative deserves what they are getting now.

 

[SketchMaster]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Good .
I hope the company disappears.
They have always had crappy drivers and when people wanted support they were ignored.
The xifi cards are nothing special.

Look at the chipsets coming and current from companies like cmedia.
Dolby digital live and DTS decoding and encoding in hardware.
I went with auzentech for my sound cards now, got a explosion and meridian.
Both are superb compared to the creative stuff, changeable opamps, metal can capacitors, discrete parts.
Both can do dolby digital and dts on the card.

Creative deserves what they are getting now.

Found this on Auzentech's site, this may be the start of a new trend for creative. You still have to use drivers based on creatives but I would hope Auzentech cleaned up a bit of the code while they were writing in support for their hardware.

 

[Modelworks]

Yeah I like there version of the xifi, but it still doesn't do dolby digital live and its also still using creative branded drivers.

 

[LordMorpheus]

Originally posted by: BouZouki
Driver support always sucked.

Long live A3D.

haha, I have a really old Turtle Beach card, a Montego I (onboard sound quit on me, it's all I could find in my house).

Works under XP with legacy drivers. No dice in Vista.

Not playing with Vista without sounds, sorry.

 

[Mallow]

makes sense b/c on board audio took over for the main stream a long time ago. they need to broaded their market appeal with other products.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
The X-Fi sucked? It was the only leap since the original SB Live

Fixed. The Audigy was still an EMU10k chip like the Live, making it nearly the same thing as the Live.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: zoiks

Originally posted by: AndrewR

Originally posted by: zoiks
Awesome. I hate that company.

Give them some credit for starting the whole sound thing. I bought a Soundblaster 16 way back when along with a Creative CD-ROM, and it was awesome.

It always amazes me that these companies can be so innovating and then just implode as they forget to keep innovating. Look at 3dfx.

My distaste for that company started with the lawsuit against Aureal semiconductor that drove them out of business. Creative sued Aureal for patent infringement, a case which in the end Aureal won but pretty much killed them financially. In the end Creative bought all of Aureals assets at chump change after they went down.

I fvkign hated that....

 

[nageov3t]

what's creative even pushing anymore?

with the quality of on-board sound on so many mid/high-end motherboards these days, I haven't really felt compelled to be a dedicated pci sound card in like 5 years (or whenever it was that the audigy2 came out)

 

[zoiks]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster

Originally posted by: zoiks

Originally posted by: AndrewR

Originally posted by: zoiks
Awesome. I hate that company.

Give them some credit for starting the whole sound thing. I bought a Soundblaster 16 way back when along with a Creative CD-ROM, and it was awesome.

It always amazes me that these companies can be so innovating and then just implode as they forget to keep innovating. Look at 3dfx.

My distaste for that company started with the lawsuit against Aureal semiconductor that drove them out of business. Creative sued Aureal for patent infringement, a case which in the end Aureal won but pretty much killed them financially. In the end Creative bought all of Aureals assets at chump change after they went down.

I fvkign hated that....

Yeah, all these years I did well without using Creative products. I have 2 machines with Santa Cruz cards and one with Montego DDL.

 

[SSP]

I'm still using a Soundblaster 16 pci (really one of those ensonique boards) in my system. Over the years I migrated this card from each computer I had because the onboard sound had light feedback that was annoying. Not a bad investment considering I bought it 8 years ago. I'm sure this card won't go further then windows XP, but luckily, I switched to linux.

 

[ultimatebob]

Let's see:

1) Most people don't even buy sound cards anymore, they just use the integrated audio that came with their motherboard or their laptop
2) The Xen media players were a flop compared to the iPod. (Come to think of it, ALL other media players were a flop compared to the iPod)
3) They're pissing off their few remaining customers like myself with crappy Windows Vista drivers and lousy outdated tech support articles.

Why would someone want to invest in this company again? Perhaps they think that the physical assets will be worth something when they liquidate the company after bankruptcy?

 

[SinfulWeeper]

Maybe AMD will do us all a favor and buy them out too. :laugh:

 

[adairusmc]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: Agentbolt
It probably had nothing to do with it, but I like to think they're suffering horribly from their absolute refusal to get working Vista drivers for their stuff.

I'd like to think Microsoft will suffer horribly for making Vista a steaming pile of shit.

Getting rid of creative is always a plus

:thumbsup: vista

:thumbsup:vista

Creative drivers for my Audigy 2 work flawlessly in Vista64 for me.

 

[flxnimprtmscl]

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
Zen > iPod

This isn't the local improv. Try again.

 

[Ktulu]

Originally posted by: Fenixgoon

Originally posted by: bigrash

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
Zen > iPod

hahaha.

larger screen, fewer restrictions, drag&drop transfers (as opposed to itunes), equal capacity at lower price. i don't see the problem.

apple marketing simply wtf-pwned everything in sight.

Go compare an Zen Vision M and an Ipod at $250 and comeback and repost please.

Zen Vision M

Ipod Classic

I used to be a die hard IPod hater and Creative supporter but Apple simply crushed the MP3 player market, plain and simple.

 

[SinfulWeeper]

Originally posted by: flxnimprtmscl

Originally posted by: BrokenVisage
Zen > iPod

This isn't the local improv. Try again.

Farting puts out better sounds then teh both of them put together.

 

[andylawcc]

Originally posted by: zoiks

Originally posted by: AndrewR

Originally posted by: zoiks
Awesome. I hate that company.

Give them some credit for starting the whole sound thing. I bought a Soundblaster 16 way back when along with a Creative CD-ROM, and it was awesome.

It always amazes me that these companies can be so innovating and then just implode as they forget to keep innovating. Look at 3dfx.

My distaste for that company started with the lawsuit against Aureal semiconductor that drove them out of business. Creative sued Aureal for patent infringement, a case which in the end Aureal won but pretty much killed them financially. In the end Creative bought all of Aureals assets at chump change after they went down.

Hehe, the first comp I built had a Diamond S4 Savage paired with Voodoo2 SLI and a Aureal SQ2500. I laughed at my friend's prebuilt one with Riva TNT2 and SB Live! Value cuz his cost twice as much as mine. the joke was laterly on me as the two (three if you count Diamond) went out of business. Later, after 3dfx demise, I bought a Voodoo 5500 PCI for $100. Matter of fact it was from an ATOTer too.