NOOO! AUREAL GOES TO CREATIVE?!?!?!?! ARG!!!

[Scorpion]

They will Monopolize the sound card industry for sure! No offense but Creative Blows as far as innovation and implimentation go! ARG! NOO! :|

 

[Alphacowboy]

whatever!

 

[Viper Frag]

That sux :| :frown:

 

[fkloster]

Noooooo. No SQ 3500. Noooooo

 

[owensdj]

Does this mean Creative Labs will now take over responsibility for supporting Aureal products and chipsets?

 

[oblivion2888]

well, the thing about sound cards is that theres not much room for improvement.....

 

[nuttervm]

i hate to be one of those 'already been posted' jackasses, but isn't this kinda old news? i thought they bought them out months ago. or am i wrong and there has been a new development?

 

[dc]

there were rumors a month ago. not rumors anymore now.

 

[sandorski]

Oblivion: I disagree, but now that Creative owns the market, you can bet that what you said will probably be true. The original SBs were very good cards(16, 32, 64), but it took the acquisition of Ensoniq for CL to get PCI tech. Then under pressure from Aureal, theyu developed the rather cheesy EAX. To fix 3d they now own Aureal. Until someone else comes up with some tech, the soundcard industry will stagnate, CL has proven to not to worry about innovation unless it's pushed and even then it seems to be easier for them to just buy the upstart.

Sad sad day.

 

[NOX]

With CL's reputation of stagnating I won't have to worry about upgrading my sound card every 3 months or so like I do with everything else

I agree, I?m getting sick of upgrading (hehe?my fault anyway!). Though I believe that once the acquisition is final, we will see an A3D version of SB Live! A3D and EAX together will be my final upgrade.

 

[hans007]

4 words...

turtle beach santa cruz

 

[Piano Man]

The question I want to know is how much of Aureal they actually got. If I remember correctly, it was Nvidia (through the use of strong-arm tactics) that got the first bites out of Aureal.


Man I hope Nvidia or Yamaha can come up with something that can compete with Creative.

 

[NOX]

Today it was announced that all of Aureal's assets, including patents, trademarks and other intellectual property, will be sold to Creative Labs for $28 million in cash and two shares of Creative stock for every 100 shares of Aureal stock.

 

[Goi]

Hmmn, isn't it ironic that even though people are unhappy about CL's aquisition of Aureal, most of these unhappy people own CL cards(esp the Live! card) and recommend them over Aureal cards? Correct me if I'm wrong. I've seen more people around these forums owning and recommending CL Live! cards than MX300s or the like.

 

[Zorba]

Goi: That was a bad choice on my part, and I am very unhappy with the Live!

Has this deal passed the FTC yet?

 

[Ben]

Although I'm a fan of Creative, I see this as bad news. They have no incentive to innovate and progress with Aureal gone. This is bad news for us. We can expect the prices to remain high and we not going to see any major innovations in sound cards.

Personally, I didn't have anything against Aureal. If they made a product worth a sh|t I would've bought one.

 

[LXi]

Goi: Thats right, I own a CL card and I recommend it to anyone. But I hate to see CL get Aureal because there would be no competitions then. I feel that way because it's for CL's own good. After all, it will benefit all of us if CL didnt get Aureal. I really wish Guillemot could've got Aureal. That would create a millenium rivalry, oh yes, CL vs Guillemot.

 

[LXi]

After all, EAX is suppose to be Environmental Audio, never meant to be 3D audio. At least thats the way I understand it.

 

[OneEng]

They (CL) may well be stagnent, but they were the first (to the best of my knowledge) to offer sound font capability. Since I am a musician, this puts the $40.00 card up into the same catagory as $400-1000 solutions of only a few years ago. The quality of sound fonts availible for FREE on the web is fantastic. My computer sounds as good with SBLive! as a $2000.00 keyboard!

As for 3D, I have always heard that A3D was better than EAX. I have also always heard and read that SB cards take less CPU power than A3D. As a gamer, I would think that would be important.

I agree that any monopoly is a bad thing. Lets hope it doesn't have too much of an effect on the release of new technology in the sound card market.

 

[Recneps]

lol using less CPU times isn't better. I have a rage pro that will use very little CPU power here I will sell you. It most be better then you Geforce 2 ultras because this thing will use just abouit no CPU time but everything looks like crap but that doesn't matter it doesn't use the CPU much.

 

[LXi]

Recneps: Uh... no? The thing is very different with sound cards, CPU utilization can have a great impact in the game speed. Yea, try turning A3D 2.0 on in Quake3A and you'll lose like 25% speed. It's not the same as video cards.

 

[Recneps]

it is the same one way it would look like crap the other way it would sound like crap and no mater what way you choose with that nice new ghz processer the memory on any 3d card will be the bottleneck.

 

[silver24]

Yea but Nvidia got all of Aureal's teck's...Hummm We'll see..

 

[Goi]

Actually OneEng, CL wasn't the first to offer "sound font" like capabilities. The Gravis Ultrasound already had this capability before the AWE32, which is the first CL card to offer sound font capabilities, AFAIK, except GUS called it patches. I'm not even sure Gravis was the first, I won't be surprised if there were others before Gravis.

 

[Hawkeye_(BEL)]

Too bad Yamaha too went out of the PC sound market

They stopped the development of new PC audio chips, and driver support for existing chips is done with a skeleton crew. That's really bad news for people with a Y4XX chips, because some popular cards, like the Maximo Sound Fortissimo and the Turtle Beach are based upon such a chip

Our only hope is now with Sensaura and the other -rather small- audiochip makers. But I don't think they'll be able to fight this giant