I loved my old SB16, then AWE64 Gold, then SB Live! Gold. I used to swear by CL's name. Then XP came and Creative did not want to support my Live card. When they did make the drivers, they wanted me to pay again for the drivers. Later they made the drivers free to download, but removed them from the page. They say my card is End of Life, and won't let me grab the XP drivers. It's good to be a pirate, I have grabbed them from a torrent.

I can live with them not making Live drivers for Vista, but pulling old drivers? Go to hell. For some reason, Vista said my card was good to go, and yet can't install any generic drivers for it. If I grab the drivers for the EMU chip, I get a BSOD. No matter, I have AC'97 and it's good enough.

I did try www.kxproject.com for Vista. Same problem, BSOD. Tried on Vista 64 and have given up. At this point I plan to remove the SB Live the next time I open my case and just use AC'97. 

I am looking to Asus with great interest.

what? you dicktionary? 

12 years old kid and bad grammar

1) said by who, only native english speaker can post here? if i post my comment in any language other then english, can you read it smart one, NO right? dicktionary, thats what i thought, STFU.

2) are you 3 years old? do you want a lolipop? would you feel better? want to suck on something?

3) nonsense? of what? nor Intel or Asus need to buy CL, give us reason whats good to do that, dicktionary. oh let me guess, thats right, we must have different text book, you must be one of those American thinking Columbus "discover" america, how can you discover millions of people? base on that, you are nonsense, since you're mentally challenge, i will just skip your further comments, dicktionary.

To Paul, ask this Christian guy "dicktionary", to define: donation, its a FREAKING choice, not forcing you to pay, if you don't want to.


Why don't the A/V receiver boys such as Denon get this AIB/chip game? They've obviously got the state of the art pieces, expertise, and licenses.
This could be just some of the Intel innovation that Otelini's looking for (presently in mobile chips).

If you are interested, you can follow the facts there:
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332
242 pages of angry customers at that time, and still growing.

Creative should at least consider changing its drivers policy.

Note: the first post was heavily modified by the forum moderator, but you can easily find the first version on the web.

What's up with the 12 year old assault of bad grammar and total nonsense? The rant about the church somehow being involved gets points for creativity anyways. 

I would be so happy if either Intel or ASUS bought them out - both companies with drivers I respect for being solid (if not necessarily being regular on updates, but if they work first time, why do you need them?) Terribly disappointed in the drivers for my X-Fi (poor quality sound, crackling, and when I run Vista all the features I paid good money for aren't there.) 

I think this current fiasco will be the nail in the coffin for Creative - and I can't say I'm gonna miss them. This after 5+ Creative cards since (and including) the original Sound Blaster.

I just wanted to straighten out that it wasn't the fact that Creative wanted Daniel to stop supporting the audio drivers, it was the fact that he was requesting donations.

If it's free, might worth the time for Asus to consider it.
Judged by the latest software DSP development, and ever powerful CPU, I really doubt the value of Creative DSP in the future.


Creative needs to die. 

Then a competent firm might buy the remains in the bankruptcy auction and gave money left over to actually do something with it, along with the Aurel patents Creative is just sitting on.

While creative soundcard hw has been mostly fine, the company drivers and support were always a nightmare, even before vista.

As an example, if reinstalled the system with an Audigy card, it had to install the original drivers plus quite a few other cumulative patches. On top of that, if one lost hte original CD, it seems that Creative expected the poor sap to buy another card, because the patch drivers only worked if one had the CD drivers already installed. And they were nowhere in the website to be downloaded.

And that was only part of the mess...

Obviously nobody remembers the ISA-PCI transition for Creative Labs. Creative wouldn't put out PCI a product worth buying for around 5 years into the PCI adventure and kept relying on people to buy AWE32 and AWE64s. It wasn't until the Live came out (with it's awful dual CPU drivers for us BP6 users) that people could even consider an all PCI/AGP system.

What about doing what Nvidia does, license their chips to various manufacturers ?

no we do not need them to stay around, my 5 years old unborn son or daughter can do that job right. LOL ROFL LMAO

the point is:
1) MP3 you lost to iPOD because you can't and didn't use the advantage of your sound card, why ZEN is better in hardware but not an iPOD killer, because your product wasn't musician friendly, software base, your ZEN gave no special feature or some what even if i own a creative sound card on my PC. 
2) your X-fi's alchemy, once i had it installed on vista x64, my Warcraft III has no sound when i choose creative in the game option, it a DX8 game running on DX10, and your flag ship X-fi give me sh!t every time when i was actually excited, wow, creative have something new to their sound card, then, right away CL kick me hard right on my ballz, yea you're damn right, that is where CL targeted, their customers' ballz.
3) if i am Daniel_K, i will say Fxxk You, i will submit my resume to Asus.
4) Asus will just make something better, its Asus, you just can't go wrong with Asus, i hope they will keep it that way, so no need of Creative Lab anymore, just no need, period.
5) the on board thing you mention, oh please, get out of here, preffff, you think Realtek.tw is dead? they are ghost? they don't exist? Realtek HD 7.1 blow Creative from U.S.A back to SG, and then SG no one has interest on buying the on sale HQ, why? i don't wanna buy a HQ from a company that is going out of business, are you joking me, on drug, cracking up and sh!t? i don't want my company to close out like CL, ain't buying their HQ in SG. bad luck, anything is possible.

Realtek tw, i 1st think hey, that little crab thing icon looks very stupid and i just don't want that and what the hack is Realtek crab thing, then i give them a shot since my SB 16 veteran class card is no longer supported, i liked it, Realtek is great, then i gave CL another chance on Audigy ZX notebook, then i was kicked in my ballz, ouch, and i have a X-fi xtremeMusic, as i mention above, kicked on the ballz again and again and again, and again.

so, it is not only about bad PR headache anymore, it's much more serious, its about kicking the customers right in the ballz, the company as a whole picture, is falling apart.

1) MP3 iPod owned CL
2) Speakers Logitech owned CL
3) Sound Card owned by their CL drivers and endless ballz kicking to customers
4) on board which you mention already owned by Realtek already and they are just great, try it, you will believe me.
5) Asus will just own CL, no need to buy it, just let it die out, empty the space out, and build a parking lot on there, or a park, something better use of the land CL is on.
6) Intel already have people working on the sound, CL is no needed, that is why CL has people leaving all the time, 0 point to work for a noob company.

p.s. Sim the CEO & CO-founder, he was once an enthusiast, if you ask him today, which company's sound card he would choose to build a system, if he says CL's X-fi, some one give him a quick slap slap, then Quad-Triple shots of espresso, ask him one more time, he will than say, anything but CL's, Asus Xonar could try a little bit for average folks, try before we comment. studio hardware is > CL, so their chart on X-fi was freaking funny.

understand STUDIO > CL rejects, do i look stupid to you CL? draw me a chart that ask me am i stupid.

there you have it folks, B.S. are nothing true, because they are B.S., just personal thoughts, noting hating, or fan boy based

IMHO, Creative have made some decent hardware - particularly the EMU10k/10k2 based stuff. Good for gamers, good for musicians, generally good quality at good prices.

However - their drivers and software bundles have been universally crap - buggy, bloated and underpowered. And that's without even touching on the Vista debacle.

I still use one of the original SBLive! cards and a later Live!Drive for music production alongside a 'pro-level' audio I/O board.

Fortunately, I don't have to use their godawful software thanks to the kX Project - www.kxproject.com. 

If you've got an old card knocking around, go try them out, they're bloody great!

Just what Creative did to Aureal and 3DLabs are more than enough reasons so it should die and vanish from this world. Or at least be bought by someone who has a clue.

Or maybe multicore CPUs will have enough cores so that one of them can be used just for sound.

It's a real shame that Aureal had good positional sound via headphones TEN YEARS AGO, but was killed and bought by Creative Labs, who then buried the technology and even today Creative X-Fi cards don't have decent 3D sound with normal headphones.

First: something now known as, Creative flooded Market with sound Cards that Blew Out Entire computer, With NO Name on Chips. Government investigated & found all sound chips came from same place(with or without name), explanation was cheap card blowing out taught you to Buy More Expensive Stuff($100+), Which Was raved by retailers.

Its Pavlows Dog thing with sound, With Twinkling at start up, bringing smiles.
However, just using add on sound card is going to blow your built in Audio Subsystem 100% guareented. If you use auction site, you'll be lucky if Card lasts Month.
So Why Slow Boat to Correct Bad Manufacturer? Catholics control almost everything with sound, its just part of Church & Knowledge isn't strong point for them, Sound Became Attack point, in computing. Sound is Simple so grabbing drivers & stateing they are "owned" is decietful trick that keeps 6th century howling Mob Satisfied, by some chimp bearded arses.
Ms. k altered code to make it better, its k kode at this point. Stop kidding Yourselves, CREATIVE IS NOT GOOD COMPANY. You will suffer if you foolishly waste Your Money There.
Thomas Drashek

Considering my experiences with Creative products, I would prefer they go away. Either another company can make a new gaming sound standard(why can't we just use 5.1 sound???) or pick up the pieces of Creative's IP and start fresh.