Creative to DanielK: stop fixing our drivers or else!

darkbenny · Post by **darkbenny** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:32 pm

Hum and I was in the market for a kickin' sound card too. Maybe I will skip Creative now.

I was looking for a sound card that frees up the CPU a bit (Creative X Gamer?) with a bunch of flippin' features. What other company is decent these days?

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 11:44 pm

The sound card market is, basically, dead.
Most people just use the (incredibly shitty) onboard sound and call it a day.

casualsax3 · Post by **casualsax3** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 11:54 pm

Onboard is no longer incredibly shitty though, that's the issue.

darkbenny · Post by **darkbenny** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 1:46 am

My onboard is Realtek, and seems to be a huge improvement over the ol' AC'97. I just want a sweet sound card to round out my gaming rig and maybe give me a few fps increase.

whicker · Post by **whicker** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 3:19 am

Gil_Hamilton wrote:The sound card market is, basically, dead.
Most people just use the (incredibly shitty) onboard sound and call it a day.

Am I that tone-deaf? I don't really notice any humming or distortion with the Realtek AC97 on my DFI LanParty board.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 4:15 am

whicker wrote:
Gil_Hamilton wrote:The sound card market is, basically, dead.
Most people just use the (incredibly shitty) onboard sound and call it a day.
Am I that tone-deaf? I don't really notice any humming or distortion with the Realtek AC97 on my DFI LanParty board.

It varies from board to board. Lot of the issues are on the analog side.

My HDAudio chip has a barely audible whine on it. And occasionally starts picking up system IO noise(seriously, out of nowhere you'll start hearing chirps in time with disk access).

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 6:39 am

darkbenny wrote: I was looking for a sound card that frees up the CPU a bit (Creative X Gamer?) with a bunch of flippin' features. What other company is decent these days?

I would say an ASUS Xonar
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829132006

There are also numerous PCI solutions that aren't by creative that are probably better than anything creative DAC and driver-wise. People get creative under the perception that they are the ati or nvidia of sound cards (which is absurd because sound is quite simple in comparison). Creative's whole business model is, create proprietary 3d sound API, pay developers to use it, market it to gamers, create dependency, buy out competition like Aureal, rinse and repeat.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 8:10 am

FitzRoy wrote:
darkbenny wrote: I was looking for a sound card that frees up the CPU a bit (Creative X Gamer?) with a bunch of flippin' features. What other company is decent these days?
I would say an ASUS Xonar
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829132006

There are also numerous PCI solutions that aren't by creative that are probably better than anything creative DAC and driver-wise. People get creative under the perception that they are the ati or nvidia of sound cards (which is absurd because sound is quite simple in comparison). Creative's whole business model is, create proprietary 3d sound API, pay developers to use it, market it to gamers, create dependency, buy out competition like Aureal, rinse and repeat.

Don't forget their professional E-Mu line, which is built on having a damn good analog side and a metric butt-ton of IO.

And sound COULD be quite complex, if there was anyone making an effort to bring it out of the dark ages. Sound right now is where graphics were when the Voodoo came out. There's minimal acceleration that enables a few effects you won't get otherwise, but nothing really notable.
Accurate modeling of sound dissipation, reflection, and absorption simply does not exist in the same way that it does for light.

In that regard, Creative is actually expending more effort than anyone else. But they're botching things pretty badly.
The way I see it... Creative is the 3DFX of sound acceleration, and the nVidias and ATis aren't doing anything.
And Microsoft is making things worse by completely removing hardware-accelerated sound from DX10.

Nightcrawler · Post by **Nightcrawler** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 1:57 pm

FitzRoy wrote:
darkbenny wrote: I was looking for a sound card that frees up the CPU a bit (Creative X Gamer?) with a bunch of flippin' features. What other company is decent these days?
I would say an ASUS Xonar
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829132006

There are also numerous PCI solutions that aren't by creative that are probably better than anything creative DAC and driver-wise. People get creative under the perception that they are the ati or nvidia of sound cards (which is absurd because sound is quite simple in comparison). Creative's whole business model is, create proprietary 3d sound API, pay developers to use it, market it to gamers, create dependency, buy out competition like Aureal, rinse and repeat.

Anything beyond EAX 2.0 is done entirely in software (and not even 1:1 at that since EAX3,4,5 are patented by Creative). If you're a gamer, you'll probably suffer a hit. Xonar uses the CMI8788 from my understanding. Here's a good breakdown at what it supports hardware and software wise.

http://www.cmedia.com.tw/?q=en/PCI/CMI8788

Why was hardware acceleration removed in DX10 again?

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 2:08 pm

Nightcrawler wrote:
FitzRoy wrote:
darkbenny wrote: I was looking for a sound card that frees up the CPU a bit (Creative X Gamer?) with a bunch of flippin' features. What other company is decent these days?
I would say an ASUS Xonar
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829132006

There are also numerous PCI solutions that aren't by creative that are probably better than anything creative DAC and driver-wise. People get creative under the perception that they are the ati or nvidia of sound cards (which is absurd because sound is quite simple in comparison). Creative's whole business model is, create proprietary 3d sound API, pay developers to use it, market it to gamers, create dependency, buy out competition like Aureal, rinse and repeat.
Anything beyond EAX 2.0 is done entirely in software (and not even 1:1 at that since EAX3,4,5 are patented by Creative). If you're a gamer, you'll probably suffer a hit. Xonar uses the CMI8788 from my understanding. Here's a good breakdown at what it supports hardware and software wise.

http://www.cmedia.com.tw/?q=en/PCI/CMI8788

Why was hardware acceleration removed in DX10 again?

I believe MS thought that it wouldn't go much further, and that most stuff can certainly be done on the CPU for the most part. Sound hasn't really progressed since the Aureal days, so I don't blame MS for coming to that conclusion. Obviously I still prefer hardware acceleration, but it's not even close to 3D acceleration where things continue to change and need more performance.

There's also the latency issue to consider for the audio.. which is probably why this was done (XAudio to be used in future sound apps? Perhaps...)

paulguy · Post by **paulguy** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 2:16 pm

I still like my SB Live! but I use Linux so my drivers aren't made by creative. I've been saying this in other places but i'd like something like the SB Live! where it doesn't have a ton of retarded gamer features but just has a nice crystal clear sound and supports high resolution audio. SB Live! is pretty clear but is limited to 48000hz sample rate(and doesn't fare very well for lower than that, which the majority of stuff is.) and 16 bit audio and I think only up to, like, 4 channels or something, with the breakout box, which I don't have. The thing I like about the SB Live is I can have things go straight out through ALSA, no pulseaudio, arts, dmix, etc. because the card itself can take a bunch of streams itself and mix them.

DancemasterGlenn · Post by **DancemasterGlenn** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 3:35 pm

paulguy wrote:I still like my SB Live! but I use Linux so my drivers aren't made by creative. I've been saying this in other places but i'd like something like the SB Live! where it doesn't have a ton of retarded gamer features but just has a nice crystal clear sound and supports high resolution audio. SB Live! is pretty clear but is limited to 48000hz sample rate(and doesn't fare very well for lower than that, which the majority of stuff is.) and 16 bit audio and I think only up to, like, 4 channels or something, with the breakout box, which I don't have. The thing I like about the SB Live is I can have things go straight out through ALSA, no pulseaudio, arts, dmix, etc. because the card itself can take a bunch of streams itself and mix them.

Same here, I also have been using my SB Live! ever since I built my first computer, and ended up switching back to it after trying a newer card in my new setup. I would like to eventually find something better, but I don't want to lose any of the features I already have (MIDI creation tools for example were not present on the card I tried to "upgrade" to...). I guess it's something I still need to read up about.