The Vista drivers were gimped for the sole purpose to force an upgrade cycle to the X-Fi 2. A card which I might add has full functionality enabled in Vista.

The issue is that Creative still sells the older Audigy cards, of which I used to own before all of this, and refuses to support them. As a consumer of these types of products, I know that there isn't an indefinite support period. I don't expect there to be. I do however expect that a card that can still be purchased retail to be supported.

If the "limitations" of Vista meant that my card would work, but not to its full extent, then fine. However, these so-called limitations were nothing more than Creative trying to force an upgrade cycle on those that have kept them in business. There exists no limitation in Vista that keep their H/W from working as is advertised on the product box. The only limitation is Creative's greed.

With the advent and general availability of multi-core processors, environmental audio (EAX), DD and the likes are now possible to achieve without dedicated H/W. Creative, as would any other company, sees this as a threat to their dominance in the sound card market. With the release of the ASUS Xonar and the AuzenTech Auzen X-Fi Prelude, Creative is now realizing that their honey pot is starting to dry up.

Sadly, the complaint I filed will be taken no further as there weren't enough people complaining to warrant any action. The business model that is Creative (along with a multitude of others) will ultimately survive because the general consumer thinks that he or she doesn't have any power to change it. Vote with your hard earned cash on a competing product to make a change.

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soun...aster&thread.id=120108&view=by_date_ascending&pa...[ve.com]

Daniel,

I know you are a decent man who tried to do his best for Creative.

I think it would be best if you made an apology. The fact of the matter is that you have caused a lot of damage to their stock prices. A lot of executives are paid by stock - you are directly taking food from the mouth of their children.

I think the lot of you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Daniel_K speaks out!
here is the FULL STORY:
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/daniel_k-who-fi.html

Vista drivers are INTENTIONALLY CRIPPLED.

There are three factors that I am hoping will change audio in games on PCs:

-The emergence of HDMI and other digital audio output ports on more and more video cards.
-The increasing feasibility of using CUDA and FireStream to offload simple, highly parallel programing tasks.
-Vista using the OpenAL library for its audio API.

How long until it becomes a trivial task for AMD or NVIDIA to write simple, stable drivers that perform all audio processing for games that don't require programers to use proprietary standards, and output the result via a digital link? How awesome would that be?

Not to derail, but why did nVidia decide to not continue the Sound Storm brand? Nothing would please me more than having a SS discreet card in my system and never look at Creative again. Also it was the best "sound card" that i ever owned.

The problem is actually not what`s written here or in the Dailytech post. Or what the mob gets their panties in a bunch for the last couple of days. The Audigy Pack from Daniel_K is available with links for download from the Creative forum. It`s been deleted in the first wave on Friday but restored a couple of hours later. There is no issue with providing the features originaly available on a card under XP also under Vista with the modified drivers.

Here`s the Audigy restore message from the CL mod:
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=Vist...
Here are the Audigy packs (which everyone torrents like crazy for no reason:
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=Vist...
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=Vist...

The issue was actually that he also made the DDL component available for other cards then the Auzentech X-Fi which is a big no-no for companies who are involved in paying and receiving the royalty for it - that would be Auzentech on the paying side and Dolby on the receiving end. It was legally impossible not to make him stop offering that.

The other issue was offering features for cards which were not originally inteded for and I believe that would be the ALchemy component and/or the Crystalizer feature (details get lost in the mean time).

The last big mistake from DK was asking for donations while repackaging and tempering with some elses IP and distributing it.

It is all obvious and clear why the original announcement says what it says knowing the above written details, but of course not when the news is based on the "ZOMG!!!111!! they are disallowing Audigy drivers for Vista!!!!!!" crap going on all over the net at the moment.

Wow, Creative, you guys are a bunch of A - holes.

I don't support these type business practices... I wish creative would die already.

What if Nvidia and ATI made their Graphics Card not being able to view movies from DVDs in Vista on purpose? Wouldn't people be angry and want to sue as well?

Vista has been out for how long? Even been in development for longer. And it has taken someone else to create thier own drivers to make thier sound card to work. We are not talking about out-dated cards, we are talking about relatively new cards. I think Creative has had plenty of time to develop drivers to make thier cards work. And if they really intentionally decided not to develop drivers for vista, i'd say it was a bad business move. This would be the perfect time for some other manufacture to make ground and dominate the market. Unless Creative gets with the program, I predict Creative's fall, a buy-out, and a new Company to Rise above the Ashes.

It is funny that MS released a premature OS and other companies gets heat on it...

My impression is that Creative deliberately tries to become the company most hated by their customers.

The purpose of this is unclear to me, though.

#8, whether or not M$ released Vista early or late is wholly immaterial to the issue at hand, which is, namely, that Creative has been lying and misrepresenting their products and their capabilities with regard to Vista, all in a pathetic attempt to create market segmentation.

Creative deserves every bit of bad press.

I think Creative has commited fraud, they sold products to customers who expected full functionality of what they were buying and Creative did nto inform thier customers that thier products are intentionaly gimped in Vista.

I think this is a class action law suit waiting to happen.

Creative needs to provide full funtionality drivers or offer a full refund to Customers with Vista or face the music in court.

I really hope this is the end of CL

Creative being... Creative.

Does anything else really need to be said?

Actually, a better question is, is anyone actually suprised that Creative would pull a stunt like this?

Hey Cyril, the nickname is "daniel_k", not "David_K". His name is Daniel Kawakami and I used to visit his forum when he started BrazilianTech.com circa 2001. I still keep my Asus A7V flashed with one of his modded BIOS.

http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=58229

:)