Creative Labs and me… a personal journey of sound
While it’s true that some companies have been updating their product drivers to deliver full Windows Vista support, there are some who just refuse to do anything to help their customers. Case in point: Creative Labs doesn’t seem to want anybody to use their audio hardware on Microsoft’s shiny new operating system. But for the last few months, an ingenious fellow by the name of Daniel_K has been taking Creative’s shoddy drivers for their Audigy series of cards, and molding them into something beautiful. His goal was to help the thousands of people who found themselves wanting to upgrade to Vista, and becoming disheartened when they discovered their perfectly good audio hardware was neutered in software. So he rolled his own blend of drivers that allowed these sound cards to have their full capabilities under Windows Vista… and it was good.
But then Creative Labs decided that they had enough of this guy fixing problems that they had previously claimed were too difficult for them, and hit Daniel_K with a cease and desist on the public Creative forums. Well, Creative learned a hard lesson that day in Whoville… don’t mess with angry consumers. Especially when your relevance in the market has reached it’s end. Walk with me for a bit, and I shall tell you a tale of sound cards and drivers, eternally retold…
Back on the 28th of March, a message appeared on the Creative Labs forums. In it, a Creative staff member by the name of Dale-CL posted a lengthy letter to Daniel_K informing him that Creative Labs was wise to his shenanigans, and demanded that he stop. Click on the thumbnail to see a screenshot of the whole post from Dale-CL, or check out the fancy block-quote below:
In principle we don’t have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.
Ok, from this quote we can confirm two things:
- Creative Labs is being run by a bunch of money grubbing a**holes.
- They should be hiring this person to work for them rather than shutting him down.
There’s only one piece of that entire quote that I can agree with; he shouldn’t of asked for money for something he doesn’t own. However, here’s where I explain that I also understand why he did. See, Daniel_K achieved so much popularity with his retooled drivers, that he became a victim of his own success. More and more people started using these drivers (myself included, more on that later) and started being more demanding on what features and fixes he should implement. It got to the point where this 15 year-old kid… I’ll type that again in bold for you… THIS 15 YEAR-OLD KID started working harder to meet everyone’s demands. Maintaining these drivers to have all the features his users requested was becoming a real job for him, so he did what most anybody in his situation would, especially a teenager who probably has no other source of income; he started asking for donations in return for the time he was spending… Wait, wait… hang on a second…
I feel that before I go any further, I should give you a little back story on my own personal history with taking it up the tailpipe from Creative Labs. It was about 8 years ago, and I was happy as could be with my choice of sound card. I had recently purchased a Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1 for my then ridiculously fast gaming machine. It was my second Creative Labs purchase, the first being my Sound Blaster Awe 64 Gold that had served me so well for so long. And after a brief stint with Aureal (*weep*), I made the decision to go back to the Creative fold, who was still the king of the sound card hill after all those years. My Soundblaster Live! purchase couldn’t have been more impressive to me. It had fantastic audio quality, full EAX support for the latest game titles, and the Live! Drive which gave me a wealth of inputs and outputs. And what tied it all together was the rather robust package of software and drivers that allowed me to control all of it in a handy little interface. That was, until Windows XP came along…
It’s a common thing in the computer hardware industry that companies continually work to update their drivers to support the newest operating systems. These companies understand that many of their customers simply can’t afford, or are unable to buy new and expensive hardware, especially when the hardware they purchased is still working just fine. So, when I made the upgrade to Windows XP, I fully expected that the sound card I had bought not 6 months prior would have updates that allowed it to function just fine in this new operating system. Boy, was I ever wrong. Oh, Creative Labs made the drivers and software available alright; for an additional $30. Wait, what? Yep, unless you ponied up the extra dough to get the updated software and drivers, you were stuck with what was essentially a generic sound card. It still played audio just fine, but all the reasons you bought a $200 sound card no longer functioned. After that, there was a flurry of angry letters to Creative, begging for them not to fleece their customers like this. Remember, this was back in the days when every game relied on Creative’s EAX effects to get the best possible quality, so we gamers really didn’t have much of a choice. Eventually, Creative Labs buckled and released the updated software and drivers for free on their website. But the damage was done, my hatred of Creative Labs was firmly in place.
Fast forward to October of 2007. I finally decided that the time was right to make the jump to Windows Vista. Being that at this stage in my life my computer is as much for work as it is play, I did a tremendous amount of research before installing the new operating system. I had grown to be quite dependent of what my current Sound Blaster Audigy 2 was capable of in relation to the podcasts that I produce, so I needed to make sure that I didn’t lose any functionality. And guess what? Creative Labs did it to me again. The drivers for the Audigy 2 were so stripped down that I wouldn’t be able to continue to use my current workflow. What was Creative Labs solution to this? Buy a new Sound Blaster X-Fi card.
To quote the greatest Green Lantern ever, Hal Jordan: “Um… Yeah. That’s not gonna work for me.”
So I started scouring the web looking for answers. I was hellbent on making this card work the way I needed it to in Vista, and I wasn’t going to let Creative Labs stop me. After a bit of Google-Fu, I came across Daniel_K and his wonderful homebrew drivers. This was the answer! Everything worked like it should and I made the jump to Vista with no trouble. Again, no thanks to Creative and their treatment of their customers. Daniel_K was my new hero, and once again, saved Creative from losing one more customer.
So, back to the story at hand. Where were we? Ah yes…
So Daniel_K began asking for donations for what he was doing with these drivers. A fair request, as we all want to ultimately get paid for the work we do. But that is when the minds at Creative decided to say something. After all, there was obviously money to be made here! If people were willing to give this “Daniel_K” donations, then wouldn’t they be willing to pay Creative for updated software and drivers, just like they tried to force on consumers before? I mean, how dare this “kid” ask for completely optional donations for something like this? Creative smelled blood in the water, and the sharks came out to feed. But little did they know, the customers they had been stepping all over for years, were ready to fight back!
When Creative Labs slapped Daniel_K with the order to stop distributing his drivers, the internet took notice. The Creative Labs forums quickly filled up with angry messages to Creative about how Daniel was personally responsible for them actually remaining customers, and that he should be praised by the powers-that-be, not punished. The story grew and grew, with it hitting the front page of sites like Digg and Kotaku, gaining momentum with every person that read his tale. I realized something that day; I was not alone in my anger towards this company. There were thousands more just like myself that finally were able to tell Creative Labs exactly what kind of terrible company they are. And here’s the most amazing part: it worked! A few days later, the original post was changed to an apology to Daniel_K, along with a note that Creative Labs hoped they could work out a mutually beneficial agreement that would help them support developers like Daniel in their efforts. Here’s another fancy block quote containing a portion of the edited post:
The huge task of developing driver updates to accommodate the many changes in the Vista operating system and the extensive testing required, including the lengthy Vista certification requirements for audio, makes it very difficult for Creative to develop updates for all past products. Outside developers have been very helpful to Creative and our customers by developing updates for many of our Sound Blaster products, and we do support and appreciate these efforts. This however does not extend to the unauthorized distribution of other companies’ property. We hope to work out a mutually agreeable method for working with Daniel_k in supporting his efforts in driver development. Going forward, we are committed to doing a better job of working more closely with third parties to support their development for our products and our customers.
So there we have it. Creative Labs has realized the error of their ways, and are now dedicated to assisting people just like Daniel in delivering support for products that Creative is no longer interested in pursuing active development on. Just as long as they get their piece of the money pie. Problem solved, all is right in the world. My, is that birds I hear singing? What a truly wonderful day! Right?
Nope. This isn’t a new beginning I’m afraid… it’s finally the end.
I’ve made the decision that I’m done with Creative Labs. Their shoddy support, questionable tactics, and frankly, disgusting attitude towards their customers, has ruined it for me. Daniel_K and his hard work was the only thing that allowed me to continue using my current Audigy 2 in Vista, and Creative tried to take that away. All this kid wanted was to help people, and corporate greed slapped him in the face for it.
So that’s it. It’s over. I’ve done my homework, and there are plenty of options for me in relation to audio hardware that will do exactly what I always purchased Creative Labs’ products for. Hell, even some on-board sound solutions from Realtek are capable of them! Also, as most gamers are aware of, more and more game developers are moving away from using Creative’s EAX effects in their titles, and replacing them with their own sound systems they’ve developed that require no specific hardware to achieve their effects. And as some of you know, Microsoft themselves changed the game (no pun intended) with the release of Vista by abandoning DirectSound for all of Window’s gaming needs, and adopting a shiny new Windows Sound System that is superior in many ways, and also completely software based. This in turn, made the Sound Blaster’s long-standing dominance of the market, due to their control of all the major sound interface standards, irrelevant instantly. Creative has scrambled in an attempt to prove that people still needed their hardware, and are still hanging in there, but just barely. Their time has passed, and the old ways of their monopolistic practices are at an end. Accepting irrelevance is a hard thing to do I suppose, especially when you’ve controlled an entire industry for as long as Creative Labs has.
Well, it’s been a hell of a ride, Creative. Not all the times were good, but I’ll cherish the ones that we had. I’m sorry it had to end like this, but as so often happens in life, sometimes the best thing for a relationship is to end it. Take care of yourself, Creative Labs. Perhaps we’ll meet again someday.
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I hope they burn in hell! Good Riddance to bad rubbish!
Great Article Tim!!