Is it just me or does Creative suck?

[Night_Hawk-19]

Since I have two 7800 gtx cards from EVGA. Finally just moved a pci card slot over and got IRQ 3 much better. So far no problems.


What sucks is how expensive speaker stands are...any alternatives...I have gigaworks S750.

I have AUDIGY 4 PRO

 

[Leadsled]

Creative make awsome low end sound cards. If you think they are crap go spend some real cash on a "PRO" level card. I believe they start at about $600 and just go up from there. Im sure there is a card for what ever amount you want to spend.

 

[Scroatdog]

The base drivers have been available at creative's site for a few months now.

How long did it take that to happen???


Years.


We need some competition ASAP

 

[Uncle Jim]

@vmerc:
what happened to the option:
"- this poll sucks"
?
It was pretty popular option a few days ago.

 

[bratboy]

@vmerc:
what happened to the option:
"- this poll sucks"
?
It was pretty popular option a few days ago.

Cool, I wasnt imagining things that an option had been removed. By removing/changing it the OP has invalidated the poll by changing midway. I guess someone took a page from the Republican play book, hehe

 

[Donnie27]

sure about that i had a Audigy 1 in my NF3 150 mobo no probs at all

I'm sorry I missed this one. With the NF3 150 and 250 the sound card is hit and miss depending each board. Even the new X-Fi causes some of these users to need a BIOS update to use it as well.

My old systems ran slower with the Audigy 1 even with a minimal install. My TB Santa Cruz sounded better. The card used faulse advertising to get customers.

Donnie27

 

[lithium726]

Cool, I wasnt imagining things that an option had been removed. By removing/changing it the OP has invalidated the poll by changing midway. I guess someone took a page from the Republican play book, hehe

a mod took the option off. MisterX to be exact.

he said that a few posts back.

 

[Donnie27]

He wasn't in the minority till after you removed the last selection, the selection that pointed out that this (rigged) poll sucks.

"Is it just me or does Creative suck?"

If that would have been one of the questions, I'd have just answered it's just you!

I too think the best question of the poll was removed but Hacking the Poll sucks.

He also might be misreading the results. There are tons of happy Creative Sound Card users who think they have Bloated software. That's hardly the NEGATIVE he thinks it is. Hell I think the full install is wayyyy over Bloated. Yet, I like the minimum install and the fact that i could install just the Wave Studio or any other piece of the package. That stuff is meant MOSTLY for newbies who complained about Audigy2 ZS being too complex.

X-Fi XM is $109 at one place and got a $10 rebate about 2 weeks after it went on sale not $200. Audigy 2 ZS is at a sweet price and is still a good value. To draw conclusions on the Creative whole line of cards based on the Audigy 1 just plain wrong. That's like compaing the first flakey NF1 to the very newest NF4.

edit to ad; Then say nF4 must suck since the first nF1 sucks.

Donnie27

 

[magnetmad]

I think they have had some ground breaking products but they have had problems in many areas.

I recently purchased the x-Fi Platinum and I have written a mini review at this Creative x-fi forum This forum is run by the same guys that help propel the very buggy emu cards into a now stable and very good product by giving users and unofficial support system and much better than the creative ones.

concluding in short, its a nice card but has some improvements to be made.

I would go for a creative x-fi which are better and newer than the old audigy's. They have completely rebuilt this from scratch and makes the audigy old technology. I actually read the review on Tomshardware lol site that made me first interested.

 

[SJetski71]

"Is it just me or does Creative suck?"

If that would have been one of the questions, I'd have just answered it's just you!

I too think the best question of the poll was removed but Hacking the Poll sucks.

He also might be misreading the results. There are tons of happy Creative Sound Card users who think they have Bloated software. That's hardly the NEGATIVE he thinks it is. Hell I think the full install is wayyyy over Bloated. Yet, I like the minimum install and the fact that i could install just the Wave Studio or any other piece of the package. That stuff is meant MOSTLY for newbies who complained about Audigy2 ZS being too complex.

X-Fi XM is $109 at one place and got a $10 rebate about 2 weeks after it went on sale not $200. Audigy 2 ZS is at a sweet price and is still a good value. To draw conclusions on the Creative whole line of cards based on the Audigy 1 just plain wrong. That's like compaing the first flakey NF1 to the very newest NF4.

edit to ad; Then say nF4 must suck since the first nF1 sucks.

Donnie27

Don't judge the soundcard from this thread alone, which was created with the intention of bashing creative (i know you aren't but still). People who see things in terms of black and white will probably hate creative products... OMFFFGGGG cthelper.exe is running in the background !? Creative is evil !. lol. Threads like this just attract the disgruntled and the children imho, but it can be fun to watch or play devil's advocate

Otherwise i could care less, i'll buy soundcards suitable to the purpose. For htpc's/movies, or music, or gaming, there are different cards with different strengths. Creative is just another name to me...

 

[Kevin Lowe]

Creative make awsome low end sound cards. If you think they are crap go spend some real cash on a "PRO" level card. I believe they start at about $600 and just go up from there. Im sure there is a card for what ever amount you want to spend.

I somehow doubt there is a pro card out there with a good positional audio implementation. It would have been nice to see what Aureal would have come up with by now.

Of course, I don't have any problem with giving money to Creative; it's just that they seem to have a problem with me as a customer. I can't even get an X-Fi yet (no x64 drivers) but there's been no progress on the A2ZS x64 drivers for some time, and the ones we have don't work correctly (try playing Doom 3 with a v2.03 driver - all the positional audio comes out of a single speaker).

 

[Donnie27]

Don't judge the soundcard from this thread alone, which was created with the intention of bashing creative (i know you aren't but still). People who see things in terms of black and white will probably hate creative products... OMFFFGGGG cthelper.exe is running in the background !? Creative is evil !. lol. Threads like this just attract the disgruntled and the children imho, but it can be fun to watch or play devil's advocate

Otherwise i could care less, i'll buy soundcards suitable to the purpose. For htpc's/movies, or music, or gaming, there are different cards with different strengths. Creative is just another name to me...

I fully agree with you! Hell, I like what Johnto has. I've only heard one Juli@ and like it so far. I helped another bud pick an M-Audio Revo 5.1 (great used price on EBay) for recording, he doesn't play any games. I don't see the Creative cards as a fit for everyone using a sound card. I also have an older P3 866MHz installed on a VIA 694 rig with the 686B. I'm using on board sound because it chokes when most sounds cards are installed, not just Creative's cards.

Donnie27

 

[Uncle Jim]

a mod took the option off. MisterX to be exact.
he said that a few posts back.

Oh that is great. Was that because 20% said this poll sucks or just because with this 20% "locked" - only less then 50% were giving out how lame Creative was?
Manipulating results like that is just another proof this poll sucks

 

[USMC2Hard4U]

Bloatware, just like norton

 

[Donnie27]

Bloatware, just like norton

No it's not, at least Creative's Bloatware works LOL!

Donnie27

 

[USMC2Hard4U]

No it's not, at least Creative's Bloatware works LOL!

Donnie27

For the win

 

[Replicant1911]

Im confused? Is there an alternative to Creative for gaming? I thought you were pretty much stuck with that?

 

[Donnie27]

For the win

WoooWhooo yeah!

Donnie27

 

[bboynitrous]

I don't like the fact that everytime they update EAX they come out with a new soundcard to showcase it on. It really makes you feel like shit when you bought the latest and the greatest from them. I felt bad for the audigy users because it only seemed like 6 months before the audigy 2 came out and replaced it claiming to be what the Audigy 1 was to the SB Live series. Really lame.

 

[jebo_4jc]

I don't like the fact that everytime they update EAX they come out with a new soundcard to showcase it on. It really makes you feel like shit when you bought the latest and the greatest from them. I felt bad for the audigy users because it only seemed like 6 months before the audigy 2 came out and replaced it claiming to be what the Audigy 1 was to the SB Live series. Really lame.

Meh I held on to my Audigy from near its release until now, and will only be replaced by the x-fi. The Audigy 2 offered no EAX improvements that the Audigy 1 couldn't match.

 

[vmerc]

Cool, I wasnt imagining things that an option had been removed. By removing/changing it the OP has invalidated the poll by changing midway. I guess someone took a page from the Republican play book, hehe

I had the moderator revert the poll to it's original design since somone took a page from the Democrat playbook and hacked my poll to add "This poll sucks". Hence causing the topic to be diverted from the actual issue, and attempting to devalue the discussion because whoever did it knows that they can't win based on the facts of the topic at hand.

Even when the Poll item "This Poll Sucks" was in place, that and the item "Creative does not suck" combined only had about 30% of the votes. I guess that says more than anything else I can add.

You're free to go make your own poll if you like. You can even add "This Poll sucks" to it if you want. Might as well. If you don't someone else will do it for you.

 

[bratboy]

As a rule you don't have Winners and loser in a poll. Seems to me it fairly split as far as Pro/Con CL. Do some have probs with CL cards sure, but alot of ppl don't so the whole "does creative suck" question the answer depends on peception. In my case they have been decent, some of the older cards I had the drivers/sw were a let down but they have improved things. Now back when they hyped the sblive and liveupdate to add features later, which never really happened, now that was a sucky time hehe. As for teasing you on the poll, if you were not the one who put it in then yeah it should of been removed, but am wondering did they roll those votes into another catagory like other or doesnt suck so those opinons were just lost.

AP News: A disturbing new study find studies are disturbing

 

[Donnie27]

I had the moderator revert the poll to it's original design since somone took a page from the Democrat playbook and hacked my poll to add "This poll sucks". Hence causing the topic to be diverted from the actual issue, and attempting to devalue the discussion because whoever did it knows that they can't win based on the facts of the topic at hand.

Even when the Poll item "This Poll Sucks" was in place, that and the item "Creative does not suck" combined only had about 30% of the votes. I guess that says more than anything else I can add.

You're free to go make your own poll if you like. You can even add "This Poll sucks" to it if you want. Might as well. If you don't someone else will do it for you.

Then you clearly don't know how to read polls if you think thats what the results show. Your question about bloated software doesn't mean Creative Sucks as you imply. Again, many happy Creative Sound Card users will agree that the Software is bloated and even a waste of time installing.

Many said the poll sucked because the poll is so BIASED.

Donnie27

 

[MantisIT]

Then you clearly don't know how to read polls if you think thats what the results show. Your question about bloated software doesn't mean Creative Sucks as you imply. Again, many happy Creative Sound Card users will agree that the Software is bloated and even a waste of time installing.

Many said the poll sucked because the poll is so BIASED.

Donnie27

QFT.

 

[jebo_4jc]

QFT.

Yep. Creative soft sucks sometimes, and that's why it's not on my machine except for the minimum, and that's why I'm still happy with my Audigy 1.

 

[MantisIT]

I just installed XP64, and then my xfi and wtf. Please don't tell me X-Fi wont work with this OS.

 

[bratboy]

Think the only eta for x64's I've seen was said to be 4th quarter for X-fi. Unfortunatly that could mean Dec 30 even

 

[MantisIT]

That's ridiculous.. Do they realize they're losing customers because they're pussy-footing around? This means I gotta go back to 32 Bit, bc I'll be damned if I'm gonna use onboard sound, Onboard SUCKS.

 

[Donnie27]

That's ridiculous.. Do they realize they're losing customers because they're pussy-footing around? This means I gotta go back to 32 Bit, bc I'll be damned if I'm gonna use onboard sound, Onboard SUCKS.

Yup that is rediculous and a *REAL issue. Creative needs to get off their Frackin' (BSG speak) rear-ends and correct this. IMHO, they should just say what problem is holding them up. If they have already said what it is, spread the word better. All sorts of fixes have been corrected this way.

Folks like Extended64.com could help them with beta drivers. You ever use Omega Drivers?

http://www.planetamd64.com/lofiversion/index.php/t10985.html

So, how many of these folks returned their Athlon64's because Microsoft didn't have Win64 ready? How many didn't buy Athlon64 until MS shipped Win64?

Donnie27

 

[vmerc]

Then you clearly don't know how to read polls if you think thats what the results show. Your question about bloated software doesn't mean Creative Sucks as you imply. Again, many happy Creative Sound Card users will agree that the Software is bloated and even a waste of time installing.

Many said the poll sucked because the poll is so BIASED.

Donnie27

Write for me then an unbiased poll as an example.

 

[Kevin Lowe]

So, how many of these folks returned their Athlon64's because Microsoft didn't have Win64 ready? How many didn't buy Athlon64 until MS shipped Win64?

Except that I could still get updates for the 32-bit version of XP. Creative, on the other hand, doesn't do a whole lot to support older hardware. Look at how long the A2ZS drivers for x64 have been broken (try loading up Doom 3's EAX support with them - positional audio all gets dumped to a single speaker).

Ironically, I just bought an A2ZS earlier this year. Know why? Because the Audigy 1 drivers were out of date. Thanks, Creative!

 

[Dan_D]

Except that I could still get updates for the 32-bit version of XP. Creative, on the other hand, doesn't do a whole lot to support older hardware. Look at how long the A2ZS drivers for x64 have been broken (try loading up Doom 3's EAX support with them - positional audio all gets dumped to a single speaker).

Ironically, I just bought an A2ZS earlier this year. Know why? Because the Audigy 1 drivers were out of date. Thanks, Creative!

Yeah, the Audigy 2ZS drivers aren't the best for XP x64 Edition. That much is true.

 

[Josh_B]

I care about gaming and Creative is better than any others...simply because they DO EAX and they DO NOT give you a frame rate hit like EVERY OTHER CARD out.

Maybe if the cards were designed correctly, they wouldn't cause data corruption though. What takes away from your gaming more - installing a fresh copy of both Windows and Linux, or a small reduction in frame rate?

 

[P3N1X0R]

no one should have to Set IRQ's and move the card to differant PCI slots or have to worry about if there motherboard will have conflicts with a soundcard.

ive been fighting a continuing problem in my system.
i have an audigy 2 value, and a pacific digital talon raid controller w/ 2 rpators.

every few boots i will get a BSOD and a driver irq less or equal, scsiport.sys
but if i take out the audigy i get 0 problems on boot. onboard sound on my k7n2 board gets along with the controller. so i swapped pci slots, and in the bios i have the controller and sounedcard on seperate irq, but i still get this problem booting windows itll take 2 or 3 minutes to boot, and finally load. but other tyimes it will crash with BSOD. and i know its the audigy 2, cuz if i take it out, it boots quick and immediately...

anybody know what irq's these soundcards like?

 

[vmerc]

ive been fighting a continuing problem in my system.
i have an audigy 2 value, and a pacific digital talon raid controller w/ 2 rpators.

every few boots i will get a BSOD and a driver irq less or equal, scsiport.sys
but if i take out the audigy i get 0 problems on boot. onboard sound on my k7n2 board gets along with the controller. so i swapped pci slots, and in the bios i have the controller and sounedcard on seperate irq, but i still get this problem booting windows itll take 2 or 3 minutes to boot, and finally load. but other tyimes it will crash with BSOD. and i know its the audigy 2, cuz if i take it out, it boots quick and immediately...

anybody know what irq's these soundcards like?

While your story is an example that suits this discussion well, you should really move your post over to "general hardware" if you're looking for help.

 

[Cowcaster88]

I didn't think they really sucked when I had my SoundBlaster Live Platinum. That was great investment in old machine. But I do agree that their software is worthless compared to what else is out there. I tried the Playstation when I first built my computer but then just switched over to WMP for everything which was easy and worked pretty well with the sound card.

I'd just use Creative for their drivers nothing more.

 

[Donnie27]

Write for me then an unbiased poll as an example.

It's not about what another poll would or wouldn't ask. It is about what this one did ask and the answers to the questions asked. The poll could have been written in many different ways. My point was just as the other guy said 7 to 1 and before that, not even the one. The other point was than Bloated Software doesn't = Suckage on Creative's part. If the Sound Cards couldn't install without all of the Bloat, that'd change things.

If I'd only owned the Audigy 1, I know for a fact I'd agree with your view of Creative.

Donnie27

 

[Dan_D]

I didn't think they really sucked when I had my SoundBlaster Live Platinum. That was great investment in old machine. But I do agree that their software is worthless compared to what else is out there. I tried the Playstation when I first built my computer but then just switched over to WMP for everything which was easy and worked pretty well with the sound card.

I'd just use Creative for their drivers nothing more.

Problem is you have to install their bullshit software just to get your remote and front panel drive to work. For this reason, I haven't bought any Creative Labs cards since the SB Live! Platinum 5.1. I never installed that crap, and none of that front panel BS worked as a result. So the remote and other cool product features didn't work. When I did install all the crap, I had alot of issues after doing it.

It really pisses me off that only the Fatal1ty and the card above it has the X-Ram feature. If I want that, I'll have to spend $100 more on the card, and I have to be stuck with a front panel drive that I don't really want or really need.

 

[P3N1X0R]

While your story is an example that suits this discussion well, you should really move your post over to "general hardware" if you're looking for help.

i appericiate your offer of where to go with this situation, but ive basically solved it....take out the Audigy 2, and problem goes away...p[ut Audigy 2 back in, problem will slowly creep back. im half tempted to take out the talon controller and put back in a promise controller, that didnt have ANY conflicts(ive done lots of tests, its the talon/A2 combo that jacks my windows up), but im finicky about my gear, and i want a controller card that will make use of my TCQ of my raptors....my old promise one doesnt

 

[FitzRoy]

Creative's Competition, be they VIA-Envy, CMedia and or Realtec, sucks much worse than Creative though.
Donnie27

Whoa, there, killer. The ENVY24HT chip is an incredible chip and is superior to anything Creative has EVER put out. It's not even close. VIA is not responsible for the chip design either, they acquired the company who was making them for years, IC Ensemble. They pretty much slapped their logo on it after that, and made some budget variants. This was THE audiophile controller back in those days, and it continues to be today under VIA. Observe the following statistic:

Envy24 based Egosys Juli@ drivers: 175 kilobyte zip file. I repeat. 175KB.

Creative: no full download package from site, they force cd installs. God knows how many MB from CD. Then you must update from the web, at 5MB+ a piece. The updates alone are 25 times larger than the Juli@s entire driver package. Want to know what bloat and inefficiency is? You found it.

People are clueless about today's computer audio solutions. The typical gamer treats audio cards like video cards. They think a proprietary company like Creative is the Nvidia or ATI of audio. The reality is:

Creatives DACs suck (the actual component that determines sound output quality)
their cards are overpriced
their drivers are bloated and buggy
their cards are humongous and poorly designed, consume more power and have more IRQ issues.
their "hardware acceleration" for features like eax are becoming useless as CPUs become insanely powerful and able to do the same software based.

If people just looked at audio for what it is... there is no "pixel shader" for sound. It's a friggin change in air pressure. It doesn't change remarkably every year like 3d apps. Even though a lot of sound cards are marketed to musicians rather than gamers, their audio dacs are superior to creatives and will be felt in movies and games as well. Why? Think about it! It's sound! Buy a good envy24 solution and tell creative and their team of design retards and marketing geniuses to screw off.