Creative Sucks!!!!!!!!!!

Creative Sucks - Yes or No


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Archaea

[H]F Junkie
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Oct 19, 2004
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I'm just flat out tired of Creative, and there is no other option for Intel gamers.

I'm tired of calling their tech support for help, and realizing on EVERY occassion that I know more about PC's and getting the card setup than they do.

I'm tired of the bloatware drivers and the two hour installs upon formating.

I'm tired of crappy EAX support that may or may not work in any given game

I'm tired of non dolby digital output even though they've said for the last three generations of cards that they all had it.



I've bought nearly every Creative card there has been along the way. I've never been happy with the card after the days of AWE64.

Sound Blaster Live, 4.1 couldn't get digital sound to work at all to my home receiver
Sound Blaster X-Gamer 5.1 couldn't get digital sound to work through my Denon Home Receiver even though it's supposedly 5.1 Called in to Creative, we don't support 5.1 in games...WELL WHY DID YOU NAME IT THAT?
Sound Blaster Audigy...NOW here we go THX, 5.1 Optical out. This will finally support 5.1 in games on my home theatre system. No, it didn't called customer support, they said it should in the next revision.
Bought the Audigy 2 ZS platinum. all the fixings. Finally a card that should be able to play my games in dolby digital on my reciever. It says it supports it, and DTS, and everything else. Plug it into my Denon 5700. Can't get anything other than pro-logic, except in movies. No games support it. Called Tech support, they say it must be the games issue. DIg around on the internet. The Creative jerk-offs have been feeding me a line of BS the whole time. Their card doesn't actually support dolby digital in games through the optical out. You have to use the analog lines. Fine. I buy 3 sets of analog lines to hook into the external in on my amp. I load up Far Cry, and Doom3. NEITHER GAME WILL RECOGNIZE I HAVE A CARD THAT CAN EVEN USE DOLBY DIGITAL SOUND OUTPUT. THE OPTIONS ARE GRAYED OUT.


I HATE CREATIVE. I HATE WORSE THAT I'VE spent hundreds of dollars on their cards thorughout the years, to false advertising and empty promises. DIE CREATIVE DIE!

I've had the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum for about 6 months now. The reason I'm just now ranting is because my audigy external drive fell off the desk about 2 feet to the floor, and broke. WTH? 2 feet. Seriously. The volume knob, and the microphone knob broke completely off. My friend bumped the unit and it fell off my short desk and broke. 2 feet. That's horrible quality. NO reason for a 220 dollar setup to be breakable like that. I dont have a single other home theatre component I've ever been so upset with over my horrible Creative EXP.

I don't really have anything I'm trying to accomplish through this post, just venting. I feel better. Thanks.
 
I've bought nearly every Creative card there has been along the way. I've never been happy with the card after the days of AWE64.

Thats why its the only card and they suck. You did not like them but you purchased them anyway. I have always hated them. thats why my gaming rig still has a turtle beach in it. I refuse to by ANYTHING by creative. Find an alternitive and by that. even if it cost more. (within reason)
 
Or better yet.... why don't I let you find out why you don't post flamebait polls for yourself?

With one slight modification to the poll of course. :D
 
I'm tired of calling their tech support for help, and realizing on EVERY occassion that I know more about PC's and getting the card setup than they do.

Got a point there.

I'm tired of the bloatware drivers and the two hour installs upon formating.

Another good one.

I'm tired of crappy EAX support that may or may not work in any given game

I have not had lots of problems myself, but I have heard stories....

I'm tired of non dolby digital output even though they've said for the last three generations of cards that they all had it.

Here is where you loose me. Creative never has claimed to support Dolby Digital encoded output for content that is not already pre-encoded in Dolby Digital. 5.1 is not some trademark word that means "Dolby Digital". It simply means that you can hook up 5 speakers and a subwoofer. Hell, it doesn't even necessarily mean that you will get 5.1 discrete channels for any given application. For games, the sound card drivers simply output however many sound channels directly to the analog outputs. "Dolby Digital" refers to multi-channel sound that is encoded (read "compressed") into a special format that can then be decoded by a compliant decoder/receiver. I believe that the reason it needs to be compressed is that recording media (for movies) generally does not have enough capacity to hold all the data for 2+ hours worth of multi-channel sound without compression. Encoding/compressing sound data on the fly in real-time is NON-TRIVIAL. It actually takes some computing horsepower (which means $). In fact I believe that it is so difficult to do cost-effectively (in real-time mind you) that Dolby has some special algorithms for on-the-fly encoding that you must pay license fees to use in your product (that's more $). It is true that Nvidia had a special solution to handle this encoding, but it was a requirement for Microsoft's XBOX because they wanted people to be able to hook up their HT recievers to the XBOX consoles. Note that the PS2 has the optical out as well, but it only sends out "Dolby Digital" when it already pre-encoded (movies, or cut-scenes). I will agree that this was an important solution because MOST people use their game consoles on whatever home theater they have set up. Gamecube and PS2 went with a cheaper solution which is Prologic (or Prologic II). Basically, you can think of this as analog surround sound where extra channels are analog encoded into the two stereo channels. Sound quality is not as good because it is suceptible to noise all the way from the output of the console, through the decoder, and out to the speakers. I am not familiar with the details of any information loss in the signals due to the actual encoding process. Anyway, I digress. The only reason Dolby Digital encoding is available on the PC was because Nvidia already had the solution for the XBOX and the Nforce PC chipset shares a lot of technology with the XBOX. Nvidia took a risk by including all of this new tech in their chipset and I don't fault them for it. However, MOST people don't use a PC in their living room, thus MOST people (up to this point) have not wanted to hook up their PCs to the HT receivers. Soundstorm audio was generally a failure from a market perspective, and not necessarily because their wasn't a strong demand for it. The lack of a license to build Intel compatible chipsets really hurt Nvidia's ability to achieve market penetration. If it did well, Nvidia would have made money on it and they wouldn't have taken it out! I agree that the market is changing and we are seeing more an more people using PCs and convergence devices in the living room for gaming movies, etc. This is why we have recently begun hearing news about new sound solutions on the horizon for PCs which include on-the-fly Dolby Digital encoding.

Fine. I buy 3 sets of analog lines to hook into the external in on my amp. I load up Far Cry, and Doom3. NEITHER GAME WILL RECOGNIZE I HAVE A CARD THAT CAN EVEN USE DOLBY DIGITAL SOUND OUTPUT. THE OPTIONS ARE GRAYED OUT.

I don't have an HT receiver amp so I can't comment based on experience. You do have a point that it seems perfectly reasonable to be able to hook up the analog outputs to your soundcard to the analog inputs of your AMP. In this case, you simply would not use the decoding feature of the amp. Do most HT receivers included analog inputs for multi-channel audio? In fact, this begs the question of why the hell it is so important for PCs to encode multi-channel audio in Dolby format to begin with. Ultimately, you just want to connect the 5.1 output from your soundcard to your big, fancy speakers. Am I missing something here? Is it that the HT receivers generally don't make it easy for a setup like this? If that is the case, isn't it more cost-effective for the receiver manufacturers to include a few RCA (or stereo) analog audio input connectors to their products than to have PC hardware manufactures spend their time figuring out how encode Dolby on the fly?

In summary, I don't necessarily disagree with many of your criticisms of Creative. However, your primary criticism seems to be about lack of "Dolby Digital 5.1" and it seems to be rooted in a misunderstanding of the technology.
 
Well if you missed it here you can pick up the hardback copy in your local book store... Holly shit..
 
Sorry, it bothers me when people rant based on a misunderstanding of the technology. It bothers me even more when other people just say "you're wrong" without giving any kind of explanation.
 
I have also had amost every creative card since my first soundblaster 16 ISA. I currently have a audigy with the digital I/O daughter card. I have never had any problems with the cards not being recognized by games or the other software problems you have been having. The cards have always worked great and I will continue to use them.

As far as the problems with the dolby digital output, I have to agree to thomase. When I read the claims and stats the creative puts out for the card, the statement the they will encode to 5.1 never even crossed my mind. You thought the it was going to encode things into dolby digital 5.1? Show me where it say it does real time encoding. When you saw dolby digital 5.1, you assumed that ment that it encodes; well you assumed wrong. I think that only nvidia has a solution that does real time encoding, but there may be others. The card simply takes what it is given and spits it out. When I saw dolby digital 5.1 and THX on the box, the thing that crossed my mind was that the card was able to decode THX on the card, and that is what it does.

As far as bloatware, I agree with you on that one; but who in their right mind installs all that software the comes with it?? I only install the drivers and one or two of the options. (I can't remember their names because I haven't reinstalled windows since I got my most recent mobo 18 months ago)

In conclusion, it seems like you are pissed at Creative because you keep on getting let down because you constantly assume the card can do things that they never say they can do. Two things ran through my mind when I read your post; nice flamebait post, and god damn, what an ass. :D

Do yourself a favor and do some proper research before you buy your next card.
 
As far as bloatware, I agree with you on that one; but who in their right mind installs all that software the comes with it??

I always did ... what's a meager 128 megs on your harddrive when you have a terabyte of storage space? :p

When I saw dolby digital 5.1 and THX on the box, the thing that crossed my mind was that the card was able to decode THX on the card, and that is what it does.

Decode THX?
Am I missing something?

Correct me if I am wrong but the THX multimedia certification only means product X will work well with product K if they are both certified.
One of the funniest things about the whole thing is the first PC that ever received THX certification was a Dell machine that required a software patch to correct a subwoofer phase problem with the THX certified speakers that it was bundled with.
Hmmmm.
Got to love it. :D

Two things ran through my mind when I read your post; nice flamebait post, and god damn, what an ass. :D

lol
The big question is who are calling a ass?
 
I for one liked all of my Creative products (I have owned an SB Live Platinum, Audigy Platinum, Extigy (on a laptop), Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro, and the other day I just bought an Audigy 2 NS)

I have never had the nead to ever crack a Creative manual (they all contain the same basic info that you already know) and I have not needed to contact technical support for anything. I play a LOT of fps games (currently Doom 2, HL2, Farcry, T:V, etc...) and I always found the performance and sound quality to be quite stunning.

Of course you do need some basic knowledge of how install the card & drivers, such as what slot to put it in (almost all motherboards do have ideal pci slots for certain types of cards like sound, NIC, TV Tuner, etc...), and what order to install the drivers in (99% of the time you want to do it chronilogically, starting with the oldest stuff (on the cds) and working your way forward until you get through all of the patches). But this is all information that you should know, before attempting to install anything yourself. If you're not willing to learn how to do it properly, bring it into a computer store and pay someone to do it for you.
 
well, I've owned Creative as well as Turtle Beach, I loved my Turtle Beach, the Creative is a great card, with excellent features but I wouldn't buy it for a reciever, the M-Audio Revolutions is probably the best card out there but it lacks half the stuff you want...EAX...for example.
 
Davenow said:
Turtle Beach supports EAX, so why bother with crapative at all?

That's only up to EAX 2.0 and only in software. Anything higher is only supported by Creative and through hardware. The sound quality on the A2 is better than on the Turtle Beach too (assuming you're talking about the Santa Cruz, or Crud as Mister X calls it).
 
Why does Creative seem to have a monopoly on hardware implementations of EAX (up to 2.0)? Is there some kind of licensing issue involved? Is this primarily why Creative always seems to have lower CPU utilization than other solutions, or does Creative also have lower CPU utilization even when NOT using EAX?

Also, no one has commented my previous question regarding why it is a problem to connect multi-channel analog output to an HT receiver in order to use your HT speakers. Its true that you hurt signal quaility but compression isn't totally flawless either (supposing you could do it). Anyway, if its signal loss your worried about, in theory, you could transfer 8-channel, 24-bit, 96KHz, sound in an uncompressed digital format (like how some Creative cards work with Creative speakers) over a some kind of cable and it would only be around 18.4 mbs (6-channel, 16-bit, 48KHz would be 4.6 mbs). What is the problem? Is it that HT receiver manufacturers don't want to do it? Am I missing something else?
 
I voted that they suck. They have good products, good technology, etc. but I am sick of them just as a company because there is no high end alternative. They can basically price things however they want without any major hit to their business.
 
I've never had any problems..if it takes a long time to install drivers I think it might be your crappy pc ;) I think some people here just hate them because "everyone else does". And the "real" haters actually had a problem with Their card. The rest have decent speakers and a SB in there system. I vote this is flamebait. And has been heard enough, and is quite pointless. So please quit bitchin because your life sucks because there conflict between the drivers, card, etc. in your machine and GET SOMETHING ELSE. for the love of god....
 
Its a shame M-Audio does not make a good gaming card yet...YET. This market is screaming for some competition...and I would have liked to have gone M-Audio this round...but in the end, Creative won for games.
 
Nasty_Savage said:
Its a shame M-Audio does not make a good gaming card yet...YET. This market is screaming for some competition...and I would have liked to have gone M-Audio this round...but in the end, Creative won for games.

It will be a while before, if ever, that a new company introduces hardware accelerated sound effects for games that will be widely accepted. M-Audio makes good sound cards, but remember that its the actual onboard sound processor that does the magic for the games. Sound quality is a different concern, as Creative's lack of interest has shown us.
 
Mister X said:
lol
The big question is who are calling a ass?

I am calling to thread starter an ass while being an ass myself. That's the best part of flamebait posts. :D Come on people there are not nearly enought posts calling people names.
 
thomase said:
Also, no one has commented my previous question regarding why it is a problem to connect multi-channel analog output to an HT receiver in order to use your HT speakers. Its true that you hurt signal quaility but compression isn't totally flawless either (supposing you could do it).
I would say the artifacts from compression would cause a greater sound quality loss than from using the analog connection. For games, it probably doesn't matter since the sound audio samples are typically low quality.

Anyway, if its signal loss your worried about, in theory, you could transfer 8-channel, 24-bit, 96KHz, sound in an uncompressed digital format (like how some Creative cards work with Creative speakers) over a some kind of cable and it would only be around 18.4 mbs (6-channel, 16-bit, 48KHz would be 4.6 mbs). What is the problem? Is it that HT receiver manufacturers don't want to do it? Am I missing something else?
Yeah, the HT industry has taken a long time to create a standard for sending multichannel uncompressed digital audio. There's been proprietary stuff like encrypted FireWire used by Pioneer, Meridian's Link. HDMI was supposed to be the new standard but I think there's still some arguments over passing through DVD-A, or it justs been approved. All of them are quite a bit more complex than Creative's relatively elegant and cheap triple SPDIF system which never really caught on.
 
Even if the tradeoffs between analog out and digital out with compression are even, it doesn't make sense to me why Nvidia bothered to create a hardware Dolby-encoding solution. Keeping with the theme, why don't the PS2 and Gamecube include discrete multi-channel analog outputs (like on a 5.1 soundcard) as an alternative to matrix encoding (Prologic, Prologic II, etc.)? I would suspect you'd get less bleeding and generally better quality. I feel like I must be missing something important here. Unless, and I hope this isn't the case, that the desire for on-the-fly Dolby encoding is simply a marketing ploy (an expensive one at that) so that the manufacturer can slap a "Dolby Digital" logo on the XBOX.

Regarding your second point, I can only include that the only reason for Soundstorm and XBOX on-the-fly encoding is simply because the HT people can't get their acts together and agree on a standard for uncompressed digital audio. Like I said, its only 10s of megabits per second, which seems perfectly reasonable to transmit of optical or coax or something like that. If this is the case, it sure is an expensive and round-about way of getting around what is basically a "standards" issue.

From reading on Dolby's site, it seems like the real intention for their DDICE technology is so you can stream audio around your house on wireless networks or via any other kind of bandwidth sensitve media. THAT is what the compression is for.
 
I made the post a little dramatic, but that's for effect. What really amuses me here is that the retorts to my post are far more off base than my original post.

Things like

fellows who say
If you don't know how to install the drivers take the PC to a shop. Or it must be a hardware conflict (irq etc)

Who said I don't know how to install the drivers? I'm a PC tech at the Federal Reserve Bank, I've been around computers since the late 80's. I build machines and troubleshoot machines for a living. The only time I've called tech support is once per card generation to try to get them to help me get a Dolby Digital digital stream to come out of my "5.1" card through the coax or optical so I can actually use my PC in my hometheatre with games that supposedly support 5.1 The techs in my exp. are ignorant. They only support a handful of things...Creative primarily supports soundcards. Exactly how diverse and difficult is their job function? But somehow it never has failed, I'm on the phone for nearly an hour, while they fiddle around and ask everyone there, get me to run though a couple basic configuration adjustments I've already done several times double checking myself only to then come back to me and say what they've advertised on the box is not actually truly implemented on this card, and it should be on the next generation. I think to myself, am I the only enthusiast who wants to hook my PC up to my Hometheatre setup? Why don't they have more information/working knowledge, troubleshooting skills, or helpfulness to my questions. IN THEIR DANG VIDEO HOOKUP DEMONSTRATION IT EVEN SHOWS HOW TO HOOK THE AUDIGY CARD UP TO A RECEIVER THROUGH THE COAX/OPTICAL OUTPUT FOR DOLBY DIGITAL SOUND, and when you do that not even their own demonstrations are in Dolby Digital. You click the 5.1 audio demonstration and it's still in pro-logic. You have to pop in a DVD to get it to click over. The receiver is not to blame. I have a Denon 5700, $4,500 dollar MSRP receiver, and I've verified it's not the input by switching to a different one to test it. The only way you can get the 5.1 audio to work is through analog out, in their demos, not digital out, and that's in their very own demos. In games, 5.1 audio doesn't work in any fashion.(explained in more detail later)

or how about this genius
Creative Never claimed to support encoding.

DUH, Nor do I expect them to support encoding. I want decoding. That's what they do advertise, and I want decoding or just plain raw data passage into my Denon Receiver. Neither works, and it's not my recievers fault. That reciever picks up and registers Dolby Digital from every source fully automatically, Xbox, Soundstorm cards, DVD players, and yes even my Creative "5.1" soundcards, but only on prepared AC3 files, and DVD's, not games, even though the games say they support 5.1. I couldn't care less about enocoding as I'm not trying to make music. I don't care if it passes a raw bit stream to my receiver and lets my receiver do the prep, but the 5.1 and Audigy cards have claimed 5.1 for 3 generations now and it just isn't there. 5.1 in the Home Theatre world means discrete 5 channel and subwoofer sound. I would have assumed from all advertising that with a 5.1 sound card it would be able to relay 5.1 audio in digital format, in fact even told by creative that the Audigy 2 would. But in fact if you hook up the coax connection or optical connection of the digital out on your 5.1 or Audigy card, the best you can do is PCM, which is NOT Dolby Digital. It is simply pro-logic, which is not 5.1 as advertised. Creative blames it on the software when I've called tech support, but my brother has an Nvidia board, with a soundstorm card, and his works just fine. My Xbox works just fine, and yes Dolby Digital makes a HUGE difference over Pro-Logic. Dolby Pro-logic cops out at above 7,000 HZ, and Dolby Digital rings all the way up to past 20,000. So your missing your entire top end of sound, not to mention the rear channels output the same mono sound in pro-logic mode, vs. Dolby Digital's discrete rear seperate channels. Oh yea, and the analog version of hooking it up doesn't allow true 5.1 either. Because the option is grayed out in every single game that supposedly supports 5.1 when you have the audigy card as primary sound card. So since the game isn't passing the 5.1 data, the card sure as hell isn't, even if you have all the analog outputs setup. Even in the Creative demos that install, with the digital outputs you cannot get the bitstream to be recognized by a reciever that it's a true Digital signal, it's just analog PCM. It'll say Pro-Logic on my receivers face, but never convert to Dolby Digital.

how about this ASSumer?
I've never had any problems..if it takes a long time to install drivers I think it might be your crappy pc

Well my 2.4GHZ P4 @ 3.0Ghz, Abit IS7, Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM drive, with dual channel PC3500 Ram, running a 1GHZ FSB would probably have a problem with you calling it a crappy. The bloatware creative drivers take 2 hours to install. You ever tired it? I would venture not..

Or this George Lucas lackey
When I saw dolby digital 5.1 and THX on the box, the thing that crossed my mind was that the card was able to decode THX on the card, and that is what it does.

Hey buddy, before you critique me you should prolly read up on what THX is. It isn't a compression algorithm, or anything of the sort, and it's not even a this thx component will work with that thx component type thing. It was designed by Lucas to be a standard of quality. If something has the THX stamp it means that it mets George Lucas's immortal opinion of quality. And if you talk to the best in the business they basically say it means nothing because you can buy the logo and there are so many "standards" of THX quality that it literally means nothing. Big names like Denon, and Nak, and Yamaha, and Onkyo, Marantz, took a long time to even start labeling their receivers and components with THX, compared to dept. store buzz brands...you know why? Because it means nothing. They have to pay to buy the logo, when their equipment was already worlds above anything Lucas 'required.' The only reason they've since started branding their equipment is purely marketing. No sir, Decoding THX? wow....guess I'm glad your happy. Oh and I'm re-reading here and I'm seeing that you are the one who kept mis-using encoding and decoding. Yet you called me the ass? :eek: Just another one of those pretend know it alls.

-----------------------------------
Thomas(seemingly the only person in this thread in the know), in answer to your question about analog output to Home theatre. Yes it works, in DVD's, or AC3 files. But on the Audigy card if you fire up a game and try to set it to use Dolby Digital, the options are grayed out....Even though the game supports it, the Creative drivers don't. So effectively the 5.1 logo you're seeing on the Audigy card is simply for movies, and AC3 files, but it doesn't work for real time decoding like in games, such as the xbox can do, or the soundstorm can do, even though the software supports it. It won't pass the signal through either so the receiver can decode it, which was originally my gripe. Because, after being promised through advertising, and through Creative techs themselves, that the Audigy 2 finally would do it. It doesn't. It's selective dolby digital 5.1 decoding/output. And my DVD player could already do all that. Not to mention the external audigy drive itself is so cheaply made that it is now uselessly broke after falling from the breathtaking height of 2 feet. I keep falling sucker to false promises and illegitimate advertising.............not misunderstanding. :mad:



PS Don't knock my grammer, spelling, or paragraph format....I'm not in class. I'm ranting...and it's 2:30AM. People who come on this boards to try to exercise their intellectual superiority are truly idiots.
 
One quick question----> what kind of cable did you use to connect the card to your receiver?
The reason I ask is cause my NAD refused to recognize a DD signal from my (now long gone) ZS card unless I used a coax cable.
Every time I tried to use an analog cable I got the same thing you described above.


PS Don't knock my grammer, spelling, or paragraph format....I'm not in class. I'm ranting...and it's 2:30AM. People who come on this boards to try to exercise their intellectual superiority are truly idiots.

How does that line go?
QFT? :)
 
I've used both optical cables, and a true digital 75ohm coax cable. actually the only difference between a normal RCA at 50ohm and a Digital Coax cable is that impedance on the cable. Digital coax cables are 75 ohm(so are subwoofer cables). Neither worked for me. That is until I popped in a DVD, or actually played an AC3 file. Then the receiver would happily pick up the dolby digital signal, and automatically change modes to 5.1 Dolby Digital from PCM Pro-Logic.

If you no longer use an Audigy 2 what do you use? As much as I hate creative, I know of no other current gamer option soundcards for intel users.
 
You know it almost sounds like a software problem with the demos....but I can't say that I had ever ran into the same thing so take that as a guess on my part. :p

If you no longer use an Audigy 2 what do you use?
I currently have A Terratec DMX6 fire for games and other multichannel audio stuffs and a EMU 1212m for 2 channel music stuff.

As much as I hate creative, I know of no other current gamer option soundcards for intel users.
Just like you alluded to the Terratec card does not have hardware support for 3d audio which kinda sucks... even though it does a lot of things better then the Audigy2 ZS card it still sucks for games. :(

The sad part is I actually miss the bloated Creative drives..... my god will someone please shoot me?


Back to your last reply and some of the replies that were posted in this thread.
I kinda saw some of it coming.... which is why I initially closed the thread but then I figured it might be wise to let it all run it's course.
Other then the name calling and a few of the abusive comments it has turned into a relatively productive thread ... my hat is off to you people for not turning this thread into a full blown flame fest.
let's try to keep it that way ok?. :)
 
mature? ;)

we can only hope...though i imagine the only reason it wasn't a 'flamebait' topic is that it appears most users agree with my original synopsis, that creative sucks. A flamefest really only happens when most people disagree strongly with a topic right?
 
Archaea,

I don't even know where to start. I don't have the time for a long post right now so I'll try to be brief. You have a lot of knowledge about HT setup and PCs in general. However, unless I have some kind of MAJOR misconception about the technology involved, (ie. the computational requirements of AC3 compression), you seem to lack a fundamental understanding of the underlying technology. I believe that it is misleading for any game to say it supports "Dolby Digital" because it is essentially meaningless, like saying it supports LCD monitors, or pentium computers, etc. NO GAME software will output sound to the soundcard in Dolby Ditial format unless it is already encoded in some kind of movie or cut sceen. During gameplay, the game synthesize a 3D sound environment ON THE FLY and separates it into multiple channels (depending on your speaker/headphone setup) and/or does special filtering and processing for 3D positioning and environmental audio. This sound IS NOT compressed in Dolby Digital format. That can only be done (at this time) by Soundstorm audio. Creative claiming to support 5.1 IS NOT THE SAME as claiming to support Dolby Digital in games. 5.1 != "Dolby Digital".

I have more to say but I can't get to it right now. In the meantime, do some reading/research. I'm not sure you completely understand the difference between "analog" and "digital". For instance, to say "analog PCM" doesn't make any sense because PCM is a digital encoding of an audio signal.
 
Note that I don't own a HT system, thus my knowledge of HT setups is a bit lacking. However, I am and electrical/computer engineer so my grasp of fundamental technical issues is pretty good. I'm approaching these technical issues from the bottom up rather than the top down.
 
should i read the load of nothingness or search for millions of related topics? I think i'll move on and stop blaming companys for what they make for us to use. If you have a problem tough shit, fix it or shut up. This thread needs to meet an end it's really pissing me off now. Nevermind i'll just unsubscribe it and forget about it like all the other "hate threads".

how about this ASSumer?
I've never had any problems..if it takes a long time to install drivers I think it might be your crappy pc

"Well my 2.4GHZ P4 @ 3.0Ghz, Abit IS7, Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM drive, with dual channel PC3500 Ram, running a 1GHZ FSB would probably have a problem with you calling it a crappy. The bloatware creative drivers take 2 hours to install. You ever tired it? I would venture not.."


I think so if i'm not mistaken by benchmarks i've done on sis sandra my PC unoverclocked does about a 2.8 P4. So this whole mine is better signal i'm getting is odd. Plus i'm decked out with all nvidia and amd so it only gets better.
 
REJOICE OH YE ENSLAVED...UH...uh... sorry I can't think of anything funny. Check it out though:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mmedia/display/20041210041357.html

Rejoice-worthy relevant parts are here:

"In early 2000 NVIDIA acquired virtually the whole patent portfolio as well as hired development staff from Aureal – a well-known maker of audio solutions from the late nineties – that was not successful, but invented a number of impressive audio technologies. As a result, NVIDIA has been about to enter a new market for itself for some time now, at least, the company has had everything that is required for this: reputation, strong team of developers and a successful marketing team.

The CEO and President of the company confirmed plans to build the SoundStorm 2 this week and called the forthcoming solution “awesome”, however, he did not elaborate on details, but claimed the implementation of the product may surprise the market, which may mean that the SoundStorm will not be launched as a component along with a new chipset from NVIDIA Corp.."

I had no idea they had A3D's technology (thought Creative did, did they buy it?) and some engineers. That would explain why I've always liked SoundStorm because I LOVED my A3D card. Hopefully this card will put Creative sound cards where they belong. In a dog's sphincter. I have had a few of their cards, and am NOT a fan of the drivers or their company (Doom3/Id fiasco, pay for CD's instead of download the software/drivers).
 
I quit using creative after I got stung with two of their crappy cards.

Really I dont care if on-board is as bad as it is...it's better getting garbage for free than paying for that garbage.
 
thomase said:
Archaea,

I don't even know where to start. I don't have the time for a long post right now so I'll try to be brief. You have a lot of knowledge about HT setup and PCs in general. However, unless I have some kind of MAJOR misconception about the technology involved, (ie. the computational requirements of AC3 compression), you seem to lack a fundamental understanding of the underlying technology. I believe that it is misleading for any game to say it supports "Dolby Digital" because it is essentially meaningless, like saying it supports LCD monitors, or pentium computers, etc. NO GAME software will output sound to the soundcard in Dolby Ditial format unless it is already encoded in some kind of movie or cut sceen. During gameplay, the game synthesize a 3D sound environment ON THE FLY and separates it into multiple channels (depending on your speaker/headphone setup) and/or does special filtering and processing for 3D positioning and environmental audio. This sound IS NOT compressed in Dolby Digital format. That can only be done (at this time) by Soundstorm audio. Creative claiming to support 5.1 IS NOT THE SAME as claiming to support Dolby Digital in games. 5.1 != "Dolby Digital".

I have more to say but I can't get to it right now. In the meantime, do some reading/research. I'm not sure you completely understand the difference between "analog" and "digital". For instance, to say "analog PCM" doesn't make any sense because PCM is a digital encoding of an audio signal.

Thomas,

I did look all this up, several years back, though it has been some years I will admit. I too have a bit of schooling in the area, having a BS in Network and Communications Management, and also having a lot of real life exp. being around home theatre systems for a lot of years. The PCM i'm referring to is what my receiver reads whenever the digital out is connected to my receiver's digital in. PCM according to the manual is blatantly an analog signal. I do recall from school that PCM in fact stands for pulse code modulation, whether or not it's basically packaged into a digital signal to be converted to analog again I don't know, but pro-logic itself is an analog signal, not a digital signal, so even though it is being transferred over an digital cable through a digital transfer, it is an analog signal. (run on sentance) Pro-logic has always been an analog signal, hence the reason you can get pro-logic sound from a simle pair of RCA stereo cables if the media player/vcr/whatever decodes Pro-Logic media. Dolby Digital however is fully digital. It requires either six seperate single ground and tip 50ohm standard RCA cables, or a single digital RCA Coax cable(75ohm cable) in order to transfer the signal, I do not know the compression format that Dolby Digital uses for compression. But is is a compressed and modulated signal of some sort. That doesn't matter.

Now after reading your post I do understand something about you suggesting the soundcard needing to encode on the fly to dolby digital in live gameplay, whereas scripted sequences could just be passing raw unmolested data from the actual game cd wihout using any extra encoding processing power. Problem is that Creatives cards don't do either, not even in their own presented demos. The other option and seemingly the new way games may decide to go is that the software itself could be actually setup to do it through software instructions rather than the hardware like supposedly half life 2 is according to the newest PC gamer. Meaning Half-Life two doesn't use EAX, A3D or any other normal sound enhancing hardware algorithms, it uses it's own software system for 3d effects, and seperation of channels. It's a fully software host provided output, no 3d soundcard required. The "miles system" i believe? At any rate after reading that today in PC gamer I know understand why my audigy card seemingly struggled with sound lag and everything else the entire way through HL2. When it typically wouldn't stutter so bad in other newer games, why? ---- BECAUSE it wasn't even being used. The Processor was generating the sound through the software instructions and the sound card was simply the connection interface to the speakers and otherwise sitting idle. I have not actually tried HL2 5.1 audio yet via analog connection to my reciever, which in theory should work, since the other games here mentioned supposedly let the soundcard to the encoding/decoding and output. I do know that UT2k4, Far Cry, and Doom3 supposedly supported 5.1 audio, and the digital bit stream never converted to digital even in cut scenes, so I know the actual 5.1 dolby digital encoding/decoding never kicked in, and it never transitioned over to the digital stream that would allow my recever to recognize a digital input...It remained in analog Pro-logic "PCM". Furthermore, When I actually tried to use the 5.1 setup through analog cables the options were grayed out in the game, like the game understands that the sound card perhaps cannot encode to a digital stream to be decoded by the receiver on the fly, and if the software needs to encode on the fly, the audigy card, because the options are grayed out seemingly can't even seperate the signal out to the analog 5.1 speakers. To me and my understanding if it's wearing the 5.1 logo, it should encode and decode both to six seperate channels. It seemingly does not. That's a farce and false advertising. The best it seemingly can do is pass raw data from an already encoded source like a dvd or AC3 file. Their marketing impression is not that, in fact their video tutorial walkthrough would make you believe otherwise, basically showing hook up like this and then click here to exp. 5.1 audio, and yet it remains an analog pro-logic output through PCM. Even clicking the distinct rear channels in the demo hooked up the way they say you are supposed to hook it up through their manual and video tutorial and live technical support will only allow a pro logic output. You want to hear the rear left speaker...too bad you hear both rear speakers.

Ah, this is getting long, maybe i'm babbling too, making it hard to understand.

cliff notes.
SB 5.1, Audigy 1, Audigy2, seemingly cannot even DECODE actual raw dolby digital information, (as in a cutscene) through the analog outputs. It can only pass already encoded information through, thus the 5.1 logo is incorrect for the most meaningfull uses of a gamer soundcard(which is what they claim to be) The raw data passthrough of a DVD or AC3 file in my opion is not justification of having a 5.1 logo. Anything can just pass raw data through. The 5.1 live and then the Audigy series claims to have 6 seperate sound channels in games, which is not the case. Xbox has the same 5.1 logo label and it is able to pass a dolby digital 5.1 signal to my receiver, so that my receiver fully recognizes the digital stream and pops into DD mode. The same with SoundStorm. The creative cards do not do what I expected, nor what is promised through Creative's marketing.
 
you know it's odd

i kept buying creative cards and i was never satisfied

but i kept doing it

i recently bought a turtle beach santa cruz and i like it :)
 
XSNiper


I was NOT comparing your computer to mine. I was relaying that I was NOT using a crappy computer ----since you stated my crappy PC was the root problem of the creative drivers taking so long to install. I also referenced that if you think it's simply a crappy PC problem, you have not installed Creatives drivers. Because they ALWAYS have taken a long time to install, regardless of your processor speed, The full software install from creative takes about 2 hours. I've timed it, and I'm not exagerrating here. I wasn't trying to play a "my schlong is bigger than your's game." Well now I am :p ....but only because you started it. Keep in mind...I've not upgraded any component for real close to a year now.

http://www.geocities.com/jvonengeln/324ghz

I don't think in anyway this constitutes a crappy computer. Not the fastest on the market no...but pretty good considering I've not upgraded in nearly a year.

I normally just run at a straight 3.0GHZ with a 1GHZ FSB. Stable as stock. The 3.24GHz is not stable in games over the course of a several hour session. But it's stable enough to run a few benchmarks, and I was really just stretching the legs of my system...to see how far she'd go in current form. I have only air cooling. Using the Zalman 7000Cu proc cooler. Geil Golden Dragon PC3500 RAM. etc. etc. etc.
 
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