Upgraded from Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD to Sound Blaster AE-9

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Gawd
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Aug 25, 2010
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My Titanium HD is now EOL and won't receive driver updates to support the latest versions of Windows 10. There are many reports that the Titanium HD does not work well or at all in Windows 10 version 2004. Because of this, I decided to just get a new sound card (I have yet to upgrade to Windows 10 version 2004 as my PC is apparently "not yet ready" for the update as per Windows Update).

I received the AE-9 today and installed it. I tested out some audio material I am very familiar with. I noticed a significant increase in clarity and detail. I use a pair of JBL LSR305 monitors and a single JBL LSR310S subwoofer for a 2.1 setup. Bass quality has also significantly increased as I can hear more "definition" and/or detail in the bass. I also noticed an improvement in imaging as well.

One quick/easy example of the improvement I noticed is in the following trailer. With my Titanium HD, the deep-voiced narrator was quite hard to understand and make out what he was saying. With the AE-9, it is MUCH easier to make out what is being said.



Overall, I think this was an awesome upgrade.
 
My Titanium HD is now EOL and won't receive driver updates to support the latest versions of Windows 10.

What makes you think that it won't receive any new driver updates? The latest driver is only about a year old, and came out right after a Windows 10 feature update that caused issues. The new driver fixed those issues. Creative has actually done a great job keeping up with the new feature updates.

There are many reports that the Titanium HD does not work well or at all in Windows 10 version 2004.

What reports? I'd love to see some actual links instead of vague references to "reports". I have an X-Fi Titanium HD as well as a regular X-Fi Titanium in computers that are both running 2004 with zero issues. I'm also running an even older X-Fi XtremeMusic and an X-Fi XtremeGamer in other computers that are also running 2004 now, and again, no issues.

I received the AE-9 today and installed it. I tested out some audio material I am very familiar with. I noticed a significant increase in clarity and detail. I use a pair of JBL LSR305 monitors and a single JBL LSR310S subwoofer for a 2.1 setup. Bass quality has also significantly increased as I can hear more "definition" and/or detail in the bass. I also noticed an improvement in imaging as well.

One quick/easy example of the improvement I noticed is in the following trailer. With my Titanium HD, the deep-voiced narrator was quite hard to understand and make out what he was saying. With the AE-9, it is MUCH easier to make out what is being said.



The Titanium HD already has a very good DAC. The DAC in the AE-9 may very well be better but the difference between a very good DAC and an even better DAC won't be significant enough to make huge differences such as being able to hear the voice of a narrator or not. More than likely, you are using different settings on the two cards. Settings for things like CMSS-3D, "Crystalizer", EQ, and their equivalents on the AE-9, can all potentially have a huge impact on what you hear.
 
What makes you think that it won't receive any new driver updates? The latest driver is only about a year old, and came out right after a Windows 10 feature update that caused issues. The new driver fixed those issues. Creative has actually done a great job keeping up with the new feature updates.



What reports? I'd love to see some actual links instead of vague references to "reports". I have an X-Fi Titanium HD as well as a regular X-Fi Titanium in computers that are both running 2004 with zero issues. I'm also running an even older X-Fi XtremeMusic and an X-Fi XtremeGamer in other computers that are also running 2004 now, and again, no issues.



The Titanium HD already has a very good DAC. The DAC in the AE-9 may very well be better but the difference between a very good DAC and an even better DAC won't be significant enough to make huge differences such as being able to hear the voice of a narrator or not. More than likely, you are using different settings on the two cards. Settings for things like CMSS-3D, "Crystalizer", EQ, and their equivalents on the AE-9, can all potentially have a huge impact on what you hear.

Have a look at the following, it says "End of Service Life" and that support is limited to whatever is already available: https://support.creative.com/Produc...i Titanium HD&subCatName=X-Fi Series&CatName=

Search Google for "titanium hd windows 10 2004" and you'll see quite a few Reddit posts of users having issues with the Titanium HD and Windows 10 2004. That might not classify as concrete proof to you but I was already having a few bugs/issues with my Titanium HD and Windows 10 1909 (which I am still currently on).

I know the Titanium HD has a good DAC and to be fair I always had in Game Mode. I am running the AE-9 in Direct Mode with all processing left off.
 
Have a look at the following, it says "End of Service Life" and that support is limited to whatever is already available: https://support.creative.com/Produc...i Titanium HD&subCatName=X-Fi Series&CatName=

It's said that for a very long time, during which they've released at least two new drivers.

Search Google for "titanium hd windows 10 2004" and you'll see quite a few Reddit posts of users having issues with the Titanium HD and Windows 10 2004.

I did the exact search you specified, but only see a few results that were posted after 2004 was released (May 27th), and in most of those threads there are people claiming it works fine.

Sorry for coming down hard on you, but you started this thread with some fairly declarative statements about the future of the X-Fi series that were clearly based on little more than assumptions and hearsay. Hopefully you will enjoy your new AE-9 card for a long time. Creative has provided new drivers for the X-Fi series for 14+ years. That would be like still getting new drivers for your AE-9 in 2032. If creative continues that level of support, then you should get more than you're money's worth out of your new AE-9.
 
It's said that for a very long time, during which they've released at least two new drivers.



I did the exact search you specified, but only see a few results that were posted after 2004 was released (May 27th), and in most of those threads there are people claiming it works fine.

Sorry for coming down hard on you, but you started this thread with some fairly declarative statements about the future of the X-Fi series that were clearly based on little more than assumptions and hearsay. Hopefully you will enjoy your new AE-9 card for a long time. Creative has provided new drivers for the X-Fi series for 14+ years. That would be like still getting new drivers for your AE-9 in 2032. If creative continues that level of support, then you should get more than you're money's worth out of your new AE-9.

No worries. It's just that I saw quite a few Reddit posts also saying that the Titanium HD will not receive any more driver updates.
 
There is 1 inch of space between my graphics card and sound card (with the sound card being under the graphics card). Is that enough "breathing" space for the graphics card's fans for effective cooling?
 
There is 1 inch of space between my graphics card and sound card (with the sound card being under the graphics card). Is that enough "breathing" space for the graphics card's fans for effective cooling?

That's an impossible question to answer, as there are going to be a lot of variables that come into play. Your best bet is to simply monitor your temperatures. Use something like MSI Afterburner and simply keep an eye on your temperatures. Generally blower-style coolers are the most forgiving when it comes to being close to another card. The 3 GTX680's that I have in my backup computer all have blower-style coolers and are less than a half inch apart from each other. Assuming the specs in your signature are current, the triple-fan layout is not going to be as forgiving, but again, your temps will be what tells you the full story.

I'd be more worried about your soundcard really... Not that your soundcard will overheat or anything like that, but your soundcard is basically an "internal DAC". They are susceptible to electrical noise, and a GPU is very electrically noisy. As long as you aren't hearing weird background noise via your soundcard while your GPU is under heavy load, then you should be good to go.
 
That's an impossible question to answer, as there are going to be a lot of variables that come into play. Your best bet is to simply monitor your temperatures. Use something like MSI Afterburner and simply keep an eye on your temperatures. Generally blower-style coolers are the most forgiving when it comes to being close to another card. The 3 GTX680's that I have in my backup computer all have blower-style coolers and are less than a half inch apart from each other. Assuming the specs in your signature are current, the triple-fan layout is not going to be as forgiving, but again, your temps will be what tells you the full story.

I'd be more worried about your soundcard really... Not that your soundcard will overheat or anything like that, but your soundcard is basically an "internal DAC". They are susceptible to electrical noise, and a GPU is very electrically noisy. As long as you aren't hearing weird background noise via your soundcard while your GPU is under heavy load, then you should be good to go.

Ran the Fire Strike Ultra Stress Test for about 10 minutes. Max GPU temp was 75 C. No weird background noise via my sound card either.
 
Ran the same test again for another 10 minutes but this time with the case's side panel removed. Max GPU temp was 74 C.
 
Amir over @ ASR hasn't reviewed the AE-9 yet, but he thought well of the AE-5, so if the AE-9 has a similar implementation, it should be quite good. That having been said, you're probably better off with a separate audio deck/setup; but as you already have the AE-9, good luck & enjoy!
GotNoRice's points are all good ones, and essentially boil down to "what you're paying Creative for in the AE-9 is basically them providing EQ presets" (as well as the electrical noise stuff, all of which is valid).
The AE series does have a much better headphone amp setup than the (anemic) Titanium HD, though (if you use headphones).
 
I have an X-FI THD and I bought an AE-9 this months, I could say the speaker out is almost the same, the headphone bring a difference but I can't say which is better, AE-9 bring more solid bass on my headphone while X-FI THD give a better vocal.

And the driver for X-FI THD works better under windows 10 20H2 for ASIO or WASAPI, AE-9 get more failures on this point and there's no automatic headphone/speaker switch on AE-9.

Without considering the future of driver I would return AE-9 back, and my X-FI THD works very well under Windows 10 20H2, you just need the most recent driver.
 
I have an X-FI THD and I bought an AE-9 this months, I could say the speaker out is almost the same, the headphone bring a difference but I can't say which is better, AE-9 bring more solid bass on my headphone while X-FI THD give a better vocal.

The Titanium HD uses a separate DAC for the headphone output that is not nearly as good as the DAC used for the RCA analog outputs. It's okay in a pinch, for the rare times when you might really need to plug headphones directly into your computer. For long term listening, you should really always be using the main RCA outputs (which use the better DAC) and a separate external headphone amplifier.
 
I have an AE5 and liked it, its now shelved though. Software IMO is the worst part for soundblaster products. The x-fi looked very tempting though.
 
The Titanium HD with Burson V6 Vivids and an O2 amp absolutely slaughters the AE-9 with the same setup...Hands down, CMSS knocks SBX out of the park. If you're seriously worried about a good mic, get a Yeti Blue.
 
The Titanium HD with Burson V6 Vivids and an O2 amp absolutely slaughters the AE-9 with the same setup...Hands down, CMSS knocks SBX out of the park.

Yeah I did that upgrade recently myself:
https://hardforum.com/threads/breat...-soundcard-creative-x-fi-titanium-hd.2003840/

In my case I used two V6 Vivids in the buffer section and two V6 Classics in the I/V section. The Classics in the I/V stage actually seemed to make a bigger difference than the Vivids in the buffer stage.
 
Yeah I did that upgrade recently myself:
https://hardforum.com/threads/breat...-soundcard-creative-x-fi-titanium-hd.2003840/

In my case I used two V6 Vivids in the buffer section and two V6 Classics in the I/V section. The Classics in the I/V stage actually seemed to make a bigger difference than the Vivids in the buffer stage.
Excellent! Just clicked the link to have a look. I'm going to read it now :)

I ended up hack-sawing the shielding where I needed to to fit the Bursons in, really works. I do some pics.
 
Unfortunately no, I've used a USB Webcam for my microphone for a while now.
Argh, yeah, I was using a Yeti but it's SOOO big on the desktop..must just be interference from the GPU or whatever causing the HD to buzz, it comes through Nvidia recording aswell . So, I enabled the onboard audio and used the mic input to solve it. I'm loving the PC37X wide soundstage, I have the PC38x's arriving today or tomorrow :)
 
I use the Daniel_k drivers for my TXD on my secondary computer with the latest version of Windows. Headphones and speakers sound good...no crackling that I had with the Creative drivers.
 
Went from a SB ZX to a SBx G6 external amp. Running Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro 250 ohms with a mod mic. Night and day difference.
 
I've been using the Same X-Fi Ti HD for years. Never had issues, never been unable to download a driver. Creative is quite good about providing driver support for years beyond EOL of a product. I think these driver rumors are just that, rumors.
 
I've been using the Same X-Fi Ti HD for years. Never had issues, never been unable to download a driver. Creative is quite good about providing driver support for years beyond EOL of a product. I think these driver rumors are just that, rumors.
You're super lucky. I've been using X-Fi Titanium HD for years, then one day the computer took 30 minutes to boot up and there was no sound after that. After spending a few hours trying to trouble shoot I just took the HDMI cable from my PS3, plugged that into the PC and added AMD HDMI audio diver, got the 5.1 audio running to my A/V receiver and never looked back ever since.
 
You're super lucky. I've been using X-Fi Titanium HD for years, then one day the computer took 30 minutes to boot up and there was no sound after that.

Just to clarify, when you say that you've "been using X-Fi Titanium HD for years", what you really mean is that you haven't actually used it in a decade. Correct?

I've used X-Fi Titanium HD for a while until one day back in 2011 the driver broke somehow and caused Windows 7 to take 20+ minutes to load. Since then I've been using HDMI out and not ever looking back.

The card was released in March 2010, so you used it for what, one year? 2011 was long before Windows 10 was even released. I'm glad you're having good results with HDMI, but it doesn't seem like you're really in a position to talk much about current driver support for the X-Fi Titanium HD compared to those like OFaceSIG, myself, and many others who have used these cards continuously over the last 10+ years and have had very good results.
 
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Just to clarify, when you say that you've "been using X-Fi Titanium HD for years", what you really mean is that you haven't actually used it in a decade. Correct?

I've used it for several years.

The card was released in March 2010, so you used it for what, one year? 2011 was long before Windows 10 was even released. I'm glad you're having good results with HDMI, but it doesn't seem like you're really in a position to talk much about current driver support for the X-Fi Titanium HD compared to those like OFaceSIG, myself, and many others who have used these cards continuously over the last 10+ years and have had very good results.

I said "for years" and that's what I meant. My experience is based on Win 7 / 8.1 drivers. I had X-Fi Titanium Sep 2010 - May 2015.
I've used all other X-Fi's before for years and drivers always were garbage. Win7 driver took a while to release, switching between headphones and 5.1 speakers were always a hassle.

Comparing to HDMI audit that's like night and day. Not a single issue since I've switched over. It just works as expected.
 
You're super lucky. I've been using X-Fi Titanium HD for years, then one day the computer took 30 minutes to boot up and there was no sound after that. After spending a few hours trying to trouble shoot I just took the HDMI cable from my PS3, plugged that into the PC and added AMD HDMI audio diver, got the 5.1 audio running to my A/V receiver and never looked back ever since.
No, I disagree. Not only have I have used a Ti HD for years, but I have used nothing but Creative cards since my first custom built 386 with no issues that I can even recall. I hate their website with a passion, but as far as how the hardware has behaved? There's a reason I still use them, for me, they work, and they work well.
 
No, I disagree. Not only have I have used a Ti HD for years, but I have used nothing but Creative cards since my first custom built 386 with no issues that I can even recall. I hate their website with a passion, but as far as how the hardware has behaved? There's a reason I still use them, for me, they work, and they work well.
You must have gotten lucky then because Creative drivers were awful throughout the time period where EAX was frequently used in games. My biggest gripe with their drivers though is that the Soundblaster Live Platinum I had never did get fully functioning drivers for it, some of the external I/O ports never worked(which was why I bought it), the most functional driver in that regard caused random BSODs, and many of the features advertised for the remote never worked because they didn't bother finishing the software for it.

Creative got where they are because EAX was light years ahead of other positional audio in games which was why most people bought sound cards in that era, not because they had superior hardware or drivers. In the DOS era Roland was the superior option while Soundblaster was the more affordable option(and what I had) and in the early Windows era Turtle Beach had the superior hardware and IME much better drivers but without the latest EAX they didn't sell very well in the gaming audio market.

Once Creative had the market cornered they seemed to get lazy for a while, for instance advertising Audigy as having better audio because it supported 24 bit 96khz audio even though there was hardly any 24 bit content out there and they let more important specs like THD slip. At least going by specs they seem to have more than rectified the high distortion levels on their latest high end cards but these days there's much better headphone DACs out there and PC speakers are pretty awful. You can get powered studio monitors and there's a few other decent non-monitor options like KEF for powered speakers but if you want to do more than stereo it's generally a better deal to get an external amp with regular speakers at which point you might as well get a full receiver and skip the SB.

Of course I've had good luck with hardware that others have had nothing but issues with and I can understand sticking with what you've had good luck with.
 
You must have gotten lucky then because Creative drivers were awful throughout the time period where EAX was frequently used in games. My biggest gripe with their drivers though is that the Soundblaster Live Platinum I had never did get fully functioning drivers for it

EAX was dropped starting with Windows Vista. Windows Vista was released in 2006. Windows 7 was released in 2009. The X-Fi Titanium HD was released in 2010. The driver issues with cards like the Sound Blaster Live during the Windows 98 / XP era have nothing to do with the X-Fi Titanium HD. Not even when the card was brand new, certainly not now 10+ years later.
 
EAX was dropped starting with Windows Vista. Windows Vista was released in 2006. Windows 7 was released in 2009. The X-Fi Titanium HD was released in 2010. The driver issues with cards like the Sound Blaster Live during the Windows 98 / XP era have nothing to do with the X-Fi Titanium HD. Not even when the card was brand new, certainly not now 10+ years later.
The person I was responding to claimed that they had been using them since their 386 without any issues, I was pointing out that they were lucky if that was case. And yeah I realize that Vista killed hardware 3d audio but that doesn't change the fact that EAX was what killed the competition and gave them a de facto monopoly.

I can't speak personally for more recent drivers but every time I look into sound cards driver complaints are extremely common for Creative products so I'm skeptical that they've improved much but even if they have improved they certainly have a poor history.
 
I don't know how in 2020 it is still an acceptable solution for end users.

3rd party drivers are neither required nor particularly beneficial. I've never found a need to use them on any of the 6 different computers that I have an X-Fi sound card installed in. Some people got into the habit of using modded drivers years ago and continue to do so. Nothing wrong with that, and it's nice that there is a thriving community surrounding these cards that cares enough to produce them. I use the stock drivers and experience zero issues, as do many others.

The "acceptable solution", from most companies, would be to not even have new drivers at all for products this old. Consider the Nvidia GTX500 series video cards. Released in November 2010 (newer than the Titanium HD). Driver support for those cards was abandoned 3 years ago... Or how about the Radeon HD6000 series, which was similarly released in October 2010 (also newer than the Titanium HD). Driver support for those cards was abandoned over five years ago. And keep in mind that the Titanium HD is not even among the oldest cards that Creative still supports. The Original X-Fi cards came out in 2005 and are still supported with the latest driver. How many other companies support 16 year old products with new drivers?

Btw, it's 2021, not 2020.
 
The "acceptable solution", from most companies, would be to not even have new drivers at all for products this old. Consider the Nvidia GTX500 series video cards. Released in November 2010 (newer than the Titanium HD). Driver support for those cards was abandoned 3 years ago... Or how about the Radeon HD6000 series, which was similarly released in October 2010 (also newer than the Titanium HD). Driver support for those cards was abandoned over five years ago. And keep in mind that the Titanium HD is not even among the oldest cards that Creative still supports. The Original X-Fi cards came out in 2005 and are still supported with the latest driver. How many other companies support 16 year old products with new drivers?

There were literally no changes in the sound interface since MS had the direct access to hardware nixed in Vista. So the same driver can be easily modified to work with a newer OS in case any changes are needed at all. There were no new features brought in by Creative for that X-Fi card in 15 years. The card is PCI, so good luck finding a new motherboard with PCI, gotta buy a PCI-E riser and saw your case to fit it. It has no front panel connectors, unless you got X-Fi Platinum with 5.25" bay extender, but good luck finding a new case with the front bays. Enjoy your analog cables getting RF interference from everything around your PC.

Video cards are completely different story. There were significant changes in video games in 10 years, so a 10 year old card just does not have enough power to run anything modern. The connectivity also sucks since those video cards were mainly DVI without display ports or sometimes even HDMI.
 
There were literally no changes in the sound interface since MS had the direct access to hardware nixed in Vista. So the same driver can be easily modified to work with a newer OS in case any changes are needed at all.

Actually there have been. The most recent was the Windows 10 1903 feature update which made significant changes to the audio in Windows 10. It caused some issues, but Creative stepped up to the plate with new drivers very quickly.

There were no new features brought in by Creative for that X-Fi card in 15 years.

Why do I need new "features" for a sound card that already does everything I need? I still have not found anything better than CMSS-3D for downmixing 5.1/7.1 into stereo for headphone positional audio.

The card is PCI, so good luck finding a new motherboard with PCI, gotta buy a PCI-E riser and saw your case to fit it. It has no front panel connectors, unless you got X-Fi Platinum with 5.25" bay extender, but good luck finding a new case with the front bays.

I only brought up the PCI X-Fi cards as an example of cards even older than the X-Fi Titanium HD that are also still supported, not as a recommendation for anyone to try to stuff one in their new rig. PCIe X-Fi Titanium cards can be found cheap for anyone wanting to try that. I have a PCI X-Fi XtremeGamer in a 2500K rig that does still have a PCI slot and I'm glad to still have up to date drivers for it. The front panel audio connectors on that case are connected to the card and work just fine.
 
Why do I need new "features" for a sound card that already does everything I need? I still have not found anything better than CMSS-3D for downmixing 5.1/7.1 into stereo for headphone positional audio.

So you're basically invalidating your own driver support argument. Unlike nVIDIA or AMD who have to support new game and features, Creative software basically had no improvements in the last 10-15 years. EAX is dead, OpenAL is dead, CMSS-3D is a gimmick.
5.1 channel downmixing to stereo is done with more than a software text book implementation. Stereo to 5.1/7.1 upmixing has been done by hobbyists as github demo projects without any special hardware.

The only innovation Creative is doing is trying to break into audiophile/streamer market with overpriced AE-9. Because nobody else cares about their products any more.
 
So you're basically invalidating your own driver support argument. Unlike nVIDIA or AMD who have to support new game and features, Creative software basically had no improvements in the last 10-15 years. EAX is dead, OpenAL is dead, CMSS-3D is a gimmick.
5.1 channel downmixing to stereo is done with more than a software text book implementation. Stereo to 5.1/7.1 upmixing has been done by hobbyists as github demo projects without any special hardware.

The only innovation Creative is doing is trying to break into audiophile/streamer market with overpriced AE-9. Because nobody else cares about their products any more.

My definition of good driver support is that it works great with the latest version of windows, and that Creative steps up to the plate with new drivers when it needs to (such as when Microsoft breaks something with a feature update). Both of those are true. If you define driver support as adding random new crap for no reason, then we are talking about two different things.

If you don't like CMSS-3D, that's fine. I couldn't care less, nor am I trying to convince you, because it's pretty clear at this point that you simply hate Creative and wouldn't give it a chance anyway. I've compared numerous down-mixing algorithms and CMSS-3D gave me the best results, so that's why I continue to use it. I'm not alone. I never mentioned anything about upmixing as that's not what I use my cards for.
 
Installing software or drivers from internet, modded by an unknown party, is seriously risky behavior. I hope they treat their computer like a 'burner' as any Windows install should.
 
Installing software or drivers from internet, modded by an unknown party, is seriously risky behavior. I hope they treat their computer like a 'burner' as any Windows install should.

I've been using the Daniel_K drivers for years. Creative got pissed at him because he fixed bugs that Creative refused to fix for a long time in their drivers. They banned him then receeded when the community went into an uproar about banning him. He has never posted a bad driver once.

He even lists the fixes that creative refuses to fix.

http://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/

From Wikipedia:

Some drivers from the Audigy 2 ZS have been soft-modded by enthusiasts. These can be installed on Creative's older cards, including Sound Blaster Live!, Audigy, and Audigy 2. It has been claimed to offer improved sound quality, hardware acceleration of higher EAX versions in games, 64-channel mixing for Audigy 1, and an overall improvement in the card's performance. Several forum posts across the web have reported favorable results with this technique, excepting Live! users where the drivers only add the ability to use the newer software applications (i.e. the newer mixer applet). Comments on forums from developers of the software mod have said that Live!'s hardware is not capable of EAX3 nor 64-channels of hardware sound mixing.

Later, in 2004, Creative released updated drivers top-to-bottom for the Audigy through Audigy 4 line that put these cards basically at feature parity on a software level. As of 2006, the entire Audigy lineup uses the same driver package. DSP decoding at the driver level on other cards than Audigy 2 ZS and 4 is still not supported by official drivers, but it works with soft-modded drivers on the other cards with hardware DSP (like Audigy 2 6.1).

When Windows Vista was released, there was only a single beta driver for the Creative Audigy series that was usable on the operating system with minimal functionality and frequent instability reported by users. A Creative Forum activist named Daniel K. modified drivers from the X-Fi and applied it to the Audigy and Live! series, restoring most if not all of the features that came with the original XP setup CD in Vista. X-Fi drivers have noticeably better sound quality under Vista, and more bug fixes because of the newer build (last modified version is 2.15.0004EQ April). He managed to enable the X-Fi Crystallizer to work on Audigy series cards in software, however because of the patents involved, he was forced to remove all the modified drivers and DLL patch.

Creative then released a newer official Audigy Vista driver (2.18.0000 as of 28 July 2008) due to public and consumer pressure. However, some form of agreement between Creative and Daniel K has been achieved, as he returned to the Creative forums, posting updated versions of his modified drivers. He released the final version of his modded driver package as of January 12, 2012.[47]
 
Creative steps up to the plate with new drivers when it needs to

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but these are the same old drivers they've been patching since Windows 2000 era - xxxxx2k.sys in the driver names is a clear indication of that, besides the all other files in the installer dated 2002+
I work in software development and only rarely I see there's a piece of software what would not benefit from rewriting it from scratch using better tools and methods. Especially if it is almost 20-year old driver.
Creative is not a software company, so they probbaly just pay some intern to dust off the old CD with the source code and patch in the new windows ID so the outdated install shield would not fail.

it's pretty clear at this point that you simply hate Creative and wouldn't give it a chance anyway.

Hare is a strong word. I don't hate them, they are just irrelevant to me at this point. They do not have any products that I'm interested in.
25 years back the SB16 with Yamaha DB50XG was totally bonkers, nowadays I look at this AE-9 and wonder why would anyone pay so much when there are other options.
 
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but these are the same old drivers they've been patching since Windows 2000 era - xxxxx2k.sys in the driver names is a clear indication of that, besides the all other files in the installer dated 2002+

As someone who has actually used these cards since that era, I can say unequivocally that there have indeed been changes over the years, even if some legacy files have been brought along for the ride. But it doesn't matter either way, because the drivers work great with the latest current version of windows, and are updated/fixed when they need to be.

I work in software development and only rarely I see there's a piece of software what would not benefit from rewriting it from scratch using better tools and methods. Especially if it is almost 20-year old driver.

It's not a 20 year old driver regardless of how many times you want to repeat that lie. You'd be surprised how much legacy code is in most new drivers. Suffice it to say that anyone still using the same 10-15 year old soundcard is probably happy with the way the software already works and doesn't actually want a complete re-write. That includes me.

Creative is not a software company.

Yeah, most hardware companies are not software companies.

I don't hate them, they are just irrelevant to me at this point. They do not have any products that I'm interested in.

For products that are irrelevant to you, that you have no interest in, and that you have not used in many years, you sure spend a lot of time spreading bad information about them.
 
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