Creative Software Modder Daniel_K Gone for Good

[allen337]

The way I see it creative has crippled the drivers so you ( the customer) will buy a new sound card when they are made. Now that the cats out of the bag, with daniel k moding these drivers and fixing the issues with vista everyone knows how creative has treated their customers over the years. Most companies allow a 3-5 year support on their hardware buy creative wants you to buy new every year to help support them. Thats like my ISP provider crippling my connection to 56k and raising it 56k every year and charging me double, wonder how many customers my isp would have?

[Sapientwolf]

Originally Posted by DaemonWraith

ah, but the unlocked chips also are the top binned runs, this means they will overclock better with less volts on avrage then a normal chip.

and creative removed fetures for VISTA OWNERS that cards came with, this is BULLSHIT no matter how you try and justify it, it would be like ATI removing dx9 support for you with the vista drivers because they want you to buy a 2900 or hd3k card, you wouldnt side with ATI on that one, you would bitchup a storm, then buy nvidia.

love how people dont really understand what creative is pulling and why, its not like dissabling something because it was bugged or couldnt be supported properly, they removed it simply to force you to buy new hardware with that as the only reasion, then they dont have the ballz to admit it.

they backed down once due to public outcry and bad publicity, If this is real(doughtfull) they will back down again, but DK is probbly not gonna come back if this turns out to be real.

I understand your point completely. I'm not too informed on the details of the driver situation. I just wanted to make a point about the "I payed for it, it should work to its fullest" argument that is faulty when take service into account (which you seem to understand).

If Creative is limiting features unfairly, then yes, you should be be getting what you payed for.

I've been using an HT-Omega Claro+ for quite a while now, no problems whatsoever, software is lightweight and functionaly, sounds great. I recommend it to anyone, or an Auzentech X-Meridian, which is based on the same C-media chip and uses the same software.

[imperialreign]

now that I've had a chance to get some fresh, warm, humid air

Originally Posted by DaemonWraith

i know that all to well, i got alot of polish blood, as well as irish/scotish, some of the most stuborn people you will ever meet but mostly good folks.

yep, even moreso with baltic peoples . . . . once the pride and stubborness kick in - it's no longer about the argument

creative are not fun to work with, their tech support as mentioned above(last page) will YELL at you, their staff involved with projects like working with game developers are just as bad, im SURE part of why ms droped it was due to how creative is to work with, and nvidia very well could have left the project due to being sick of fighting with creative, i have seen that happen with games, some of the people i use to do computer work for where game developers, this may sound shocking but most of them dont really know much about whats inside the puter, they just know their part of the dev prosess, that thats it, well every singel one of them had nothing nice to say about working with creative to support new eax fetures or work out buggs with eax and creatives drivers, comments like "they are a bunch of assholes" where common, now most of those dev's had creative cards because at the time creative was THE card choice for "true gamers".

I completely believe it. I even wondered if after nVidia left the development, it turned into MS and Creative butting heads over how things were going to go. No one really knows, as even that info on the MS+Creative+nVidia collaboration is fairly unknown - and I can't even remember where I read that . . . MaximumPC, I think

Plus, their tech support is stoopid - every once and a while I throw an email their way with some BS dumb issue I've made up just to see what kind of responses I'll get - all I can say is that they are 100% predictable at this point, and even if you come across as being tech knowledgable, they respond to you like your a tech illiterate n00b. Like I mentioned earlier, their poor support was what drove me to start the X-Fi thread here, so that users out there could have somewhere they could look up typical issues and ask questions and get real answers. From what I've seen over the last couple of years, you couldn't go asking questions on the Creative forums due to the number of trolls that hang out there, so . . .

yeah, i acctual have seen stuff like that but most of the x-fi problems i have seen are dirrectly due to the drivers, most dell owners dont go out and buy a soundcard, they use the onboard, and if they buy a soundcard they get the cheapist one they can get(because most dell owners are cheap bastards, hence they own a dell)

a little of both, most of the driver issues I've seen usually resulted from an improper/corrupted install, or something similar.

I can say, though, that their driver download links aren't always labeled correctly. I don't think their driver team does enough support testing, either. For example, I've found for the longest time that all of the X-Fi update drivers for the XP Media Center Edition are all incompatible, as much as the drivers list the OS as being supported. That turns into a headache for the customer, and for those trying to help the users.

yes it is wrong to remove fetures the card was sold supporting, they didnt do that with older cards when you went from 9x to xp or 2k to xp, video card makers dont remove dx9 support on cards that support it because they want to sell new cards to vista users......same diffrance in my book, this is all on creative.

and im glad that ubi brought back 10.1 im sure it was due to public presure and not wanting to look like they where pandering to nvidia to give nvidia an unfair advantege by removing it.... got any links to reviews of the 2nd patch, would like to see if there appears to be any under handed tricks being used to keep the perf of ati vs nvidia from changing between the 10.0 and 10.1 paths.

I see your point, as I think it wrong as well - but we'll never know if it was just meant to be a temporary thing, and the ongoing debacle with the dan_k drivers just blew up during the middle of it.

I also see your point with the VGA adapter argument - but at the same time, they'd never have to worry about dropping support like that. If you want to keep up with the newest games, you've got to upgrade the video card sooner or later, y'know? It's rough to be able to keep going with current games on a video card thats 3-4 years old, much less 5-6.

I had mentioned in other threads a while ago, the audio card, from any manufacturer, outlasts just about every other piece of hardware in a rig (unless you're an audiophile and constantly wanting the newest thing ). They're not subjected to the same rigors as other pieces of hardware, and for 90% of users, as long as it still sounds alright, there's nothing wrong with the card. I mean, hell, just for example, I just finally convinced my father last month to upgrade from his . . . ENSONIQ PCI!! That's right, the first sound card that got away from the ISA standard . . . the first PCI soundcard, and one of the first true multi-channel cards. That thing is 12+ years old at this point, but still works fine (even in Vista . . . surprisingly). He just didn't see a point considering the card still worked.

IDK, I guess I just think the notion of people wanting to hold onto an audio card for more than 5-7 years, and expecting it to function properly in the most recent WIN OS to hit shelves is kinda unrealistic.

thats easy, my maddog cmedia based 8738 soundcard, full vista drivers that WORK PERFECTLY updated from the cmedia forums(the guy who uploads to forums dosnt have acces to update the site....diffrent dept)

I'm just curious as I'm not sure . . . those are the official drivers? C-Media doesn't always keep up with updating their site, as the most recent driver release for the 8738 based cards is dated 2002.

TBH, I don't really keep up with C-Media chipsets too much, as they like to do little "tweaks" here and there for different manufacturers . . . makes it hard to keep up when 3 different card manufacturers are using the CMI8788 chipset, but each one has a version that's "tweaked" just for them

the DMCA dirrectly battles fair use laws, and it tends to loose, its the one big thing i would like to kick bill clinton in the nuts for, dumbass admited in a tv callin show (people call in with questions and he would answer) that he really didnt understand the DMCA he just signed it, the people pushing it made it sound like a good deal....didnt mention that it didnt allow him to copy his own cd's as backups for use in the car

yep - sad, IMO. DMCA is a load of crock, IMO, and doesn't nullify the original copyright act of 86 . . . which is dumb becasue the two acts contradict each other.

I still go by the old school rule, though, and will backup my software, CDs, DVDs, etc as I see fit - even if I have to break copy protection to do so. By the old act, I'm within my rights as long as I don't make numerous copies and/or distribute copies.

creative clearly did this to try and force ppl to buy their next big card, as the dolby support, its because creative refused to pay for a dolby licence for the cards, thats the only reasion, really dolby cant go after creative and win if its a user made mod/hack that enables said fetures, so its just creative wanting to keep their older products as crippled as possable in order to push their owners into buying the new cards they are working to bring out.

this is an old and well established practice in the computer industry that software makers and some hardware makers use, its died off a bit since companys that pull that crap tend to die when users disscover that they can choose something like a c-media based soundcard vs creative without loosing anything they will acctualy notice, and get longer support cycles.

cmedia still sells alot of chips and companys using their chips still sell alot of cards dispite the insainly long support cmedia is giving to chips like the 8738(hell i have seen 8738 based cards on newegg in the past year) mind you the 8738 is the same age as the sblive first run cards!!!!!!

my initial impression of the whole issue when it erupted a couple of months ago, was that it could be an issue with Creative and Auzen - as Auzentech had Dolby encoding enabled, Creative didn't (although their cards were capable). Dolby encoding was a big selling point with the Prelude . . . but, based on Creative's reaction then, I had gotten the feeling that they were being pressured to act.

But, it's very true, though, that hardware manufacturers will sometimes kill or disable features as time goes on . . . they just don't trip over themselves and publicly admit to it like Creative did. That little incident right there, IMO, will go down in the list of top-10 biggest tech blunders. Partly why I think they were pressured to act, if it was of their own accord, you think they would've at least reviewed it a little better . . .

and after reading this post my openion of YOU has changed, but my openion of how your earlyer posts in this thred came off hasnt

now go play some games or something

s'all good - I'm just trying to shed some light on the other sides of the argument, that's all. There are a lot of Creative bashers out there who go on without any real definitive argument, and there are also many who just enjoy the mob-mentality. But, in trying to show the other side of the argument, I realize I'm going to come across as being a fanboi (and it helps that I can stay reasonably level-headed as well ), especially to those who are fed up with the companies practices, and even moreso when the subject matter is as heated as the issue with the dan_k drivers has been.

[eidairaman1]

Alright Can we get back on Track

[Mussels]

and this really makes me feel 'i told you so'

Many times, even on this forum iv'e told people that creative dont support daniel_k and his drivers, and never did - and heres the proof (again)

I'll be getting the HDMI xonar as my next card, and never going back to creative until they start supporting older products.

[eidairaman1]

Originally Posted by Mussels

and this really makes me feel 'i told you so'

Many times, even on this forum iv'e told people that creative dont support daniel_k and his drivers, and never did - and heres the proof (again)

I'll be getting the HDMI xonar as my next card, and never going back to creative until they start supporting older products.

Speaking of Which, Next system Build will probably have a HT Omega Sound Unit in mine heh.

[thebeephaha]

Originally Posted by eidairaman1

Speaking of Which, Next system Build will probably have a HT Omega Sound Unit in mine heh.

Anything with the Oxygen HD chipset in it will be great.

My Auzentech X-Meridian is absolutely stunning. Gaming performance is not as good as the X-Fi but sound quality I put to the X-Meridian any day. The design of this card is second to none.

I see no reason to go to Creative unless you are dedicated to needing true EAX support and even then the ASUS cards emulate that very well.

[Wile E]

I don't even care if they support older products on new OSes, so long as they officially EOL'd the product. X-Fi isn't EOL, so it should have all of it's features enabled for Vista as well as XP, especially considering X-Fi products are "Vista Ready".

But as far as this email to D_K, even if it is a fake, I don't blame him for throwing in the towel. No matter how you look at it, Creative is treating their customers unfairly. The EULA be damned. "An unjust law is no law at all." -St Augustine

[TheMailMan78]

Wow Creative just lost a customer in me. I see hardware like any other thing I buy. Its mine. I should be able to do what I want with it. Bottom line is he wasn't making profit. He did this because he was just that good/kind. If Honda, Toyota, Ford or Chevy let you mod their software for better performance why cant creative? I cant tell you how many times Iv flashed my Mustang (no jokes) and got better than stock performance. Can you imagine if auto makers took this stance? "We will take legal action against all mechanics or drivers if they fix our cars, acquire better gas mileage or drive over 30 mph as stated in the EULA."

imperialreign,
FYI automakers do have EULA. When you buy a car and you sign all them little papers it states in the fine print you wont do anything unlawful in the vehicle. Now I ask you how many times have YOU went over the speed limit or did a U-turn and got a ticket from your cars manufacturer?

[NympH]

Someone quick buy out creative and shut them down!

[tigger]

I've got the stuff(files etc),i'm just gonna enable ddl on my x-fi.Blow me creative.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by tigger69

I've got the stuff(files etc),i'm just gonna enable ddl on my x-fi.Blow me creative.

if you get that working let me know. i have a few friends with X-fi cards who tried, and failed to get it to work. (wrong drivers, i beleive)

[jydie]

First off, I get really mad when a company fails to release driver updates for some of their older products.

Creative are fools... ATI has not been supporting some of the newer video cards that come out for AGP, but thanks to the Omega drivers these cards work fine with the new drivers. If ATI/AMD forced Omega to stop releasing these drivers then a LOT of people would be angry and ATI would suffer with less sales. If anything, ATI should thank him for helping them out. Creative should be thankinig Daniel K, not threatening him.

I do not own any creative sound cards. I do not desire much from audio since my PC has a simple 2 speaker setup, so I just use onboard sound. But, if I ever buy a sound card it will NOT be one from Creative. For the price you pay, they should support their products for a long time by releasing updated drivers. I am glad they got caught in a lie... they deserve to have their name tarnished for that!!!

[eidairaman1]

BS dude, you dont look hard enough

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/d...estionID=31542

Also most games ive played Omega Drivers tend to screw them up, thats the risk you take onto your own, reason The big companies dont support the Creators is because they dont want to be answering questions when the person that created the drivers is the one that is supposed to know.

Originally Posted by jydie

First off, I get really mad when a company fails to release driver updates for some of their older products.

Creative are fools... ATI has not been supporting some of the newer video cards that come out for AGP, but thanks to the Omega drivers these cards work fine with the new drivers. If ATI/AMD forced Omega to stop releasing these drivers then a LOT of people would be angry and ATI would suffer with less sales. If anything, ATI should thank him for helping them out. Creative should be thankinig Daniel K, not threatening him.

I do not own any creative sound cards. I do not desire much from audio since my PC has a simple 2 speaker setup, so I just use onboard sound. But, if I ever buy a sound card it will NOT be one from Creative. For the price you pay, they should support their products for a long time by releasing updated drivers. I am glad they got caught in a lie... they deserve to have their name tarnished for that!!!

[eidairaman1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design

read that to get a good definition of how ReactOS was created.

Originally Posted by ghost101

http://www.reactos.org/en/index.html

They say here that this is a "ground up implementation". Like I said before, if Daniel wants to build drivers from scratch, he should. But these are modified drivers.

Secondly, this will never reach the popularity similar to the modified creative drivers mentioned here.

The crucial thing here, is that Daniel blew his chance by unlocking extra features. Creative clearly wanted to end this there and then, and set a precedent. At that point they became "hacks" and creative excercised their right (which always existed) to end this. A promise not to unlock anything after this means nothing. I may be wrong in the last bit, but he seems to have done exactly this with Vista drivers by enabling things which otherwise didnt exist in the Vista drivers.

[ghost101]

Originally Posted by eidairaman1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design

read that to get a good definition of how ReactOS was created.

Interesting read. So if Daniel can prove that he used Clean Room Design, Creative cant do anything. But obviously he didnt and so my point stands. Clean Room Desing seems to be consistent with what React OS called "ground-up implementation" anyway.

[allen337]

Dont really matter what way he came about fixing all of creatives problems with xp-vista, what matter is creative is using their drivers to criple your $200 card so it doesnt work in vista so you(the customer) will buy a new card, even though the 2 month old $200 card says VISTA READY on the box. Cats out of the bag, no excuse for it.

[kenkickr]

Originally Posted by imperialreign

just my $.02


for starters, we can't compare ATI or nVidia's or any other comapny allowing users to get away with "cracking" their hardware to Creative. As stated before, the technologies are Creative's property, and it's their call what's allowable, and what's not - doesn't matter if it's 3rd party drivers or not. It makes no difference if other companies allow users to unlock features - that's their call. And if enabled features allow access to things that are supposed to be disabled due to any legal agreements between Creative and other companys.

Keep in mind as well that in the audio market, people hold on to audio cards for overly long periods of time - even after product support has reached EOL, there are still many users who won't give them up - in their mind, the card still works, still sounds good, why purchase another? There are still users out there running Live! initial-release cards (that dates back to 1998). What other type of 10-year old hardware in any of our systems can we utilize to run current applications and software? This is where I can kind of see Creative's stand, if they don't start locking and disabling features, users will never move up to newer hardware, and the company could risk losing money as well.


and about this:



there's still no word yet if this last statement from Creative to Daniel is even official, and he has mentioned so himself in the OP on their forums. It could be someone just trying to prank him - I would imagine that if the message were legit, it would be more long winded than just one sentence, and wouldn't sound so abrupt.

Also, if it were from Creative, I'd imagine that there'd be a signature or at least a name at the bottom of the message, and a link back to the companies main site or the email of the signee - not a link back to the Creative Forums.

It's not legal-looking enough to be an official statement from a multi-million dollar company; especially when compared to the first statements they ever made.




Sadly, this will blow out of proportion again with mob-like mentality taking the reigns instead of anyone actually stopping to think about all the circumstances involved.

This is the most sophisticated post I have seen in this post. I used my Audigy 2ZS for about 5 years and only upgraded cause my card and Vista had issues, which are now fixed due to daniel_k. Wonderful drivers and if you haven't tried them check this site out. http://nomoregoatsoup.wordpress.com/x-fi-drivers/

[donmarkoni]

This is unbelieveable! Creative WILL loose so much customers and money because of this.
Anyone remember NVIDIA and unlocking shaders? They are smart company! People unlocked shaders and loved NVIDIA cards for that! NV didn't sued RivaTuner's author. They changed their way of disabling shaders and no one complained, everyone were satisfied with what they had before, even if they couldn't have it with newer GPUs.
I won't discuss who is right and who is not, because there is allmost nothing else to say, but i'll have to say that, as a proffesional overclocker and amatuer modder, i'm 100% by daniel_k's side!
Stupid move, creative, stupid...

[HousERaT]

My last sound card was a Creative. It will be my last Creative sound card. They're officially on my BOYCOTT list.

[imperialreign]

seeing as how this thread has brought a lot of users out of the woodworks -

I just have one question for everyone that has decided that this incident is the last straw . . . what if, per chance, this little message to dan_k from "Creative" does turn out to be a hoax?

I'm only mentioning based on the fact that over the last couple of months, since the first incident with the dan_k drivers hit the i-net, Creative seems to have been making changes here and there back in the right direction . . . considering the fallout of the last incident, there's a good possiblity they might be trying to clean up their PR - for how long they'll stick with it is questionable - but what if they are trying to turn around and that message was just a hoax?

[allen337]

If it was a hoax you bet your ass someone over at the creative forums would say so after all this bad pr. Ive been on 5 different forums and all are done with creative, think they would clear the air if its a hoax. ALLEN

[imperialreign]

I'd hope so . . . but considering how long it took them to respond to the user outcry after the initial incident a couple of months ago . . .

Perhaps this incident will prove if their PR department has actually learned anything

[DaMulta]

Big Fing LOL, took a little while for them to go look into the email they sent......Their forum board must work on the same time table as their driver team....

daniel_k

04-03-2008 06:39 AM

I've received another cease and desist e-mail.



I'm done with Creative, enough is enough.



Don't even bother asking me for the files.

KokChoy-CL
Administrator

06-08-2008 06:25 PM

I have noted the issue, please allow us time to verify the legitimacy of that email.



For those who just join in to post your rants/curses, you know who you are. The forum rules are listed for a reason, this is not a place to vent your anger and post your abuses.



Kok Choy

[imperialreign]

Originally Posted by DaMulta

Big Fing LOL, took a little while for them to go look into the email they sent......Their forum board must work on the same time table as their driver team....

that comment right there cracked me up man!

nice!