It’s a sad day for me.

See, I’ve been the proud owner of Soundblaster sound cards since my IBM-compatible 286 days. I’ve owned every card that Creative Labs released under the Soundblaster banner, with my current card being an XFi.

As an owner, I put up with what can best be termed as a substantial increase in “bloatware” from Creative upon driver installation of each successive card. And why not put up with it–after all, Soundblaster cards had it all: fantastic sound, enhanced aureal experience via CMSS, EAX, and Crystalizer. Not to mention up to 7.1 surround sound that included DTS and Dolby Sound features. While there were a few wanna-be’s on the market, everyone knew that if you wanted the real deal, you bought Creative.

But all of that changed with the introduction of Vista. Microsoft completely revamped the sound-driving portions of their new OS, making it possible for all of the enhancements available almost exclusively by Creative suddenly available at the software level by any sound chip developer. In layman terms: the sound card processing field was leveled: all cards and onboard chips have an even and fair chance to work their aural magic. Now, it came down to software-based rather than hardware-based rules.

And Creative dropped the proverbial ball for their longtime supporters. Across the internet, stories started pouring in about how Soundblaster card owners began experiencing massive BSOD (blue screen of death) crashes on their system. But especially owners of the latest card from Creative: the X-Fi. Myself included.

The driver issued by Creative in response to the official release of Vista was, shall we say, substandard. If anything, it revealed the Achilles Heel of Creative. They were the king at producing hardware, but incompetent at producing the software to drive that hardware once Vista changed the rules.

What’s interesting about this is that Vista didn’t spring onto the scene out-of-the-blue. There was a long, drawn-out process of beta releases and public releases, during which time Creative also put out time-limited drivers that would expire after a short period of time, at which time the end-user would have to uninstall the Creative drivers and seek out the next “beta” driver from Creative to install again.

This was true even for their most recent flagship product, the X-Fi, which, I logically conclude, had the full attention of their developers still, since it was their newest product. But even given the resources that Creative assigned to their X-Fi line, Creative could not seem to release a fully working software to interface with their hardware card. It became more and more obvious that each new driver release from Creative introduced new problems, and still more reports of BSODs in Vista. Again, I myself experienced the BSODs, which especially reared their ugly head when accessing the card in games, but would randomly appear otherwise.

To date, over a year after the official release of Windows Vista, Creative has yet to release a fully working driver for their X-Fi Soundblaster line of cards. And that’s not to mention their older cards–but I’ll address that below.

Most of the blame, Creative says, is placed at the door of Microsoft, for changing the rules so that sound is handled at a software level rather than at the hardware level within the Operating System. What this has to do with writing a driver that is stable using the fully-documented process within Vista, I have no idea; it seems more an attempt at an excuse to me–one that borders on corporate level whining. And this becomes even more evident when I look at the soundcard/soundchip market and see that others seem to be having nowhere near the problems that Soundblaster owners are having.

And apparently, that fact has not escaped the notice of other Soundblaster owners, either. They’ve been quite vocal about their unsatisfactory experiences that are eerily too similar to my own. Many of gone back to XP in order to regain stable use of their Soundblaster card, and for a time I did too.

But this, I’m afraid, is a temporary fix, because we are unavoidably being dragged forward to that inevitable day when Windows XP goes the way of Windows 2000, Windows 98, and Windows 95. It’s just a matter of time. And what then? What if Creative still has not figured out how to write a stable driver?

The Rumor Mill, of course, suspects that Creative is more interested in producing a new product (X-Fi 2, for example) so they can bump up their profit margin all over again, forcing owners to buy upwards in order to have the quality of sound that they’ve become accustomed to. The problem here is that we really are no longer bound to Creative when it comes to quality sound options, since Vista levelled that playing field. And even if we do buy the next card from Creative, there is now ample evidence available to make us pause and wonder if it will only work until the next OS is released from Microsoft, given what Creative has done so far with Vista. And personally, I think that is a very sobering point to consider.

There is another rumor now appearing on the internet, that Creative has decided to shift their focus to going software-based rather than hardware-based. Even with this, it appears that Creative has determined that trying to figure out how to make their X-fi and earlier soundcards work with Vista is a waste of time and resources. The caveat, of course, is that if they can’t write a stable, working driver for their products that compares with how their products work in XP (and since it’s done via software in Vista, and emulation has achived far greater things in other aspects of computing!) then how can we depend on them to figure out their software-based future?

Things have become even bleaker recently, as regular readers of Creative’s User Forum are well aware. Which also brings me to the motivation for this commentary.

See, even though Creative Labs has been unable to produce a stable, working driver for their soundcards (X-Fi and earlier models)–and thus has been releasing substandard “official” driver releases that lack features that are available in their XP counterparts–it appears that the Creative User Base has been able. The Creative User Forum has, over the course of the past year, seen the release of user-modded drivers that have enabled nearly everyone owning even the older Soundblaster cards to have those cards function nearly the same under Vista as they have under XP.

But rather than congratulating the user base for their ingenuity in accomplishing what they themselves have been unable to figure out, Creative Labs has now made it unmistakably clear that they will tolerate no such thing, and has removed numerous threads that have provided said drivers from users. Their claim: intellectual property rights are being violated. This after nearly a year of silence while users helped one another through driver issues, up to and including modded drivers. And it is on the heels of it coming out that Creative is shifting from hardware focus to software focus for future sound-based advances, which makes this new clamp-down all the more dubiou as to actual motive.

Response from the user base has been anger, disgust, and dismay. While most users admit that on a technical, legal level, Creative is correct in their claims about intellectual property, they are utterly shocked that Creative at this point refuses to offer them stable, working drivers (or is unable to), and that when they do so for themselves out of love for the product and the name, Creative slams the door shut. Is it possible that Creative thinks they are the only ones who can be creative?

At the center of this new controversy is a registered user named Daniel_K, a name that has quickly become synonymous with restored functionality in Soundblaster cards that have yet to see that same restoration made available by Creative themselves (and would they want that, considering that if you get the old “stuff” to work with an OS like Vista, where’s the incentive to buy a new product when it comes out on the market from Creative).

Recently, Daniel_K’s modded drivers were removed by Creative and after almost a week of silence, an official statement was released on the Creative User Forum, directed specifically to Daniel_K.

Below is the actual statement, as posted on the Creative User Forums:

We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don’t have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.

Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you. We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages. To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP. In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules. If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.

Phil O’Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.

Again, what is especially important to note is longtime posters on the forum quickly saw through the cleverly-worded but pathetically weak appeal to “IP” (Intellectual Property) as the basis for shutting down Daniel_K and others’ efforts from here on forward in making their soundcards actually work as intended, and responded with their own interpretation of events and the irony of Creative’s newfound official position. Unfortunately, newer forum users and readers will not understand that this battle between the users pleading for dependable, stable drivers and Creative (who has consistently been utterly silent about when we can expect those drivers–if ever) has been going on for well over a year.

Why is it, Soundblaster owners want to know, that Creative cannot release stable, working drivers for their products so that they will work as intended–but they have no reservations about demanding a cessation of users’ efforts (and successes!) to that end? What is the motivation for a company to want their products to continue to generate BSODs, to continue to operate in a far more limited manner than it does under Windows XP, and to simply not work dependably from owner to owner? It isn’t about Intellectual Property at all–and the above-cited letter spells it out: it’s about money. Creative’s ability to up its earnings in the future is directly proportionate to their ability to make older products crippled and increasingly unsupported–even the most recent high-ticket soundcard–the X-Fi–that continues to be promoted as the end-all-cuz-it-has-it-all soundcard–yet continues to fail miserably under the Windows Vista environment.

And so it is that I, like numerous other longtimers, have come to realize that our longterm support and advocating for Creative products has all been for nought. And like numerous others, I have decided to cease all further support for a company that acts so frivolously with its userbase in the face of a shifting market that has made Creative (not us) obsolete. Clearly, Creative is acting out of some delusional sense of grandeur that they continue to hog the spotlight in sound for PCs, and can afford to lose its hardcore userbase.

What a shame.

And what a dark day for Creative.

Timothy Kline / ENVISIONocity