butjer1010 wrote on 2025-10-04, 07:51:

I don't know what is wrong with people nowadays....
More than 90% of people here are giving negative comments about Creative, the company that gave us so much fun before...

Yeah.
They bought EMU Systems and lived off its achievements throughout the entire SoundBlaster Live! era, including X-Fi. Then they shut that company down.
They sued and bought Aureal, goodbye A3D.
They didn't let Carmack implement his work in the his sound engine.
They had such a falling out with Microsoft that they removed all Creative Lab extensions from Windows Vista.

Such nice guys, it's a good thing they don't live next door to me

butjer1010 wrote on 2025-10-04, 07:51:

I don't know what is wrong with people nowadays....
More than 90% of people here are giving negative comments about Creative, the company that gave us so much fun before...

Creative Labs engaged in a lot of marketing hype and scummy business practices. The latter of which included suing Aureal into bankruptcy, buying up the remnants and eliminating the best 3D positional audio on the market at the time. Which as an owner of an Aureal-based card at the time was not something I was happy about.

Don't have a lot of sympathy for them these days.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-10-04, 12:57:

Creative Labs engaged in a lot of marketing hype and scummy business practices. The latter of which included suing Aureal into bankruptcy

To be fair, Aureal's predecessor (Media Vision) also had a shady past due to financial fraud. Perhaps old, unresolved issues forced the Aureal to go bankrupt so quickly.

I have no idea what to think, the complete and total lack of ANY product information doesn't exactly strike me as promising. I didn't even know this existed until seeing this thread. I signed up, mainly out of curiosity.

Honestly, I'll reserve judgement, but on my modern hardware, sound capabilities are probably my lowest priority. On my old hardware, it's a completely different story, but I highly doubt this, whatever it is, will have much to do with old hardware. I think the Doom screen and retro hints are there to maybe play on nostalgia and the modern popularity with retro/classic gaming. I really am at a loss as to what this is supposed to be, other than some form of modern USB PC sound device. Maybe when more is known, if ever, I'll change my mind. Time will tell.

From the updated page:

Missing the magic of classic PC gaming? Relive it with built-in DOS sound and games

The inclusion of this in the description makes whatever this is all the more confusing. Is it supposed to be some sort of gaming device then?

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-10-04, 15:24:

From the updated page:

Missing the magic of classic PC gaming? Relive it with built-in DOS sound and games

The inclusion of this in the description makes whatever this is all the more confusing. Is it supposed to be some sort of gaming device then?

I suspect that it would probably be both. So, possibly a control surface with audio functionality, possibly DSP effects (maybe in hardware) and possibly a screen to play those DOS games on . However, if that thing does not also have a battery to power on the go, it would seem rather pointless to have dos games running on it, since the suspected primary use case of the device would require it to be connected to a PC with much more processing power and a decent size monitor, which would make running games on the device pointless versus running them on the PC.

The more I read and think about this thing, the more confused I get as to what its target audience might be.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-10-04, 09:08:

butjer1010 wrote on 2025-10-04, 07:51:

More than 90% of people here are giving negative comments about Creative, the company that gave us so much fun before...

Because big public companies are not your friends. Also lets not forget that Creative was reselling the same fricking chip 4 times in a row at the height of their power and snuffed at least one major competitor by bleeding them dry with lawsuits.

I liked Creative. I've owned their soundcards, CD-ROM's even a Creative Zen MP3 player.
But as you said they gave us fun before. The company has lost relevance over the past 15+ years.

Just as Nokia made great phones around this same time. They even still make android phones today, yet it's a Samsung phone in my pocket. That's just how business works your on top till your not.

I'll still happily buy their ISA or Audigy/X-FI soundcards, Yes the company did some bad things (threating Daniel K with legal action I think was the worst)

The fact that a large public company with access to funds is realising this on Kickstarter of all things!? with the most vague descriptions doesn't sit well with me. It's like they are trying to tick off all the things they are "famous" for

I'm not trying to pick on you butjer1010. In fact I wish I could still think happy thoughts towards Creative. I still do thinking back in time, I still enjoy their hardware I have today, I just cant see buying any of their new products in the future
Tired of cluttered setups? Swap modules to fit your workflow.
Frustrated with switching audio connections? Re:Imagine makes it seamless.
Typical sales speak for this product will make your life easier!

Missing the magic of classic PC gaming? Relive it with built-in DOS sound and games.
DOS is what made our company famous so you know dos right? you liked it? come buy our product!

Settling for average sound? Experience high-quality audio powered by Sound Blaster.
Every soundcard they released always advertised high quality audio, why stop now!

butjer1010 wrote on 2025-10-04, 07:51:

I don't know what is wrong with people nowadays.... More than 90% of people here are giving negative comments about Creative, th […]
Show full quote

I don't know what is wrong with people nowadays....
More than 90% of people here are giving negative comments about Creative, the company that gave us so much fun before... There are few guys like "Intel486dx33" who is happy to see something new from Creative. Nobody knows what they'll deliver, but the thought they can make in 2025. something new, and maybe connected to old hardware is great. Will they succeed, we don't know? But until than, i'm glad they have anything to offer to older generations like we all are.
Something is changed with peoples minds in a few last Years, but changed to worse. So much hate and negative thoughts is hard to accept, especially here on pages like this one. Why does everybody have such negativity inside they heads, i don't know, but i hope this will end soon.
It is so hard to read all of this negative comments and mocking, that i need to drink some alcohol to ease the pain 😀 (joke of course)
Please, everybody, this is Creative, let them do what they are up to, and than, if the result will be bad, than this comments will be valid, until than.... If they succeed, who will be happier than us, old guys?
Hope no one will be offended with my plead, there was no intention...

Speaking only for myself, though others may agree, the issue in this case is not Creative the company, but their, IMHO, weird and hype fueled marketing campaign about an extremely vaguely defined product that apparently addresses needs and/or solves problems that are just as vaguely defined.

Had it been any other company, in any other field and doing something similar, my reaction would have been the same.

I don't get excited about a marketing campaign for something essentially undefined just because it happens to include a few buzzwords and that one or two of those happen to intersect with one of my fields of interest.

I don't equate needing more facts and evidence than those provided to be interested, let alone to be excited, with being "negative". I am not a blindingly idealistic or gullible fanboy.

shevalier wrote on 2025-10-04, 10:24:

Yeah. They bought EMU Systems and lived off its achievements throughout the entire SoundBlaster Live! era, including X-Fi. Then […]
Show full quote

butjer1010 wrote on 2025-10-04, 07:51:

I don't know what is wrong with people nowadays....
More than 90% of people here are giving negative comments about Creative, the company that gave us so much fun before...

Yeah.
They bought EMU Systems and lived off its achievements throughout the entire SoundBlaster Live! era, including X-Fi. Then they shut that company down.
They sued and bought Aureal, goodbye A3D.
They didn't let Carmack implement his work in the his sound engine.
They had such a falling out with Microsoft that they removed all Creative Lab extensions from Windows Vista.

Such nice guys, it's a good thing they don't live next door to me

They also bought\devoured Ensoniq as well... oh, and Sensaura.

IMO, the scummiest part of the whole Aureal thing is that Creative initially sued Aureal for infringing on copyrights while Aureal counter sued claiming that Creative was infringing theirs. In the end, Aureal actually won but were in such shambles due to legal costs that they were forced to file for bankruptcy.... and... of course we know who still had plenty of money to purchase what was left of them.

If someone wants to know why people these days don't assume the best about the decisions of corporations, it's because of past experience. I could put a big smile on my face and say "Oh! Look at the pixelated parrot! I vaguely remember that! Clearly Creative is going back to their roots!" but, to be honest, their roots were a bit rotten, and realistically they are just doing this for attention. The product is likely going to have nothing to do with retro computing or even sound cards in general aside from maybe acting as a USB audio device, at best with some kind of virtual-surround feature for headphones that has existed for 20+ years (thanks to Sensaura...).

The fact that the first PC that I could call "my own" had an integrated Ensoniq chip with "Creative AudioPCI" silkscreened on it, and I remember fondly the sound of the MIDI soft synth it used in Windows 98 doesn't really change any of the things mentioned in this thread.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-10-04, 09:08:

butjer1010 wrote on 2025-10-04, 07:51:

More than 90% of people here are giving negative comments about Creative, the company that gave us so much fun before...

Because big public companies are not your friends. Also lets not forget that Creative was reselling the same fricking chip 4 times in a row at the height of their power and snuffed at least one major competitor by bleeding them dry with lawsuits.

And made products that make us happy back than? If You deny that they were one of the "greatest" (maybe too strong word, but You know what i meant) companies that made great products, which we all were in awe when we tried them, than You are either too Young, or too hateful to admit! I will never forget my first hearing of crowd roaring in Sensible Soccer on Sound Blaster, after i change from PC Speaker to SB in my PC (386SX33). Those were the times when someone like Creative could make a difference in this market, and make something that could really impress You. Today this is not the case at all. What can Nvidia, Amd or Intel make, that You didn't see so far, or what could they make to impress You? Graphics card that cost 3000€, and can play games with ray tracing at 4K in 50FPS (more only with reducing resolution)?

Again same comments. I don't know where is my wife right now, but i know everything what happened 35 Years ago, 3000km far from me, who f..ked who in country next to mine, .... What is going on in peoples minds, that they think they know everything ever happened to everyone. And they will defend their opinion with attacks, because they know everything!!!! Why? Who am i that i claim that Creative is company that destroyed another company 35 Years Ago because their director was some shady guy??? As i said, i don't know what is happening in yard next to mine, what my wife doing right now! She said she is going to work, but where she is i don't know, what she's doing, i don't know,.... but i know Why the war between Ukraine and Russia is happening right now???? Isn't that sick to claim?
I just said that we all had SB cards in our PCs, and the sound they produced was fantastic back then. If they want to do something like that again, i'm happy. If they fail, i will be the first one to said that, but until then....

A lot of Sound Blaster cards are actually pretty mediocre sound devices. Sure back in the day we didn't really know any better. Going from PC speaker to a Sound Blaster 16 was a marked improvement, even if that Sound Blaster had poor quality, noisy audio output.

I recently re-created our old family PC with a similar model SB16 to what we had back in the day. And to be honest, I kinda hate it. There are simply much better sound cards including sound cards from competitors back in the day (Terratec, Turtle Beach, Guillemot, Roland, etc.).

Creative Labs relied a lot on aggressive business practices and marketing hype. Things like their multi-media upgrade kits had a lot of appeal for anyone looking to add sound and CD-ROM capabilities to their early 90s computers.

Sure, we may have nostalgia for some of those old Sound Blaster cards. But it's heavily tinted with rose-colored glasses, I'm sure.

And made products that make us happy back than?

Emphasis on back then, last time it was 20 years ago. I like some specific Creative products, but don't have any rose-tinted glasses for the company as a whole. And it was already pointed out here, that Creative weren't very innovative by themselves after some point. They had to buy Ensoniq to remain relevant in early PCI days and then very heavily rely on E-MU division to make decent gaming cards. They were "Nvidia" of the sound cards, but weren't sly enough to remain relevant in Vista+ days.

butjer1010 wrote on Yesterday, 16:18:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-10-04, 09:08:

butjer1010 wrote on 2025-10-04, 07:51:

More than 90% of people here are giving negative comments about Creative, the company that gave us so much fun before...

Because big public companies are not your friends. Also lets not forget that Creative was reselling the same fricking chip 4 times in a row at the height of their power and snuffed at least one major competitor by bleeding them dry with lawsuits.

And made products that make us happy back than? If You deny that they were one of the "greatest" (maybe too strong word, but You know what i meant) companies that made great products, which we all were in awe when we tried them, than You are either too Young, or too hateful to admit! I will never forget my first hearing of crowd roaring in Sensible Soccer on Sound Blaster, after i change from PC Speaker to SB in my PC (386SX33). Those were the times when someone like Creative could make a difference in this market, and make something that could really impress You. Today this is not the case at all. What can Nvidia, Amd or Intel make, that You didn't see so far, or what could they make to impress You? Graphics card that cost 3000€, and can play games with ray tracing at 4K in 50FPS (more only with reducing resolution)?

I think there is some kind of possibly language-related misunderstanding going on here. Not praising a company up and down is not the same as being hateful, and stating facts is not the same as being hateful. The details of the Aureal lawsuit and Creative's anti-competitive buying out of every sound card innovator until the market was destroyed is all public knowledge and easy to find online.

It'd be like if Nvidia had destroyed all the competition and yet handled it so poorly that no one had a use for a 3D accelerator by 2010... and now 15 years later a GTX 280 or GTX 480 would still be the most advanced GPUs around because no advancements had been made, and all games went back to software rendering so it didn't really make a difference.

Also, for what it's worth, my computer sound card\chip history goes like this:

Commodore VIC 20, Tandy 1000HX built in sound, Packard Bell with Aztech Sound Galaxy Washington 16, Ensoniq AudioPCI on-board (rebadged as Creative AudioPCI), Yamaha XG PCI, Aureal Vortex 2 SQ2500, Sound Blaster Live!, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Nvidia MCP-T Soundstorm with Realtek ALC650, Realtek ALC850, Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music, Asus Xonar DX... and I'm still using the Xonar DX in my main PC 15 years later because the sound card market was in ruins by the time the Xonar was released and there has been zero change since then. It is little more than an optical output now, and I only use it because it has zero problems and I prefer the drivers it uses vs Realtek ones.

From the AudioPCI to the Nvidia Soundstorm was a span of maybe three years for me... that's six sound cards I tried in an effort to get the best card. Those were very weird times for PC audio enthusiasts.

Of course, in the past 20 years I have dabbled in retro computing and purposefully used old sound cards. Also in that time I have been exposed to the various issues with Sound Blaster cards during the 90s, since I experienced none of those with the Aztech card back in the day.

Not trying to prove anything, just trying to give context.

Personally, I'd love to see Creative make a comeback by working with developers to make games sound more realistic (and I do NOT mean HRTF or surround sound simulation with headphones... ), and if they wanted to tack on retro aesthetics (the talking parrot, the old logos, etc.) to benefit from the nostalgia of old school PC users, that's totally fine. That doesn't seem to be what they're doing though. So, I'll leave it at that.

butjer1010 wrote on Yesterday, 16:28:

She said she is going to work, but where she is i don't know, what she's doing, i don't know,....

Here's hoping she popped out to buy you a chill pill

badmojo wrote on Today, 04:14:

butjer1010 wrote on Yesterday, 16:28:

She said she is going to work, but where she is i don't know, what she's doing, i don't know,....

Here's hoping she popped out to buy you a chill pill

Hehe, don't worry, i'm ok, but i just don't understand the people who think they know everything, and have need to prove it online!!! That's all i wanted to say.... I'm ok, trust me, i'm chill 😉

[/quote]
I think there is some kind of possibly language-related misunderstanding going on here. Not praising a company up and down is not the same as being hateful, and stating facts is not the same as being hateful. The details of the Aureal lawsuit and Creative's anti-competitive buying out of every sound card innovator until the market was destroyed is all public knowledge and easy to find online.
[/quote]

If more than 90% of comments are negative, it seems to me that this is hateful.... maybe i'm wrong, but this is not the first forum or first thread i can see that hate towards everything! That's why i commented this. Maybe really word hateful in my language means something else than on English, but i doubt.

butjer1010 wrote on Today, 07:25:

If more than 90% of comments are negative, it seems to me that this is hateful.... maybe i'm wrong, but this is not the first forum or first thread i can see that hate towards everything! That's why i commented this. Maybe really word hateful in my language means something else than on English, but i doubt.

if you are gonna feel and comment like a californian crystal gen dude, then you are on the wrong place.

like what you want, but corpos are not your friend.

butjer1010 wrote on Today, 07:25:

I think there is some kind of possibly language-related misunderstanding going on here. Not praising a company up and down is not the same as being hateful, and stating facts is not the same as being hateful. The details of the Aureal lawsuit and Creative's anti-competitive buying out of every sound card innovator until the market was destroyed is all public knowledge and easy to find online.
[/quote]

If more than 90% of comments are negative, it seems to me that this is hateful.... maybe i'm wrong, but this is not the first forum or first thread i can see that hate towards everything! That's why i commented this. Maybe really word hateful in my language means something else than on English, but i doubt.
[/quote]

Just to be clear, there are, IMHO at least a few nuances here.

a) Some people have negative feelings about Creative. Either they dislike the company for various reasons and possibly even wish it to fail. I do not feel this way about Creative despite understanding the reasons shared by others.

b) Some people have negative feelings about this new product's marketing campaign because it is full of mostly hype and buzzwords AND never makes it clear concretely what problems it is trying to solve or what needs said product might fulfill. I, for one do not have any idea what this product might be able to actually do for (or not) me based on that marketing campaign. As a consequence I do have a negative view of the marketing campaign specifically.

c) Some people might already have a negative view of the actual product. I personally feel that there simply is not enough to go on for that. This might end up a very good product that people (possibly even myself included) actually find useful and, hopefully for Creative, the product will sell well. However, as I have previously stated, there is currently too little actual information for me to be interested, especially in the context that I do not feel I am missing anything in particular in my retro experience and the marketing is not being very convincing, IMHO (see point b). In other words, I DO NOT have a negative view of the product and, in fact, do not have ANY view of the product because it's use cases are unclear at this point.

To be clear, I do not feel that I have an arguably negative view of anything except the marketing campaign (point b) AND the fact that I am skeptical about there being a potential use case, for me specifically at least, for any retro themed product that likely targets a wide audience (as Creative or any other relatively large company would likely want to do). I would be happy to be proven wrong.

I agree some people here truly dislike (hate) Creative. However, he fact that this product announcement does not generate enthusiasm, while being arguably classifiable as a "negative" reaction, does not necessarily imply any "hate", IMHO.

Living wrote on Today, 11:49:

https://media.revistavanityfair.es/photos/60e85574fccef075722a4831/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/46567.jpg […]
Show full quote

butjer1010 wrote on Today, 07:25:

If more than 90% of comments are negative, it seems to me that this is hateful.... maybe i'm wrong, but this is not the first forum or first thread i can see that hate towards everything! That's why i commented this. Maybe really word hateful in my language means something else than on English, but i doubt.

if you are gonna feel and comment like a californian crystal gen dude, then you are on the wrong place.

like what you want, but corpos are not your friend.

If You think i would cry because of Your emotions towards someone or something, then You're on wrong place! You should go at least to school again. You don't understand simple sentences i wrote up there....