Creative sucks
I turned by back on them long ago.
First they made really nice HW. 486 times.
Later I had severe issues with the SB Live and Creative didn't care a bit about it, though it was at least 50% their fault. Still it was an bearable situation.
Then I heard about that issue with these XFI Cards, already working with both Linux and Windows on my boxes. During that period onboard chips had become already good enough to work with them, and furthermore I noticed that most soundcard vendors used the same chips anyway (this is a thing Linux definitely taught me - different vendors, different names, but at the end it is the same chip inside), so why buy an expensive card that often just uses the same RTLxxxx, CMI, VIA or whatever chips?
At the moment I'm quite happy with my onboard stuff which is fine enough. Okay, I'm not into professional sound/music production but then you have other vendors than Creative (if their HW is useful for prof. purposes anyway).
And it all works out of the box with the in-kernel ALSA drivers. The W32 part of my systems works with them as well, so I can't complain.
I still wonder why Creative show such a fubared state of mind. I mean they were slapped in the face by Vista/Microsoft with all their EAX and stuff and they still refuse to support alternative systems in any way. But they could really score here, esp. since market for dedicated cards is shrinking all the time. (Same goes for VIA tech with their CPUs and chipsets, but at least they installed Harald Welte so it can only become better in the future.)
I just don't understand their behaviour.
Well, but that wouldn't be the first enterprise that is being smashed down the abyss by management (note management, not engineers).
But they'll probably have to learn it the hard way. I'm just sorry for the engineers when Creative goes bankrupt one day.
I turned by back on them long ago.
First they made really nice HW. 486 times.
Later I had severe issues with the SB Live and Creative didn't care a bit about it, though it was at least 50% their fault. Still it was an bearable situation.
Then I heard about that issue with these XFI Cards, already working with both Linux and Windows on my boxes. During that period onboard chips had become already good enough to work with them, and furthermore I noticed that most soundcard vendors used the same chips anyway (this is a thing Linux definitely taught me - different vendors, different names, but at the end it is the same chip inside), so why buy an expensive card that often just uses the same RTLxxxx, CMI, VIA or whatever chips?
At the moment I'm quite happy with my onboard stuff which is fine enough. Okay, I'm not into professional sound/music production but then you have other vendors than Creative (if their HW is useful for prof. purposes anyway).
And it all works out of the box with the in-kernel ALSA drivers. The W32 part of my systems works with them as well, so I can't complain.
I still wonder why Creative show such a fubared state of mind. I mean they were slapped in the face by Vista/Microsoft with all their EAX and stuff and they still refuse to support alternative systems in any way. But they could really score here, esp. since market for dedicated cards is shrinking all the time. (Same goes for VIA tech with their CPUs and chipsets, but at least they installed Harald Welte so it can only become better in the future.)
I just don't understand their behaviour.
Well, but that wouldn't be the first enterprise that is being smashed down the abyss by management (note management, not engineers).
But they'll probably have to learn it the hard way. I'm just sorry for the engineers when Creative goes bankrupt one day.
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