Creative Goes After DanielK over his modded drivers

jzodda · Mar 28, 2008, 08:35 PM

Check this stuff out. Looks like Creative wants to shut down modded drivers.

Quote:

Daniel_K:

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.

Message to Daniel_K - Sound Blaster - Creative Labs

FreedomFighter · Mar 28, 2008, 08:50 PM

Yes and they have banned me from their forums because I dared to tell people that they could google the banned drivers.

I've found links to the drivers and posted them here in a blog I created to contain links to all of the banned drivers, if anyone has more please send me a PM and I will add them to the blog:

Fighting Against Suppression

People need to spread the word about this, Creative is really screwing their customers, and stifling and suppressing those who release good working full featured drivers. I hope this story gets to digg and slashdot.

Robert McClelland · Mar 28, 2008, 09:14 PM

Well creative have nothing against pax drivers we have permisson do them. My freind ask them along ago.

FreedomFighter · Mar 28, 2008, 09:31 PM

Someone submitted it to digg.
Let's Digg it

Digg - Creative Goes After Driver Modder

Robert McClelland · Mar 28, 2008, 09:34 PM

See thats why we don't touch the drivers

we just fix infs that creative left out ect.. And I just added support ect.. to them. Thats why people love my driver mods. I feel bad for ya.

tcman · Mar 29, 2008, 07:13 AM

I can't blame people for modding the CL soundblaster drivers, since the driver support by Creative Labs sucks like hell. I got an Audigy 2 and Audigy 2 ZS and the last driver updates date from oct. 2006 (02.09.0016 for windows xp 32bit). This driver is almost one and half year old. If that happened with Nvidia's Forceware drivers or Ati Catalyst drivers, they would be sued by many customers.

Creative Labs have newer beta drivers at their connect.creativelabs.com: Sound Blaster X-Fi Audigy BETA Driver 20070827;

"This latest driver includes some performance enhancements made in particular for Unreal Tournament 3 and other UnrealEngine3 based titles."

Well, many Unreal 3 engine based games have launched, and still there's no final driver, well not for the Audigy series, while there are still bugs in the beta driver.

Creative Labs should provide better support, even for their older cards like the entire Audigy series and soundblaster live (the emu10kx family) since these soundcards differ not "much" from each other. An unified driver for all their Audigy series and X-fi series would be great and in my opinion possible. If it's possible for Nvidia to make their Forceware drivers work for their Geforce FX, 6, 7, 8 and 9 series, why Creative Labs can't do the same thing for their soundcards.

I have heard that Asus can provide EAX 5 support (in software) for their Xonar soundcards with their new 2.0 drivers, also no "Alchemy" software is needed for direct3d sound supported games under Windows Vista. Now Creative Labs feel somewhat uneasy and claimed that the software solution by Asus is not as good as Creative Labs hardware solution.

Here's Asus reaction on the matter: X-bit labs - Asustek Computer Claims that Its Audio Cards Do Support Latest Environmental Audio Extensions.

More and more onboard soundcards (HD Audio - Azalia) have surfaced and they do not sound bad, e.g. the Realtek ALC889 and ADI 1988B. Many people would not buy a dedicated pci soundcard if the onboard already is already sufficient and good enough (Realtek update its driver very frequently, well at least more frequently than Creative Labs), while companies like Creative Labs got bad support for their products.

Also in my opinion the multi-gpu war has some indirect impact on add-in soundcards: If you want a multi-gpu setup you can't use a pci/pci-e soundcard; you can't put a pci or pci-e soundcard in your pc system since 3 gpu cards (Nvidia's triple SLI) or 4 gpu (AMD-ATI's CrossfireX) require alot of space, especially with their "2 slot" vga coolers.

In the end Creative Labs make good products and there are still people who love their products. But since Creative Labs sucks in their driver support, people are "making" the drivers and apps do what they are intended to do: working flawlessly, so you can enjoy your music, movie and games with your favorite soundcard you have bought with your hard earned money.

So, Creative Labs blame yourself, because if your drivers are working the way they should be, people won't have to mod them on their own!!!

Zelig · Mar 29, 2008, 07:40 AM

Creative's drivers have been a wreck for ages, they've long since lost any of my business.

IvanV · Mar 29, 2008, 08:58 AM

Creative should really take a note or two from the graphics card makers on support, frequency of updates and attitude towards modded drivers. Pipelines are being unlocked and all sorts of functionalities are being added by modded sets and third party applications and no fuss is being made. Enabling "new" technologies on "weaker" cards is only possible if the "new" and "high-end" solutions lack true innovation anyway. Besides, the end-user bought a chip, the end-user wants to utilize the capabilities of the chip he bought - what is more natural than that?! And if they really can't bear the thought of modded drivers, it's another lesson for them from the graphics card market where the modded sets are far less important than they used to be. Why? Because the official releases got good and feature rich.

Shakey_Jake33 · Mar 29, 2008, 01:05 PM

I assume their reaction is specifically referring to the modification that adds DDL functionality to Audigy/X-Fi. Of course it does bring up some licencing issues related to Dolby, though these are obviously features which have been standard on other cards for years now.

Creative do themselves no favours. They made themselves look stupid with the lie about Alchemy for Audigy needing different programming efforts, and their efforts to clamp down on these issues has only served to spread work across the net and make Creative look worse. Not the smartest of reactions from them.

eastcoast · Mar 30, 2008, 03:15 AM

There's now a petition to demand that Creative provide better driver quality, stop selling mislabeled products, leave Daniel_K alone and support open source development.

Please see Creative Labs Driver Quality Petition

Knight_Rider · Mar 30, 2008, 05:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert McClelland

See thats why we don't touch the drivers

we just fix infs that creative left out ect.. And I just added support ect.. to them. Thats why people love my driver mods. I feel bad for ya.

Would appreciate if you can get your X-Fi Vista drivers working. And also put back DD/DTS which is suppose to be there. I dun see what Daniel_K did wrong? He is putting back features which is suppose to be there and not making Creative cards. How can it be call stealing? He helped countless people run their soundcard properly on vista, which creative didn't manage to do. Without him, creative will gg earlier ... Oh ya did ATI threaten the person who release better software ?

Shakey_Jake33 · Mar 30, 2008, 06:01 AM

I don't think it was adding back DD/DTS that they had a problem with, but the adding of DDL, backporting of Crystaliser to Audigy, and enabling of EAX5 on all cards. The first brings up some licencing issues, but the latter two reveal how Creative lied to their customers, claiming the Audigy was not capable of such functionality.

The EAX5 situation is interesting. For years, they had a virtual monopoly on gamers because they owned EAX5. The advent of Vista leveled the playing field in that regard, and they've lost that advantage. EAX is a prime example of why a closed, proprietary format is bad for us all.

Knight_Rider · Mar 30, 2008, 10:33 AM

Nothing new. We knew Creative lied when we mod our audigy cards from ZS to Audigy 4. So Audigy 2 not supporting DD/DTS was all bull. It might not sound like the real Joe but hey we got most of the feature didn't we. So now Daniel is doing what YouP-Pax used to do and Creative is making a big fuss??? I think it's a big loss to them since asking audigy users to pay for ALchemy was already one foot in the grave. Hmmm wonder what can a X-Fi be modified to?

Shakey_Jake33 · Mar 30, 2008, 10:44 AM

If YouP-PAX added DDL and Crystaliser, EAX5 to Audigy cards, you can be sure Creative would have a problem with them. Creative have re-allowed the Audigy Support Pack which adds hardware DD/DTS decoding back in, they only started to have a problem when X-Fi and Prelude features were being backported to older cards. I'm certainly not defending Creative here, I'm 100% in support of daniel_k (it's a consumers right to get the maximum out of their products!), but lets understand what Creative is making a fuss about.

theubersmurf · Mar 30, 2008, 11:30 AM

They backpedal in the same thread. I don't know if he was soliciting payment, nor do I know if he was adding unintended functionality, but functionality for Audigy under Vista was ultimately allowed.