Gizmodo
Remember Daniel_K, the good guy who took it upon himself to fix Creative's craptastic Vista drivers and ended up getting threatened with legal action as thanks for his work? Well, he's spoken out, and he's not happy about Creative's dickish treatment of him.
Daniel justifies the fact that he asked for donations by saying that in Brazil, where he's from, Creative's hardware is expensive. He wanted to buy more of it so he could make more patches, but needed the money to do so and didn't feel like spending his own coin on hardware he'd never use. Makes sense to me.
Here's the entirety of his letter:
ALchemyAlso, am I doing this April Fools thing right? [Gadget Lab]It all started when Creative released the first beta of ALchemy for X-Fi cards, saying it used X-Fi's advanced capabilities (EAX5).
After some investigation, I've found an EAX5.0 check and patched it... and it worked!
Sometime later, they released the final version of ALchemy X-Fi and the paid version of ALchemy Audigy.
I was realy mad at them, they didn't release a new Audigy driver and were charging Audigy owners for a software that runs on top of bugged drivers? What is the point of that?
Then I modified the X-Fi "free" version of ALchemy, not the paid version.
I did the same with the later versions, but when they released the 1.00.11, I couldn't patch it anymore.
So I bought it, just for the sake of it.
Well, I did manage to patch the latest version of ALchemy X-Fi to run on any card, without even removing Safecast, but I'm done with that.
The Audigy driversThey took several days, countless Vista reinstalls.
Creative purposedly modified the Audigy drivers to disable some features when Vista is detected and also purposedly introduced some bugs to prevent some XP utilities from running.
I did a complete analysis of the driver to determine where all the checks and bugs were introduced and started modding.
Features that I've successfully enabled:- Dolby/DTS decoding (originally discovered by another Creative forum member, but I've explained how to use it)
- CMSS, CMSS2 and Stereo Surround (originally only "CMSS" was available, this setting also affects ALchemy/OpenAL, so it is really useful)
- Advanced EQ and Special FX presets
- DVD Audio
- Hardware MIDI synthetizer (I wrote a small utility that automatically detects and changes the default Vista MIDI Synth during driver install or can change it later using its GUI. Some media players lets you choose the MIDI synthesizer)
- Equalizer (with preset saving, very hard to accomplish, had to deal with bugs in Creative software and use my creativity to find a workaround).
- WaveRT (a Microsoft replacement for ASIO, however I don't know if it really works or not)
The Live!/Live! 5.1 driversCreative have always released UDA (Unified Driver Architeture) drivers.
They purposedly ruined the Live! support in Vista: 2.1 speakers setting resulted in distorted sound.
After some investigation, I discovered the culprit module and replaced it with one from the last XP version and the problem was fixed.
In the later releases, Bass Management, Equalizer and EAX effects using software processing and Hardware MIDI support were added.
There was also an ALchemy for Live! cards.
The X-Fi drivers
I've added the following improvements: Hardware MIDI and WaveRT.
I didn't have a X-Fi to test, so modding was then limited to these features.
The Audigy LS/SE/Value/Live! 24-bit drivers
Officially, they lack Bass Management, Equalizer and EAx effects, once available in XP drivers.
I've found that the Audio Center utility (originally from the Vista Audigy Advanced MB drivers) worked just fine with these cards, so I made it available.
Also fixed an annoying bug present in the official drivers that cause the speaker type changing to Full Range speakers on reboot (disabling Bass Management).
The X-Fi Xtreme Audio drivers
Have the same speaker type bug. I fixed it.
Gameport support pack for Vista
Allows a limited number of gameport controllers to work on the x86 version of Windows Vista.
What Creative didn't likeI've learned how Creative enables or disables a feature for a specific model.
Alchemy:
My last ALchemy release (1.00.08) was complately unlocked and could be used with any sound device from any vendor.Audigy cards:
Successfully enabled the software-based X-Fi Crystalizer for use with Audigy cards.X-Fi:
Got Dolby Digital Live enabled on any X-Fi card. To clarify, I still didn't manage to enable DDL on Audigy cards.
A friend of mine bought a X-Fi, so I could test it, it really works.
The only current X-Fi based card that supports DDL is the Auzentech Prelude.The P17 to Xtreme Audio mod
P17 is the codiname for a simple PCI audio controller that powers the Audigy LS/SE/Value, Live! 24-bit and X-Fi Xtreme Audio host-based soundcards.Completely modded the P17 drivers to transform any Audigy LS/SE/Value and Live! 24-bit into a X-Fi Xtreme Audio (enabling Crystalizer).
Modding is OKI don't think there was something wrong with mods themselves.
Modding is a common practice among enthusiasts and I don't recall some company threatning a modder, unless you allow an exclusive feature to be used with competitor products (ie: SLI on non-NVIDIA chipsers or ALchemy on competitor products, as I've said before).
Remember the Promise Ultra to Fasttrak mod? It was even published on a well known review site.
There was also the GeForce to Quadro mod, the NVIDIA nForce 4 to SLI mod, also published on review sites.What I did wrong
I've asked for donations.
Do I really need the money? No, thank God I don't.
I thought it would be ok to ask for donations so I could buy new hardware to support.
I did buy some hardware: an used Live! 5.1 for ~$15 and a new Audigy SE for $60.
Computer hardware is really expensive here in Brazil.
An X-Fi Xtreme Gamer costs about $240 here, with taxes and shipping, The same card can be bought for ~$80 in the US.
I just can't spend my money buying new hardware that I won't even use.
Even the features I've enabled, I don't use.
Later I tried to encourage donations to release the DDL feature for X-Fi and Crystalizer for Audigy.
I said something like "the more people donate, the faster I'll release".
This was even worse, but I was so eager to modding that I didn't think straight. I was hoping to get a X-Fi asap.
While I did ask for donations, once released, the downloads would be public.
I do recognize that I deserve some criticism for that.
To date, I've got $146, with amounts ranging from $1 to $50 (this value is still uncleared).
Reversing ALchemy was also wrong, I know. But I reiterate, what is the point of improving ALchemy and changing for it, when it requires an improved driver? It was my protest against Creative.
What Creative did wrong- They publicly threatened me, just to show their arrogance.
If they had contacted me by e-mail or private message I would do the same thing (remove everything) and no one would know about their insatisfaction.- Removed everything I posted in the forums, even if unrelated to the "forbidden" stuff.
If they can't provide better drivers, let people make their own choice.- They did not recognize my hard work.
I've been supporting about every Creative PCI soundcard, would even support USB devices if I had one of them.To date, the Audigy Vista Support Pack was downloaded about 20,000 times.
The current situationDDL encoder and Crystalizer were not publicly released.
I've deleted the P17 to Xtreme Audio mod and ALchemy from FileFront (where I store the files).
I've been told they will allow me to continue with my mods, except the "forbidden" ones.
I'm also allowed to receive donations.Download of my mods
http://hosted.filefront.com/braziliantech/
Comments
I took one look at the pic and pissed myself! thanksfor the laugh, giz.
this is the old baby diaper full of Indian food and burnt hair trick isn't it?
Why doesn't creative do a grand gesture, please their entire client base, and hire the guy for like 50k a year. You get a shitload of nice press, you kill any negative feeding bloggers, and you make a PR mistake into a gesture of good will? nope, not in corporate america.
@ Darrone - I agree. Don't piss on the guy like that and then say, "Oh, well here's a towel - a small one." He's really doing THEM a favor. Just hire the guy to fix your effed up problems.
Jerks.
Uncle Jesse? Where are the rippers? Seriously, what does Jesse Katsopolis have to do w/ the A-team. Is this some sort of test?
@Darrone: But that would imply that they are not capable of doing the work themselves. Essentially they'd be calling themselves morons. Better to bury their incompetence I guess is what they're thinking.
@BoinK: does anyone care about this except the hardcore blogging consumer? The people who care are the people that arent going to be fooled by their negatively attacking a modder.
My question is that why on earth are people smashing their Creative sound cards? If they are a gamer, what brand sound card are they going to use now?
Actively screwing the software drivers on your product sounds like the most dumbassed decision making I've ever encountered. You know its just for their bottom line. Idiots, creative just lost allot of the respect i have for them.
Mullets make me laugh! ROFLOL! He looks like a young Scott Baio.
@Git Em SteveDave: Remember when he was Jesse Cocker? I wonder why they suddenly changed it to a more Greek name?
Wait. Is this real? Or is this another joke?
Damn. I can't wait for this day to be over.
@rdldr1: Integrated sound.
What is this?!
No MR. T!?
Wha!?
I really thought if anybody had the stones to post all T all day it'd be the Giz.
Wow. That was disappointing.
***DUSTYBUTT PITIES THE FOOL***
creatives just mad some kid fixed something that they have had a whole department working on since vista came out.
@rdldr1:
Asus Xonar
Turtle Beach
M-audio
SIIG
all decent sound cards. Xonar recently got limited EAX support
It makes me tingle when i see someone doing the right thing. So many consumers get the shapt for the ole mighty dollar to flow into millionaire pockets.
Cha-ching for the little guy...
I will be buying ASUS PCI-E products from now on. they have the best PCI-E cards in the market and will continue to support htem indefinatly...
Peace
Jesse Katsopolis > Mr. T in every way, but especially as a macro.
I sent the PR Vice president of Creative Labs a little nasty gram. I know it probably won't get much attention, even though it should.
@Darrone: Because Creative isn't interested in helping their customer base. They are interested mostly in creating purposefully buggy and underfeatured drivers in order to force customers to upgrade to the X-Fi.
And this is exactly why the whole open source movement is so important -- it takes away the ability of hardware and software vendors to do this.
So what does Daniel_K do for a living that he has time to fix all of Creative's drivers for free? It is absolutely wonderful he is doing this, and I see no reason why he should not be able to collect donations to go purchase the hardware to fix the drivers for. (And hopefully have enough left over to buy himself dinner.)
Never the less, how the heck does he have the time to do this?!
@rdldr1, @Jestyr:
Also:
Auzentech
Razer Barracuda AC-1
HT Omega
ASUS Xonar
Creative is irrelevant. Screw them for what they did to Aureal.
@HeartBurnKid: Not suggesting they actual fix their drivers. I'm talking about from a PR standard. This guys job could be to eat doritos and fart on a snare drum twice daily, its just a PR gesture.
@Darrone: I agree. They should've hired him. but that would'Ve been helping their customers, showing gratitude... not pissing in their faces like they wanna do.
Never buying creative stuff again. Screw them.
Call him what you will, but he was tapping Rebecca Romijn for a few years....if he was smart the house was wired with X10.....
This should be recorded as a classic case study for every MBA student to learn how not to handle the precious commodity known as "goodwill". Creative was sitting on a gold mine because this guy was basically working for free to enhance Creative's product line and their reaction was to publicly take him down? This shows that Creative is populated and run by retarded monkeys and the fallout from this PR gaffe is going to cost the company its prestige, respect, and most importantly - clientele. Creative: you're not the only game in town bitches. There's plenty of competition out there and you just cut your own legs off by taking the most disadvantageous path possible for yourselves.
@Darrone: Corporate Singapore, actually.
And I thought I had problems with creative drivers. Good thing I don't have Vista installed. I haven't bought a creative product in over 3 years and that was just because I "heard" that they retooled their drivers from WinXP instead of using the old hacked Win98 drivers.
I had a <sarcasm>wonderful</sarcasm> RMA experience where I was getting static interference coming from DVD playback. They said nothing was wrong with the board and sent it back without really doing anything. Their excuse was "we can't recreate every person's hardware configuration for the sake of finding a rare issue." If it's so rare, why not send me a new card?!
Customers: lifetime to gain, seconds to lose.
It's "an X-Fi," not "a X-Fi." Does this bother anybody else? I'm seeing this sort of thing a lot lately. And yes, Creative's being a real dick.
Sounds like our protagonist here was fixing a lot of crappy, buggy drivers. And for that, Creative should just cut him a check, or send him a pie basket*, because he's frikkin earned it.
What's going to get him in trouble (and what Creative just cannot let him do) is enabling functionality in Creative's products that is licensed from other companies. Things like Dolby technology. It makes sense that Creative would build their asics/firmware with Dolby related support across the board, but then enable/disable based on whether the specific product being built out of it actually licenses that technology.
By enabling said features, Creative is opened up to law suits in terms of breach of contract, or additional licensing fees based on the size of the installed user base, or issues of "due diligence" in terms of their contractual obligations to protect the IP of their technology partners.
Creative is still a bunch of dicks, but in some specific cases, they may not have a choice in the matter.
* The guy lives in Brazil. He's probably up to his ears in fresh fruit, and bootylicious bikini models, so send him some pie instead.
My question is why did Creative "purposly" disable features?
.... And oh yeah... buy a mac!
@ctthoqqua: sure you can use those cards, however its technologies are more supported by video game companies than any other brand. It may be clever marketing, but I've done my research before I purchased a new sound card. Creative sound cards are generally the best for games, Id like to see evidence otherwise.
Auzentech
Razer Barracuda AC-1
HT Omega
ASUS Xonar
They are what Matrox is to nVidia.
OK no more Creative products for me! If this is the way Creative treats people who are actually giving support for their products, I can imagine the horrors that support will be for an average user! I think everyone should boycott Creative products. Substitute their sound cards for something like the Razer Barracuda. Their speakers suck so go for Logitech or Klipsch instead. Heck their media players pale in comparison to the iPods. All in all, screw Creative products, as there are better ones out there!
@Darrone: 50k/year? Uhhh...try doubling that at least.
At LEAST.
I don't think I'll knowingly ever buy a Creative product again. And Cambridge Soundworks is owned, but technically apart from, Creative so I'll still go there if the price is right. What a bunch of dildos.
Speaking about Creative's sound cards... I wanted to upgrade my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 card, so I bought the Extreme Gamer X-Fi card because I had just purchased the Logitech Z-5500 digital speakers. The Card did sound great, but it suffered from the infamous "squeal of death", which many people were having with that particular card. What happened was... when I would play music or watch a video, the audio would play extremely fast. I was saddened to find out that creative never issued a fix for this problem, and just said if you experience this problem, try placing the card into a different PCI slot, which I did. Unfortunately, I had the same problem and just simply returned the card for a full refund. Not sure if I will ever buy another creative card. I put my original Audigy 2 back into my computer and with my speakers, they actually sound pretty good.
Well I thought it was a lovely story. And he told it so well! With such enthusiasm!
Creative has been scamming pc owners for close to 20 years, forcing them into pointless upgrades under the guise of new "features" and OS support.
I stopped buying Creative gear years ago, m/b 5.1 works fine for me!
I never use those additional features.
I do a little gaming, watch the occasional video and maybe do some internet radio while I'm surfing.
The most I'll throw at it is running Audacity, but nothing major there either.
My days of worrying about sound card branding are over.
There's no need for it any more, and certainly Creative has done nothing to earn my continuing support based on what's coming to light from this story.
Oh Creative... that shitty company that continues having a shitty costumer relationship and continues releasing shoddy products because unfortunately, there are few other competitors.
Yeah, Creative does sucks. Not only on the stuff no one else cares.. like their lame attempt on 3D cards, mp3 players and other stuff... but also on their main product: sound cards.
Same Creative of "our sound cards makes CD quality music sound BETTER than CD quality music!!!" and bullcrap like that.
Companies like these eventually ends up dying poisoned by it's own greed.
The only reason I don't pull the Creative card out of my machine and go with the on board sound is the fact that offloading the audio to a card is better for gaming performance, and hey, let's face it:
The stupid thing is already installed and working!
So IN THE FUTURE I won't be as hung up on what card I run.
For now, with the machine I'm running it can stay.
For now.
I haven't used Creative soundcards in years and I was a gamer. Most recently Auzentech's X-Plosion 7.1 DTS is my soundcard and it is excellent.
It's just been downhill since they got delisted from the NASDAQ, huh?
They actually had a solid plan with X-Fi by catering to gamers and audiophiles. They managed to royally F the execution up... They're gonna end up like Vodoo graphics if they keep this up.
any chance for a class action lawsuit? wilful negligence?
Man thank god I downloaded those drivers. My Audigy 2 works great now in Vista!!!!! F*** you creative, I will never buy anything from you again.
@mikeklein: Did I mention his job was eating doritos and farting on a snare drum? I think I did, soooo, yea. Someone pays me 50k a year to fart on a snare drum, they got themselves a grade a employee.
@Monty: we have a lot of time in brazil, and hes probably in college right now =P
let me re-phrase that...
we do have a lot of time if we dont work...
i used to have a lot of time, but my h4x0r5 skills are lacking =P
computer science graduate and can´t do half of the shit he did for creative, i actually have a audigy 2 platinum ex that doesn´t work, simply because i´ve put a buggy firmware update in there...
it sucks balls, i love my audigy 2 platinum
From what I read in their initial letter, what Creative is ACTUALLY concerned about is the use of their drivers on non-Creative hardware. Creative may have recognized early on that internally-developing the drivers that the Brazilian created would cause a problem in that they could be used on other cards. Thus, they chose to make some of their own cards obsolete and concentrate on newer, more patent-secure technologies.
Creative has every right to protect and defend their market share. But if they can't build a decent soundcard and proprietary drivers, that's THEIR problem and consumers are right to stop buying their products because of that. Don't stop buying them because Creative has a legal right to defend itself.
I just sent Creative a nicely worded email outlining my past purchases and my decision not to buy anything of theirs again.
I wonder if they'll reply. Heh.
@jd_cincy: How? I've had the same sound card and 5.1 speakers for years, and years, and years, and I now run Vista and use both my computer's sound cards on a daily basis, and it works as well as ever.
Boy I was so strong armed into upgrading I never even noticed.