UPDATED: Creative charges for working Vista drivers

Posted at: 12:00am 5th July 2007 by Ben Hardwidge

ALchemy package costs $9.99 for Audigy owners

In a move that looks set to be about as welcome as a crocodile in a goldfish pond, Creative is charging owners of Audigy cards $9.99 for the privilege of having working EAX and DirectSound3D effects in Windows Vista.

The ALchemy software package was originally only intended to support Creative’s X-Fi cards, but the company later announced that it intended to open up the drivers to the company’s older Audigy cards too; little did we know that the company planned to bill us for the privilege.

Before ALchemy was released, any games that used EAX or DirectSound3D (which is the majority of games) were limited to basic stereo audio in Windows Vista, because Microsoft has removed the audio hardware abstraction layer from the new OS. ALchemy restores hardware acceleration in Windows Vista, allowing gamers to experience proper surround sound with EAX effects again.

Strictly speaking, ALchemy is a software application as opposed to a driver, but we still thinks it’s incredibly cheeky of Creative to charge for the privilege of EAX and DirectSound3D support, especially as the card should be able to do it anyway.

UPDATE

Creative has now responded to this, saying that ALchemy was ‘initially intended as an X-Fi only project, free for all X-Fi customers, but requests from end-users during BETA-testing prompted the extension of support to cover the Audigy range.

To clarify some confusion regarding charging for drivers, all of our Vista drivers are available to download at no charge, but the additional resource required to secure development and testing of Creative ALchemy for Audigy required a means recouping the additional development cost, hence the nominal charge for Audigy users.’

Creative is correct in saying that the actual drivers themselves are available for free, but these drivers won’t make your Audigy do what it says it will on the box. As the company told us, without ALchemy ‘most games will either output no sound or default to Direct X Software mixed 2 channel stereo with no EAX effects which drastically reduces the in-game experience.’ Then again, it doesn’t say that the card will work with Windows Vista on the box either.

Seeing as the cost for ALchemy is only around a fiver at the current exchange rate, is it fair enough for Creative to charge Audigy owners for this software? Let us know your thoughts.