Creative driver modder responds to crackdown

I have purchased and returned several "Creative" products which qualifies me to comment on my experience. It is obvious that the focus for "Creative" has been and is, - hardware and marketing. The products generally look nice and seem to offer exceptional value for the money. However, as we all know, the promise falls far short of the hype. Experience has shown consistantly that the firmware supplied with ALL "Creative" devices is sub-standard. Experience has also shown and, is in fact pathetically easy to verify, that support for this issue is extraordinarily difficult to obtain. I can only speculate why this is because of the company policy attempting to "legally" control all information associated with "Creative" products. I can say that acknowledgement and commentary regarding legitimate customer concerns by "Creative" is conspicuously absent. More disturbing by far however, is the energy and resources expended to remove all traces of Daniel Kawakami's involvement in the modification of "Creative" firmware. By going into public and private forums and removing all comments refering to this issue they have effectively re-written or removed history. They have inadvertantly tipped their hand and shown how vulnerable we are to tactics which are and will be used by the powerful to control what we do and do not see.

Comment by Romi_Sharpe at 4:42pm 28th July 2008

I have purchased and returned several "Creative" products which qualifies me to comment on my experience. It is obvious that the focus for "Creative" has been and is, - hardware and marketing. The products generally look nice and seem to offer exceptional value for the money. However, as we all know, the promise falls far short of the hype. Experience has shown consistantly that the firmware supplied with ALL "Creative" devices is sub-standard. Experience has also shown and, is in fact pathetically easy to verify, that support for this issue is extraordinarily difficult to obtain. I can only speculate why this is because of the company policy attempting to "legally" control all information associated with "Creative" products. I can say that acknowledgement and commentary regarding legitimate customer concerns by "Creative" is conspicuously absent. More disturbing by far however, is the energy and resources expended to remove all traces of Daniel Kawakami's involvement in the modification of "Creative" firmware. By going into public and private forums and removing all comments refering to this issue they have effectively re-written or removed history. They have inadvertantly tipped their hand and shown how vulnerable we are to tactics which are and will be used by the powerful to control what we do and do not see.

Comment by Romi_Sharpe at 4:42pm 28th July 2008

WOW, I have been under a rock or in a cave to miss this. I did notice a surge in anti-Creative on E-Stores but just thought ,"newbs messing up their equipment again." After reading all this it leaves me 1 HUGE question....Has Creative resolved this yet? If not ,why? I don't have vista yet but ,if/when I do get it I will most assured not use a Creative card in it!!! That is of course they revoke all this dung about 3rd party help and realize the 3rd party they are condemning is the customers they sell to.

Comment by t4dog at 1:05am 5th April 2008

Realistically, the only way Creative's lawyers could touch this modder is if he was *selling* his modified version of their *free* drivers. Since he only asked for donations and only worked on technology that was being given away anyway, I fail to see a problem. My guess is that he hit on a critical (and deliberate) sabotage in the drivers so that they didn't run on Vista, which would be embarrasing for Creative if it got out. Hence all posts removed from forums and a nasty slight made publicly. It may be naieve of me but since most motherboards nowdays have decent onboard sound output (if not control) there's little reason for me to get any cards and thus, drivers at all.

Comment by Godkyra at 7:02pm 4th April 2008

look further down the page dummy... that one i posted has over 500 seeds at this miniute and maybe more if creative dont get there act together

Comment by NikoBellic at 11:52am 4th April 2008

Creative you can go suck strawberry's through dog sh#t for all I care,I will never buy your sound cards again. Oh yea Asus make a nice sound card!!!

Comment by rustynutts at 7:22pm 2nd April 2008

creative, hire this guy. he seems to do more work than anyone else at your offices, and with more success. users get drivers, creative undoes the damage done, boy gets job. sorted.

Comment by sotu1 at 5:08pm 2nd April 2008

Don't know why it did that, I only clicked submit once...

Comment by lexluthermiester at 5:07pm 2nd April 2008

The following is a message sent to the corp offices at Creative.... "To whom it may concern; I've been watching the situation concerning the custom drivers issue recently brought to light by your actions against the individual known as Daniel_K. I find it most disheartening and disturbing that you would hound a man for doing nothing more than providing, free of any charge or duty, driver support for an operating system that you have not properly supported. Asking for voluntary donations to continue efforts of providing functionality for hardware you folks have failed to properly support is not immoral, unethical or damaging to your IP. Perhaps it is damaging to your ego's and hurt your reputation, but that is rightly deserved. Creative dropped the ball. Instead of spending all the money you have on the attorney's, perhaps you should invest in hiring programmers that can write properly functioning drivers... As for the ALchemy "pay to upgrade" scheme, let me ask a simple question; Why should I pay more money to use hardware I've already paid for? And before you ask, why should I "upgrade" to an X-Fi when my Audigy 2 works perfectly? Now credit where credit is due. The X-Fi series has proven to be a wonderful product, one which I have upgraded to in one of my machines. I have no intention of upgrading the other. So let me ask another question; Is Creative going to pull it's head out of the sand and support Vista as well as you supported XP? I'm not using Vista as a primary OS yet, but I may on my home theater machine[which has the aforementioned Audigy 2]. I've been testing it on a spare drive and I used Daniel_K's custom drivers because I wished to see the difference, which was very noticeable. Creative has a responsibility and obligation to provide FULLY functional drivers and support software for the lifetime of the hardware, so long as it is widely in use. It has not escaped my thoughts that you are trying to force people to purchase an X-Fi based card in order to get the most from the drivers. This is a flawed point of view and has been proven time and again to fail from a business aspect. Creative has dug itself into a hole in many ways. The only way you are going to pull yourself out of it is if you provide the same high level of drivers/software and support as you do hardware. Next, getting back into the onboard sound market would also do good things for your longevity. And finally, instead of prosecuting your user base and those who support your products, welcome them and their efforts. Let's take Nvidia for example, they listen to their user base. And when many custom driver web sites came out with fixes to the issues Nvidia cards were having in Vista, they didn't hound the the community, they learned from them. And now the Vista drivers Nvidia has released operate with near perfection. Creative needs to follow this kind of example to move into the future and regain it's former market strength and reputation! Now I will qualify myself, I have been a fan and supporter of Creative since the days of the SoundBlaster AWE32[suddenly I feel very old]. I never use onboard sound. I have always used and recommended the use of Creative sound cards. For my portable media needs I have a Zen and love it. So perhaps you can understand how disheartened and disappointed I have been with Creative's recent display of choices. It is time for Creative to pull it together and reclaim it's place as a champion of the PC audio market! It is my hope that you do so soon. Best Regards, {name withheld} Salt Lake City, Utah" I doubt they will listen to me alone. But if enough of us chime in with them directly, they will act, or they will fail. We need to provoke they into action!

Comment by lexluthermiester at 4:55pm 2nd April 2008

i need my drivers updated.

Comment by TBallS at 2:15pm 2nd April 2008

So he was 'fixing' things that should have worked properly and fully in the first place? There wouldn't be an issue here at all if Creative hadn't put the 'faults' there for him to fix. Creative have been caught out pulling a fast one. Never a good move for your reputation. Oh dear. Hmm... and as for paying for increasing the performance of hardware that was deliberately handicapped by the manufacturer...? Will Intel/AMD be sueing those who sell pre-overclocked gaming rigs next? Not exactly the same I know, but it makes you think.

Comment by Bogus2002 at 1:29pm 2nd April 2008

Sounds like he cottoned on to making some bucks out of the idea too which is obviously wrong (making people pay more for a quicker release). But that said Creative ought to be beaten with a stick. *** EDITED BY MODERATOR FOR LANGUAGE ***

Comment by pveater at 12:50pm 2nd April 2008

Re: the previous post.... unless you're a major OEM or distributor of course!

Comment by cjagusz at 12:04pm 2nd April 2008

If anything, his work goes to show that some companies will do anything to keep the customer buying new product. Regardless of the way he has been treated, reading quotes such as "Creative purposefully modified the Audigy drivers to disable some features when Vista is detected, and also purposefully introduced some bugs to prevent some XP utilities from running" has put me off ever buying a Creative product again....and as a dedicated Creative customer since 2000, I'm sure that's something that will hit them hard.

Comment by F_A_F at 11:51am 2nd April 2008

...you're not meant to stick with onboard sound, you're meant to go out and buy a new XFi... But very shabby by Creative. Yes they have to make money, but the way they have dealt with Vista from the start is at best blinkered and naive and at worst could be considered morally (not to mention environmentally) bankrupt. Unfortunately for them, in this day and age, many people don't take everything at face value. If Daniel had assumed they were being truthful when they said that these features didn't work in Vista, they wouldn't have this problem.

Comment by jjs113 at 9:46am 2nd April 2008

Someone sent me a link to a torrent. It's even on the Creative forums thread!! And xonerater bad news, this story erupted on Friday 28th March, not the implied 1st April.

Comment by NickMC07121989 at 9:21am 2nd April 2008

Is there any coincidence in the fact that this story came out on April 1st? Anyone feeling like a bit of a fool?

Comment by Xonerater at 8:58am 2nd April 2008

Is anyone torrenting this drivers yet? Surely getting them out there and making them easy to find is the best way of rallying against corporate oppression?!

Comment by gavomatic57 at 7:41am 2nd April 2008

Surely instead of chastising the guy, they could maybe look at what he's achieved all by himself & maybe work with & encourage him. All power to the guy's bow for getting as far as he has in a near bankrupt country. & I must be living under a rock, I'd never heard of him or his work before, so thanks, CPC, for this article.

Comment by Landy_Ed at 7:45am 2nd April 2008

leil_lei sure is a tad cross at creative but it's times like these I'm glad to have an audigy4 on XP. If this'd happened to me I'd be attaching my soundcard to a brick and sending it to Creative via throwmail...well, I'd be bloody annoyed anyway.

Comment by EdArch at 2:24am 2nd April 2008

'http://www.fulldls.com/torrent-app-944180.html' (without quotes) have fun, and just take advantage of the full potential so you can see how badly creative treat their customers on the budget audigy range

Comment by NikoBellic at 2:05am 2nd April 2008

the amount of backlash that creative will recieve if they don't fix this asap will be massive. it is true that daniel may have gotten a little over zealous in his actions, but those were minor infractions that creative should have privately contacted him about. creative's R and D division is great, the hardware they put out is great, but PR and CS from them is about as usefull as floppy disk is to a super computer (that metaphor nerdy enough for ya'?). and daniel has every right to unlock features hidden in his hardware and to help others do the same. after we own the hardware, we are free to do WHATEVER we wish with it. do intel and AMD attack us for overclocking their CPU's? no. altering drivers is no different from overclocking, do companies care if overclockers modify and distribute BIOS? no. creative is just being a money whore, and their products are not good enough to keep us tolerant of this crap. and no individual company can stand up to the computer enthusiast community and win, when nvidia tried to phase AGP out by ceasing production of AGP versions of their latest cards, a petition was made, and the 7800gs soon followed. a company is eternally at the mercy of it's customers and that will NEVER change.

Comment by yougotkicked at 9:21pm 1st April 2008

Can no one just stick with the old boring drivers that work.....? pff

Comment by Lightning_Pete at 9:24pm 1st April 2008

we thank you for your hard work, but please stop making Creative a better company, i tried the Alchemy crap with my X-fi xtreme music on vista 64x, its crap! (their CL driver blows, 3 mins after i installed the Alchemy for free, i uninstall that sh!t right away, wasted my time) no sound with WCIII DX8 game that is 5 years ago, with the option of choosing CL card in game. (not the great driver you made D_K, even tho i haven't tried using your driver yet, a bit hard to find now) stop making them drivers, we will all switch brand, period, no need to feel bad. hear me Creative, the next 35~60+ years of my life, no chance, that is as if your Creative Lab still even exist! ***edited by moderator - please refrain from swearing in comments***

Comment by Leil_lei at 7:52pm 1st April 2008

i was thinking of upgrading my sound recently but i guess that i am just better off going with onboard sound instead, due to creative disrespecting customers like that. P.S for you newbies on the site (custompc that is) just remember to go to page 2 of this to see the real upgrades that he has managed to do to the Drivers and then you'll see what i mean when i say they are disrespecting the consumers.

Comment by NikoBellic at 7:13pm 1st April 2008

So CMSS and the like and those presets are all disabled on audigy cards in Vista? If so then I am now even more on Daniel K's side as those features worked fine in XP on my Audigy, I haven't yet put my audigy into my Vista machine due to the lack of space at my PCI port, I have just recently freed up this space to progress into installing the card, after hearing about this story and the fact that it looks to me that the above features won't work in Vista, I'll stick with my onboard sound.

Comment by Cerberus_xiii at 6:55pm 1st April 2008

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