Seems Creative are releasing more products on the X-fi chip to confuse consumers even more. Will this mean they will improve driver support more as well?

http://bg.europe.creative.com/corp [...] &ref=12936

Some small pics here, i cant find anymore info at the moment

http://support.creative.com/Produc [...] nd+Blaster

They look pretty cool (close to Asus's Xonar) hopefully this is proper shielding

Who cares....
Look at their past attitude.
For them customer is no thing."only cash matchine"

I care. Creative has been around for a long time, having led the way to the sound we now have. You might not like their attitude, but they are in business to make money, just the same as all other companies are. Besides, if you ever tried to deal with other companies, they aren't exactly customer conscious either. Auzentech, for example has a very bad problem with consumer relations.

As for the new card, I wait for the real reviews to come out before making opinions. I hope its a step in the right direction and we get better sound with Vista and these new cards. It seems like all the companies are having problems getting really good sound from Vista, form what I've seen and experienced. I can say that the ASUS card that I bought has left me a bit less than thrilled by its performance.

What ASUS card did you get Sailer, ive heard nothing but good things about it. And have been thinking about getting one on my next build, however, these new Creative ones may have thrown a spanner in that.

The Xonar. Its a good card, but not remarkedly different than the previous X-Fi which I moved to my XP machine. Fact is, the sound isn't quite as good from my Z-5500s for music, but it seems to have better differentiation among the speakers with games.

With the new Titaniums from Creative, I'm hoping that the few troubles I experience with the X-Fi Fatal1ty Platinum card might be fixed. But will have to wait for reviews before making judgments.

Creative will never learn, they can kiss my a** with the latest escapade:

http://forums.creative.com/creativ [...] 15#M124415

post #6

"Dear Audigy and X-Fi customers,

We recently announced the launch of our new X-Fi Titanium sound card series which are designed for use with PCI Express motherboards. We are including Dolby Digital Live encoding with these new sound cards, marking the first time that we have shipped this functionality in a Creative product.

We understand from previous customer feedback that many existing X-Fi and Audigy owners would like to have Dolby Digital Live functionality with their present sound cards. Rather than restricting the Dolby Digital Live feature to the new PCI Express sound cards, we are currently planning to offer it to existing Audigy 10K and X-Fi 20K owners for a nominal fee.
We will provide more information regarding the availability of the Dolby Digital Live encoder shortly."

Thank You.
The Sound Blaster Team

kpo6969: Awww gawd damn, they are still going for more money after the last fiasco with Daniel K and hacked Vista drivers unbelievable. I thought they would have learned by now.

Daniel K's back from what I've seen on their forum.

Just when it looks like Creative is doing something good, they decided that shooting themselves in one foot wasn't good enough, so they take aim at the other.

Sailer: Maybe its just the big toe on the other foot for the moment rather than the whole foot.

kpo6969: I know that he is back, Creative give him an ok as long as he doesnt profit from anything apparently

http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7844.html

We were under the impression that Creative and driver modder Daniel Kawakami had reached an agreement where Daniel could continue supplying Creative sound card owners with patches without angering the Creative legal department. Apparently not, since he has now posted a message over at the Creative forums where he says that he received a second letter of seize and desist from Creative. He has now decided to stop releasing patches and fixes, because he believes that he would only mislead buyers that they would be able to get full functionality with Creative sound card when Creative so obviously wants to limit them and doesn't want them unlocked. This is of course entirely Creative's choice, but far from appreciated by the consumers.

This is a copy of his post, verbatim;

"I've received another cease and desist e-mail.
I'm done with Creative, enough is enough.
Don't even bother asking me for the files.
Unfortunately, the situation did not change for us.
They did say an updated Audigy driver would eventually be released, but don't be optimistic about it (their priority is the launch of X-Fi 2).
What I can say for sure is the features I've enabled will not be made available in an official driver update.
Although I still have my doubts, they've said I would not be threatened if I provided patches instead of the actual binaries, because of licensed technologies built into them (Dolby/DTS).
While this could even be true, most of the disabled features are Creative's own technologies, which means they've disabled them on their own choice.
That's funny when people think you are an idiot.
They were after me and, on a chat session, they asked me what I'd like from them, as if I were expecting something.
They've promised me a free X-Fi 2, but I told them it was not necessary, because I was getting a couple of cards from other companies that contacted me.
Well, at least they are getting flammed all over the web and they are certainly mad about it and I could feel it while chatting with them. That is an enough reward for my hard work.
I'm not releasing a patch to enable DDL on any X-Fi neither Crystalizer for Audigy because, as they've pointed out to me, providing an alternative for their customers is good for them and increase their sales, specially when someone is doing it for free. Given the current situation, I cannot let this happen, as people get used to this and still buy Creative products.
Remember, while they say that 3rd parties are ok to provide workarounds, it is Creative's job to provide official driver/software updates.
I just hope their competitor companies do something about it.
And I really hope people don't forget this.
Thank you very much for your support and your donations.
Best regards,
Daniel Kawakami"

Hes right, he has indeed proved his point. Although ive never used his "patches" i think hes done a great thing exposing a few of creatives hidden secrets.